Benevolence vs. Free Market

The gospel is a gift given to us – something that is precious but yet costs us no money – which leads us to ask whether it thus subverts the human economy. At the risk of deconstructing capitalism, we could cite that doyen of postmodernism, Jacques Derrida, who provided a wonderful insight when he wrote that the problem of gift is that it breaks the cycle of exchange in the economy. Derrida's proposal is that the gift subverts the real objective of all economic transactions because our acts of economic transaction are all calculations. Thus gift has no place in the economy, which is perhaps why economists would call a gift an externality. However, perhaps a gift also becomes a source of doubt in the economy because gifts are ultimately more valuable and meaningful than the things we buy or covet for ourselves. The gift suggests that we act in a way that is wholly other, that we give up our self-interest as selfish. Yet, if we give, or forgive, are we not still making a calculation?

It seems that we want the economy to do that which we personally do not want to do: to serve or be charitable. We do not want to give ourselves, so we subcontract to the state. I am not suggesting that charity will solve everything (though it would go a long way). Rather, I wonder to what extent we abdicate our responsibility to care, expecting others – government agencies, welfare, the state – to do our bidding. The price we pay is perhaps small, and we expect a big dividend from it, one that takes away our guilt. A gift also becomes indebtedness, for gifts are not truly given freely, and the gift becomes part of the cycle of exchange, for there is symbolic debt or duty created in the act of giving. The one to whom I give becomes indebted to me. Can we ever give truly selflessly?

Derrida and other writers have taken this discussion of gift further, and in these postmodern times there is a tendency toward wishful thinking in imagining an alternative economy to the free market. This is taking a good idea in the wrong direction. Absolutely, there is tension between economic life and the life of faith. Economic life appeals to our self-interest, rewarding us for our self-interest, as well as punishing us when we manage our wealth badly. The free market system is truest to our nature and money provides a measure of how well we as individual economic agents, businesses, other economic organizations, and governments play the game. Yet the life of faith asks us to give ourselves up, to be selfless toward our neighbor. But few, if any, of us are so capable. We are then held hostage by the economy, caught in a struggle between economic self-maximization and our selflessness, for which we receive no economic reward.

In many ways I have been at pains in this book to defend the free market system against theological attack. However, the overall aim has been to rectify a perceived bias against the market and to argue that the market is something Christians and churches can and should work with for the better. Theology should not exclude the market, since the market is the best form of economic organization we have at our disposal at present. Within this limited framework there is much that can be achieved for the good. To this view, I add a major caveat. The market is not the place for us to find salvation, nor should we use the economy as a means to shore up our own independence from God. The values of the gospel are, in the ultimate court, contrary to the market – but this applies just as much to all else in this world that is at odds with the gospel. (183-185)

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.