Chapter 11 and Verse From Good Bookkeeper

Orange County Treasurer John Moorlach, who when he’s not wearing his glasses and Bermuda shorts kind of looks like a young Methuselah, says the Bible is his most important resource when it comes to sound financial investment. One presumes he always skips Chapter 11 and turns immediately to the Song of Salomon Brothers.

In an interview published in The Times’ Saturday Religion section, Moorlach credits the Good Book with providing more than 2,000 tidbits of financial advice, which is about the standard weekly output from the average television astrologer.

The Bible is free and much more reliable, Moorlach says, citing such verses as Proverbs 22:7: “ . . . the borrower is servant to the lender.” If people just followed the Bible’s simple but practical teachings, Moorlach says, they could avoid financial trouble.

The man is no false prophet.

He was the modern-day Isaiah who tried to warn us in 1994 about the impending county financial crisis. Nobody would listen until our walls of Jericho finally tumbled.

After the bankruptcy, the supervisors had little choice but to give Moorlach the treasurer’s job, although he made it abundantly clear he’d settle for two goats and a burnt offering.

Since assuming office, though, he’s won two subsequent uncontested elections while managing to keep his light under a bushel basket.

By touting the Bible as a financial guide, however, Moorlach seems to be implying that his ill-fated predecessor, Robert Citron, could have benefited from a little more catechism.

I’m not so sure. Citron wasn’t openly religious, but I sense he relied heavily on the Bible when dealing with Merrill Lynch, being especially intrigued by the part where the lamb dwells with the wolf.

Citron also must have been a fan of Ecclesiastes: “To every thing there is a season . . . a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to skim, and a time to be scammed.”

By the time he pleaded to several felonies and finished serving time for his mishandling of the county’s finances, Citron’s favorite book of the Bible probably was Lamentations. One wonders how many times he recited from Chapter 3, Verse 46: “All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.”

With the Lord as Moorlach’s shepherd and his investment banker who leadeth him beside the still waters and away from risky reverse repurchase agreements, the county seems to be renewed.

A devout Christian, Moorlach is hip to the secular world that surrounds him. He doesn’t try to force-feed his beliefs onto county government, not that it couldn’t use some divine inspiration now and again.

You have to wonder, for example, if Moorlach shouldn’t have ministered to Supervisor-infidels Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson earlier this year before they went head-to-head with County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier.

Moorlach might well have gone to a knee with both men and read to them from Proverbs 21:19:

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and an angry woman.”

And is there a supervisor--or City Council member anywhere, for that matter--who wouldn’t love to utter Psalm 35 before every meeting: “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me.”

Beats the Pledge of Allegiance, doesn’t it?

The point is, Moorlach’s religiosity as the backbone of his public life is nothing to fret.

Indeed, readers may be asking themselves if this column couldn’t benefit from Scripture. Well, if you must know, II Timothy 2:16 has long guided this column:

“But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness.”

I can hear the readers’ chorus now: “Amen!”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com