Divine economics

...the Enlightenment emphasis on human reason and autonomy 'left nothing to restrain the competition for wealth', so that the laissez-faire economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was powerless to restrain corporate human greed...Associated with the unrestrained use of capital (and interest) without regard for the human consequences, 'capitalism' came to have a bad name in many christian circles.  Conversely, the prohibition of private property in Marxist 'socialism' has had similar dire consequences for human society.

Rebuilding a theology of social relations has been a major challenge facing the churches in the last century.  This task is made more difficult by a lack of awareness of the corporate dimensions of sin among many Christians, seen at its worst in the simplistic identification of personal prosperity with divine blessing, or of 'freedom of choice' consumerism with gospel values.  Debates about wealth creation in modern western societies illustrate some of the issues involved...According to the Christian vision, wealth creation is inseparable from the growth of people as persons in relationship.  Christians are to be effective contributors in the manufacturing industry, on the factory floor, in the research laboratory, and as directors.  Nevertheless, those so involved are called not only to ensure the quality of the product, and a fair return to all involved, but also to implement policy that is consistent with Christian ideals of what it means to be human, in social as well as personal terms...On a wider front, matters such as national policy on aid and development, support of cross-cultural evangelism, or the promotion of peace and justice come into view.  Christians who see their role in the divine economy as limited to immediate friends or neighbourhood fail to catch the breadth and grandeur of the divine vision for a 'commonwealth' of all races, tribes and tongues.

- Charles Sherlock, The Doctrine of Humanity, pp. 108-110.

Cash-as-sacrament

The narrowing of 'economy' to refer only to money arrangements has gone along with a simliar narrowing in the meaning of 'wealth'. It derives from the old world 'weal' (meaning 'goodness'), the root from which terms such as 'welfare' (meaning 'well-being') derive. Wealth in this sense may be defined as the sum total of resources which enrich human living, relationships and service. Money, in turn, can be described as the 'effectual sign and symbol' of wealth. This sacramental language reflects the idea that although a banknote is in itself only a (very fancy) piece of paper, when used in exchange for goods it conveys its face value effectively; but it is not the goods themselves...money is not wealth in and of itself; wealth transcends having money in the bank. In societies where the cash economy is less significant, wealth may be measured by the number of cattle one owns, the food one grows, or the degree of influence carried by one's reputation. The accumulation of capital is limited in such societies, since it requires larger barns to be built to house the crop; large-scale capital accumulation is possible only in a society where money functions as the effective symbol of wealth.

 

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One distortion in modern capitalist systems is the way we have come to think of money as real in and of itself, so that money has become the barometer of wealth. In biblical terms, however, it is the created order and the gospel of Christ which constitute the divine 'wealth' God offers us, an 'inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1 Pe. 1:4)...We are to care for and promote the 'common weal', the good of the whole human community, local, regional, national and global (cf. Je. 29:1-7)...In this light, Christians should be as committed to justice and as critical of vested interests as any Marxist, but with greater realism about the difficulties involved, a more nuanced ethic, and a firmer hope. 

 

-Charles Sherlock, The Doctrine of Humanity, pp. 106-107.

The center

If we understand that we have a natural aggression which is aggravated by the inevitable frustrations life, and amplified by the increasing controls of civilization, that we use each other and ourselves as scapegoats, that the deepest aspect of our anger is in the face of innocent suffering and injustice, and that the often unrecognized but primary object of our anger is toward God, then we are at that very center of Christianity asking the question to which the crucifixion of Christ is the answer.

-C. Fitsimmons Allison, Guilt, Anger, and God, p. 86.

All-sufficient preciousness

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov

Know yourself

Labour to see the emptiness, shortness, and the pollution that cleaveth to a man's own righteousness.  This also must in some measure be known, before a man can know the nature of the love of Christ.  They that see nothing of the loathsomeness of man's best things, will think, that the love of Christ is of that as to be procured, or won, obtained or purchased by man's good deeds.  And although so much gospel light is broken forth as to stop men's mouths from saying this, yet 'tis nothing else but sound conviction of the vileness of man's righteousness, that will enable men to see that the love of Christ is of that nature, as to save a man without it; as to see that it is of that nature as to justify him without it:  I say, without it, or not at all.  There is shortness, there is hypocrisy, there is a desire of vain glory, there is pride, there is presumption in man's own righteousness: nor can it be without these wickednesses, when men know not the nature of the love of Christ. 

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, p. 85.

Certain, consistent, purposed love

Love in us is a passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways.  For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds.  Hence, oft-times that which is loved today is hated to-morrow (2 Sam 13:15).

...love in us is apt to choose to itself undue and unlawful objects, and to reject those, that with the leave of God, we may embrace and enjoy...

Love in us, requires, that something pleasing and delightful be in the object loved...for the love that is in us, is not of power to set itself on work, where no allurement is in the thing to be beloved.

...Love in us decays, though once never so warm and strongly fixed, if the object falls off as to its first alluring provocation; or disappointeth our expectation with some unexpected reluctancy to our fancy or our mind. 

...All this we know to be true from nature, for every one of us are thus...our love, as we are natural, is weak, unorderly, fails and miscarries, either by being too much or too little...

...We therefore must put a vast different betwixt love, as found in us, and love as found in Christ...here there is no ebbing, no flowing, no going beyond, no coming short; and so nothing of uncertainty...Love in Christ pitcheth not itself upon unlawful objects...Love in Christ requireth no taking beauteousness in the object to be beloved, as not being able to put forth itself without such attracting allurements (Ezek. 16:6-8)...

Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved...The reason is, because Christ loves to make us comely, not because we are so (Ezek. 16:9-14).

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 48-50.

What are we lacking?

The late Neil Postman, longtime professor of media ecology at NYU, commenting in 1994 on our false hope in technology/information to save us from ourselves:

...let me summarize in two ways what I mean. First, I'll cite a remark made repeatedly by my friend Alan Kay, who is sometimes called “the father of the personal computer.” Alan likes to remind us that any problems the schools cannot solve without machines, they cannot solve with them. Second, and with this I shall come to a close: If a nuclear holocaust should occur some place in the world, it will not happen because of insufficient information; if children are starving in Somalia, it's not because of insufficient information; if crime terrorizes our cities, marriages are breaking up, mental disorders are increasing, and children are being abused, none of this happens because of a lack of information. These things happen because we lack something else.

 

 See Genesis 3.