Yesterday I suggested that free market capitalism is very efficient at processing the information it receives. If we feed a value system like individualistic materialism into the system, then the results will reflect those values. If we feed virtuous values into the system, the results will reflect those virtues. Most would agree that individualistic materialism is the dominant value system fed into our economic system. That presents a problem for Christians because these values are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. What are we to do?
The apostles faced a similar problem. The Greco-Roman empire was grounded in a hierarchal power system, but Jesus turned the world upside down. Jesus said the way to become first is to become last; to become the servant of everyone else. All humanly constructed hierarchies based on social categories are rendered meaningless. Paul understood this when he wrote about Christ's new creation in Galatians 3:28.
There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Some have tried to minimize the radical nature of this passage by saying it is limited to salvation (soteriology). That rationalization doesn't work. The end of the verse makes clear that Paul is writing about ecclesiology: "…for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
In their morning prayers, Jewish men were known to thank God for not having created them a woman, a gentile, or a fool/slave. Women could only observe temple worship, and Gentiles were only allowed into the outer courts. But with the Church, the symbol of entrance into the community ceased to be circumcision; a rite that was only possible for men. With the Church, the symbol of baptism was open to everyone. All are made one in Christ, and the social hierarchies are rendered irrelevant. All are welcomed "into the temple" as worshipers and ministers of God. To use Paul's repeated metaphor, we are to function as one body, with each part of the body contributing to the welfare of the other. Yes, there would be leaders, but leaders would be selected through the gifting of the Spirit, not human social categories. Jesus and Paul called on disciples to feed a different set of values into the social order.
This created a huge problem. The Romans demanded social order, and order was achieved through dominating power. People refusing to live by the hierarchies of the culture would be perceived as a direct threat to social stability. Greek and Roman philosophers used to write household codes exhorting the householders to rule over their wives, children, and slaves for the sake of the social order. Any Christian householder not enforcing these standards would be considered a potential threat. So what did Paul do? Paul did something highly subversive.
Paul wrote his own household codes. They are in Ephesians 5-6 and Colossians 3-4. Peter wrote similar instructions in 1 Peter 2-3. Many have errantly assumed these codes to be instructions to maintain traditional behavior that regrettably seeped their way into the Bible. They get lost in the instructions to wives to submit to husbands and slaves to masters. They miss two startling differences in these New Testament texts compared to the culture's household codes.
First, the household codes were not about three sets of relationships: husband/wife, father/child, and master/slave. They were about the relationship of one person: the householder to his wife, children, and slaves. The Greco-Roman codes were always addressed to the householder, and the household members were expected to obey under the penalty of death. Paul and Peter address their codes to all the members of the household, giving justifications for their requested behavior that usually center on service to God and "for the sake of the gospel." All the household members are now free agents choosing service for the sake of the Kingdom.
Second, nowhere does Paul or Peter tell husbands to rule over their wives. Even in the frequently misunderstood Ephesians 5 passage, Paul does not tell the husband to be the head of the wife. He merely observes that he is the head. His only instruction is to love his wife to the point of death. The husband is to lay down his power trip for love, and she, in turn, submits to him. They submit to one another in Christ.
Paul is simultaneously preserving the social order and thoroughly undermining it. At the surface level, it may appear to be little different from Roman life because the "subordinates" are not seeking power. But at the core, it is rendering the hierarchies meaningless. As this other-centeredness would spread to other households, they would eventually rot the hierarchies from the inside out. Indeed, Rodney Stark, in The Rise of Christianity, points to two plagues in the second and third centuries that killed at least a quarter of the Roman population. As Romans abandoned the cities and their closest family members were stricken with the plague, Christians fearlessly and joyously stayed behind and cared for others, some dying of the plague. The other-centered abandonment shook the empire to its core as the Romans weighed the inefficacy of their gods and values compared to that of the Christians. Christians did not withdraw from the empire to live their values. Nor did they take to the streets demanding social justice. They formed communities of other-centered love and fed those values into the day's decision-making structures.
The central problem in our day is not the economic system. The problem is a Church that is not grounded in other-centered love. Economic values would change if the Church ever returned to the other-centered love of the gospel. And when those values are fed into a potent "operating system" like free market capitalism, watch out! The world will be transformed.
The American Church has two obstacles to overcome to reach this reality. First, there are too many Christians who the individualistic materialism of the culture has co-opted. They appreciate and champion the efficacy of the markets, but their values are shaped more by the ubiquitous values of the culture than the other-centered stewardship of Scripture.
Second, some rightly resist individualistic materialism but conflate it with the underlying economic system. Many pastors and leaders in traditionally mainline branches of Christianity and on the Evangelical left, talk about "profit" as though it were a dirty word and deride the market system for being based on greed. These critiques have more in common with collectivist materialism than the gospel of Christ. If individualistic materialists tend to idolize the free market system, then collectivist materialists tend to destroy it. Both are rooted in the Enlightenment, not Scripture.
The consequence of collectivist materialism in the Church is that those who would enter the marketplace to exhibit the other-centered love of the gospel are not supported. They are guilty by association of individualistic materialism because individualist materialism and free market capitalism have been conflated into the same thing. Rather than supporting and equipping ministers for the marketplace, the leadership views them as suspect and tainted, except, of course, when it comes to the annual Church stewardship campaign.
No, the problem is not free-market capitalism. As Rodney Stark has so eloquently shown in his book Victory of Reason, the genealogy of the ideas that gave rise to free market capitalism can be traced back to the fall of Rome, and they are born directly out of the Christian milieu. The Enlightenment's effective hijacking of these ideas in the service of human autonomy has created an ongoing war between individualistic and collectivist materialism. It is time that the Church act prophetically in reversing this Enlightenment hijacking by infusing the most potent economic system ever devised with the other-centered stewardship values of the coming Kingdom.
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