What causes poverty? Countless volumes have been written over the ages trying to answer this question. The fact is, it is one of the simplest questions of all time. It can be answered in two words: Being born. We have nothing when we come into the world. All that we have comes through investments others make in us and through investments we make in ourselves. Poverty is our natural human state. The real economic question is, “What causes prosperity?”
No topic is more frequently discussed in the Bible than the topic of material possessions, and yet the Bible gives us no economic system for implementation. It speaks a great deal about the prosperity being of God, but how do we achieve it? The Church has been left to discern that as it lives in community with God through the ages.
Economics is central to our life together. Unfortunately, I believe that the Church frequently misunderstands economics. I recently read N. T. Wright’s otherwise excellent book The Last Word, where he wrote,
The greatest of the Enlightenment-based nations, the United States of America, has been left running a de facto world empire which gets richer by the minute as much of the world remains poor and gets poorer. (p. 13)
Several things need to be unpacked from this sentence:
1. Enlightenment thinking by extension is responsible for our economic systems.
2. The United States is the primary cause, or at least a major culprit, in world poverty.
3. The world is getting poorer.
This characterization of the world is widely shared among theologians and seminarians, but it is wrong:
1. Free markets and capitalism are direct extensions of Christian thought and a moral good.
2. There are cultural and economic dynamics at work that play a much bigger role in persistent poverty than the actions of the United States.
3. The world outside the West is experiencing an unprecedented outbreak of prosperity (though it is unevenly spread.)
Over the coming days, I will lay out a rudimentary theology of economics and the causes of prosperity. I will tap into the biblical narrative to see what scripture says. I am particularly going to emphasize the eschatological implications for economics. I will reflect on capitalism, where it came from, and its promise for the future. I will reflect on what this means in terms of how we view our everyday lives and the implications this has for how we envision being the Church.
Furthermore, I will tell you the ending now. I do not believe that the decline of morality in the marketplace, or morality in general, is primarily a function of Enlightenment thinking. Nor do I think it is a function of the Western political and economic systems. The primary locus for the decline in morality is in the Church, and as it relates to economics, in the Church’s marginalization of work in the marketplace as godly service.
I hope you will join me on the journey.
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