Shall we talk about the price of gas? Why not: Everyone else is. Here, I'll get us started:

I don't like how much gas costs and I wish someone would do something about it.

There, that was easy. Now for the hard part: Who can do something? And what?

There's no shortage of people with opinions, especially in an election year, when they routinely talk as if the government is the key player. Tax oil companies' "windfall profits." Allow more drilling at home. Invest in alternate energy sources. Or simply have the government order a freeze on gas prices. (More than half the public likes that last one, according to one poll I saw.)

Some ideas make at least some sense, others make no sense at all. But none of them, or even the best of then all together, add up to a solution.

Taxes only drive prices up. Freezes only create shortages. Drilling at home might bring prices down, but probably only a little and not for a long time. Alternative energy can do some good in some ways, but (for various practical reasons) its uses are limited, especially for transportation.

The truth is, we're probably stuck both with needing oil and paying high prices no matter what. The main reason is that we — i.e., Americans — just aren't in control here. Most of the world's oil is in other countries. And the biggest thing driving up oil prices is worldwide demand from rising nations like China and India. That demand is only going to grow. We can pursue whatever policies we want to affect oil prices at home, and if we do everything right, we may make the price at the pump a little lower than it might have been. But for the most part, it's out of our hands.

I don't mean to depress anyone, or to discourage anyone from doing what they can to keep prices down. (How many of us really need to drive a gas guzzler?) Just the opposite. We'll get by. And maybe some good will come of it. Maybe God will use this to help strip us of some illusions.

It's human nature: All of us tend to assume that whatever standard of living we're used to is the minimum we're entitled to. But as Americans, we're used to that standard being very high — much higher than the one enjoyed by virtually everyone who's ever lived. We don't like what it costs us to drive each day? We should just imagine how thankful and awestruck anyone who'd lived before the last century or so would feel about driving even once. Most of what we have, we have because people before us created it. And, of course, because they and we were blessed by a Creator.

It's also human nature to feel that wherever we live is the center of the universe. But again, for Americans, this tendency is magnified. We're so used that "We're No. 1" feeling: We take the lead, and the rest of the world is supposed to follow. We have a hard time accepting that things happen in the rest of world that affect our part of the world. We keep defaulting to the belief that whatever we Americans pay is determined mainly by what we do, or what our government does.

Some of our attitudes become pretty silly when they're put into words. We know that. Still, habits of mind are powerful things. Many of us fall into them more often than we think things through. All the more so when our culture keeps reinforcing them.

Take our politics. The Left usually focuses more on government programs while the Right focuses on the private sector. Both sides, though, have gotten in the habit of talking — and, I'm afraid, thinking — as if every issue is a "problem" to which there are "solutions." It's practically an article of our national (secular) faith: We can do whatever we set our minds to, as long as we have the right tactics and a can-do mindset.

Christians who have political leanings can easily find themselves pulled too far in either direction. I've felt the pull: I certainly think a lot more highly of the private sector's capacity to produce good results than I do of the state's. But I shouldn't make a god out of the private sector, any more than I should make a god out of the state. I've got a God, and He doesn't tolerate substitute saviors.

If I take a Christian view, I can never lose sight of the fact that this is a fallen world. Christians shouldn't think that we're going to fix things up just right in our country or world, and make everything the way it's supposed to be. And we should be. God gives us a number of promises, but those promises don't include endless affluence or eternal economic growth. Nor is it even clear that those are always good things.

Prosperity can be blessing or curse — a gift by which God meets our needs and enriches our lives, or a judgment by which He gives us over to decadent self-indulgence. On the flip side, scarcity can be curse or blessing — a rebuke to a rebellious, stiff-necked people, or a loving discipline which God uses to remind us of Who we really depend upon to meet our needs, and of Who and what really matters. There's no hard and fast moral rule about wealth or poverty: It's all about what He does with them.

This is easy to say: For most of us, high gas prices are still a long ways from driving us into actual poverty. They're a taste of tough times, though, and a glimpse of tougher times to come. And what we do to weather the economic challenges won't be as important as how we weather them spiritually. If we keep our eyes on Who sustains us and see His blessings where the world sees burdens, we'll come out richer in the way that counts the most.