As promised in the previous article, this will be a discussion of how the world's different religions relate to economic issues and systems.
Many of you, like me, were raised in an era where Communism was routinely linked to Secularism and godlessness. A good Christian would staunchly oppose Communism in any form, especially when it came in the form of proposed political reforms in the United States. Many Christians began to equate welfare with Communism and decided that the Christ who hinted that our salvation would be based on how we treated the weakest and poorest wouldn't mind if we stiffed them by eliminating welfare altogether. Some Christians still hold that view!
It was then accepted, often without question or the insight that there might be more than two answers, that God himself instituted and ordained capitalism. Never mind that the clear testimony of the Scriptures opposed the very basis of capitalism. As you may know already, I see this as a sign of the corruption of Christianity until it has become the anti-God force spoken of in Daniel and in Revelation.
This discussion will look at various economic systems, how the world's religions relate to them, and what it might mean for you and me. And to do that I think it appropriate to go back to the beginning. For me, a creationist, that means the book of Genesis. And since over 1500 years of the earth's history are covered in just two chapters (4 and 5) it's certain we'll get little detail about economic systems prior to the Flood. About the only things remotely related to economics are the mention of Tubal-Cain's tools, and of Lamech's lament about all the hard work caused when God 'cursed' the ground.
After the flood, however, there's little time wasted between that narrative and the mention of the first economic systems. The mention is a little sparse and we have to add what we know from secular history to fill it out, but it's there.
You may recall that Noah got drunk, which allowed his son and grandson to enjoy themselves at his expense. (I think it almost certain that the Bible doesn't tell us what really happened but instead uses euphemisms.) As a result Noah cursed both Ham and Canaan. When the Genesis narrative gets around to naming the descendants of Ham, it spends quite a bit of time (relatively) talking about Nimrod. He is named as the builder of many of the great ancient cities; Babylon, Ninevah, and others. Here in Genesis ten we have the first mention of Babylon, a city which gets considerable attention in the rest of the Bible (most of it negative).
Babylon became the home of the great and unfinished "Tower of Babel." Indeed, it is the confusion of the languages at this site that gives it the name "Babble"on. ('Babel' is a Hebrew word meaning "confusion".) So what happened that made Nimrod such a key character in ancient human history? I think it was the establishment of a fundamental social system that has become so pervasive that every culture in the world has adopted some form of it. And I think that's at least part of what's meant when the name "Babylon" is used later in Bible prophecy.
In very short order people began to band together to enjoy the benefits of specialization. Those who were good at tending food crops became farmers. Those who did best at other occupations took them on exclusively. By banding together and trading people could have more of what they needed because of the efficiencies of specialization. But man's natural (since the fall, of course) greed makes this system difficult to maintain.
Two things were "invented" to keep corrupt humans from taking advantage of the system of specialization to get more out than they put in. The first was currency -- a means of exchange by using something to represent value. Rather than giving the builder harvested crops in return for building a barn, the farmer would give currency, which the builder could use to buy whatever he wanted. Sounds great so far. The other invention was government. People needed some sort of authority to impose order.
Government, in and of itself, is not part of what God intended for the human race when he created it. It's made necessary by man's fallen condition. But the establishment of both government and currency quickly led to a greater evil. And I think Nimrod can be considered the "author" of this system. Genesis says Nimrod "built" all the named cities. Now I don't care how long he might have lived or how strong and energetic he was, there's no way he could have cut and placed all the stones needed to construct these cities.
"Of course not," you say. "But he was in charge of having them built." I expect Nimrod himself, as a warrior, never did any of the actual building. What he did do, as a warrior, was to gain control of large groups of people. He could then name himself their authority figure, and extract a small amount from each in taxes, and get quite wealthy without having to do any actual work himself. Nice work if you can get it, we sometimes say.
And secular history reveals that at his death one of his younger wives proceeded to set herself in a similar position, not on the basis of being a governing authority, but by establishing herself as a religious figure, able to grant or deny people the blessings of whatever god they worshipped. And thus we have the birth of the relationship between religion and economics. It's not a very noble beginning, and it may well explain the convoluted alliances that have resulted.
The system of a few people getting wealthy through the labor of many is the evil that Nimrod introduced. Various systems have been put up to select the privileged few. For many cultures and for many years that was inheritance. If your parents were wealthy and lived off the work of others, you too got to be wealthy and live off the work of others. Thus we have the tradition of kings.
Now most Christians will quickly point out that there's nothing wrong with being rich. Abraham, Job, and Solomon were very wealthy. But that doesn't explain Jesus' assertion that it was essentially impossible for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God, and it ignores some pertinent realities. Solomon's wealth turned into a snare that very nearly cost him his eternal salvation. Abraham and Job's riches were of an entirely different nature.
What good did it do Job to have those thousands of livestock? He couldn't eat them all! He couldn't drink all the milk produced and he couldn't wear all the wool. The answer is in the size of his household. We're told that Abraham's household consisted of over a thousand persons. These were the people who ate the meat, drank the milk and wore the wool or used it for shelter. It was considered Abraham's only because he was patriarch of the group, a recognized leader.
The same would be true of Job. We sometimes think that these men lived at ease while their servants did all the work, but that's probably not the case. As nomadic peoples these clan leaders had to pack up their own tents and set them up again. And they probably also put a considerable amount of time into mediating disputes within the camp. They provided value to the community and, in return, received what they needed.
Now I would guess that even Abraham and Job were corrupted by their need to relate to the rest of the post-Nimrod world. As leaders they would be expected to wear better clothing and have larger dwellings than the rest of the tribe. But God accepts people where they are, not where they should be, and his expectations vary with the circumstances. (I know the absolutist Christians out there are blazing red angry right now. Their shallow minds cannot accept the idea that God might expect something of them that he doesn't expect from someone else.)
And what about the economic system of Israel? Even in that day God specifically told them not to exact usury (interest). That's the basis of capitalism, and Jews get away with it today by reasoning that the restriction on usury applies only to other Israelites, not to the population of the world as a whole.
The economic system established through Moses relied on irrevocalbe land "ownership" for every Israelite. God acknowledged the need for trade, but insisted that it be honest (no use of differing weights, etc.).
The Christian church began by insisting that the ban on usury still applied. Indeed, Acts tells us the economy of the early church was essentially communist (see Acts 4:32). This ran counter to the thinking of some wealthy members and led to the demise of two particularly staunch "ownership" people named Ananias and Sapphira. The fate of this system is a little unclear, since Christianity quickly spread to southern Europe and the more capitalist countries like Greece. Certainly by the time Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire the restrictions on capitalism were at least pushed into the background.
But this establishment of Christianity quickly led to its complete corruption. What's interesting is that the Roman church restored the ban on usury. Many protestants like to point to this as a cause of the dark ages. Given the greed and dishonesty of the human race that's probably at least partially true. But the restrictions on knowledge used to maintain church and government leaders in power probably had a greater impact.
Protestantism, which rose during the "Enlightenment" period and is often considered part of it, rapidly dropped the ban on usury. Capitalism was widespread, and this allowance by the Protestant churches gave Protestant nations a head start on the newly surging economy.
Meanwhile, back in the territory of the "king of the south," a new monotheistic religion arose. Its founder, Mohammed, believed that neither Jews nor Christians were accomplishing the change in the human that he believed religion required. His religion focused on the behavioral aspects of society. Muslims are careful about what they eat and drink. Sexual purity is a key value. And the Quran does ban the imposition of usury.
Of course Muslim societies have found ways around this by charging "fees" instead of "interest." (What's the difference?) So Islam and capitalism have an uneasy relationship, reflected in the animosity of fundamentalist Islam against the United States, now the very impersonation of capitalism. But where did the link between Christianity and capitalism come from?
Ever since Nimrod's widow invented her own brand of religion, religion has been expected to keep the working classes under control. If you are going to steal from a large group of people that large group must be convinced that you aren't stealing at all. And if you want more, then the workers have to work more. How do you get them to do that? Have the religion teach the value of industriousness and submission to authority. Given the admonitions of Paul about secular authority it isn't hard for Christianity to comply with this expectation.
Furthermore, what better way to maintain a docile and exploitable workforce that to promise them "pie in the sky by and by"? "Be a diligent and industrious laborer and you can get a great reward." Since the wealthy take the present day reward, that's about all you have left to promise them.
Are you beginning to see the reasons for the close relationships between Christianity and capitalism today? Can you see why the regulation of sexual behavior is such a key issue? If people can have sex without having babies, pretty soon there won't be enough workers to keep the wealthy in their work-free state.
Into all this marched a man named Karl Marx. He looked at the relationship between the corrupt church and the wealthy and didn't like it. He thought the world would be a better place if everyone simply produced what they were capable of producing and, in return, everyone got what they needed. With the church covering for the wealthy, however, this would never happen. I'm also sure the devil had a hand in corrupting Marx's ideas to further his own ends. Anyway, Karl denounced religion and everything it stood for.
I doubt if Karl ever realized what had happened, but his disdain for religion provided the capitalists with the ammunition they would need to defeat communism. Here's how it went:
After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, when it became clear that a large communist society was imminent, the world's capitalists went into panic mode. Who would feed them if the world's workers recognized the power of a communist economy and refused to work for them? This was an evil that MUST be stopped. Religion to the rescue! "See, Russia has become a godless society because of communism. God won't like you if you harbor communistic thoughts."
It worked. Most of the nation's pulpits regularly resounded with admonitions against not just the godlessness of communism, but of the system itself. Preachers twisted scripture until the good aspects of communism were portrayed as evil and anti-Christian. It didn't help that a few overzealous communists persecuted Christians (and other religions). That fed fuel to the rhetorical fire, until the common sense of the faithful was burned away.
And communism ran into its own "corrupt humanity" problems. Karl had envisioned this, and called for a powerful central government to control the future of humanity until all could see the benefits of communism. But he didn't answer the question of who would control the government to keep it pure. Both Lenin and Stalin were ruthlessly violent characters who fed the fires of anti-communism with their inhumane treatment of Russian citizens.
Marx's intent had been for the government to force the wealthy to give up their privileged lifestyles and join the rest of the community in producing what they could and receiving what they needed. But, as pointed out in Animal Farm, the central government figures refused to play the game and ended up looking much like the wealthy capitalists they had pretended to oppose. Even so, the restricted liberties we were told about so often applied mostly to the wealthy, not to the common people.
I remember reading the book God's Smuggler in which a man claimed to have smuggled countless numbers of Bibles into the godless Soviet Union. But that doesn't make sense. Soviet government presses themselves printed Bibles which were obviously NOT banned (except in a few places where overzealous fundamentalist communists held power). Still, the story served to confirm to many Christians that God could not approve the economic system associated with that government.
And so in the Vietnam years we continually heard that this war was required by God to stop the spread of communism. OF course the liberties the working class soldiers were dying to protect were the liberties of the wealthy to stay wealthy without working. And a new wrinkle entered the picture. A large secular class of Americans who felt no obligation to any religion emerged. They led the opposition to the Vietnam war. They championed liberal causes and, starting in the 1960s, began to have real influence on American politics.
Hence the modern day misconceptions about politics and religious affiliations. The wealthy have financed the growth of fundamentalist and "Evangelical" Christianity. They encouraged the preachers to rail on the godlessness of the liberals (never mind that most of these liberals were devout Christians from liberal denominations). When liberals stand up for freedom, the preachers keep telling us, they really are encouraging aberrant behavior. Today most Christians are convinced that the government will have to impose some sort of moral restrictions in order for capitalist society to survive.
So it is absolutely natural that this particular mixed blend of ideas has welded U. S. Christianity with the party that currently defends the rights and liberty of the inordinately wealthy. When Bush sends men overseas to die, he says they're dying to protect our liberties. What he really means (and dare not ever say) is that they're dying to protect the rights and privileges of the non-productive upper echelons of our society. The rest of us haven't seen one iota of an increase in our liberties, while we have seen major restrictions on them.
About now you're probably expecting me to solve all the problems I've raised. But I can't do that. The problem that has plagued every economic system on earth is the fundamental corruption of every human being. No imposed religion can ever solve that problem. And Jesus made it clear that voluntary change in Christianity would help only a small portion of the world's population.
You cannot make a nation composed of only voluntary Christians because once you make it clear that you have to be Christian in order to stay, you have immediately created a large class of involuntary Christians. They may act in ways to make it look like they are Christian, but they won't have the changed hearts that result only from full submission of the life to Christ.
Anyway, Jesus told his disciples that they would live in this world but not be part of it. So true Christians can live in capitalist or communist or other economies. They can take part as needed to support life. But they won't become apologists and promoters of any worldly economic system because their treasure is in another place. The problems of economic justice cannot be solved on this earth by any system, and certainly not by the two dominant systems of the last century.
However, I can talk about the evils of any system and call people to accept, at least intellectually, that a better way exists. The real answer will be when God, in an immediate action, removes all the unconverted from the world, leaving only voluntary Christians (and by that I mean everyone submitted to God regardless of cultural or religious affiliation) to live in a society where economics really don't exist. I'd rather look forward to that than argue about who should and who shouldn't be allowed to eat without working.