The Economy

Last week in the small group I attend sometimes (when I am actually in Chicago on a Sunday night), Sam brought up an interesting question. Socialism or capitalism? He attempted to frame the conversation in a biblical sense, but didn’t succeed fully, mainly because the bible does not endorse either side of the argument. It did though open my ears to a couple of different things over the past few weeks which talk about economy in a seemingly Christian sense.
I listen to the Mars Hill Bible Church sermon every week, usually given by Rob Bell (who is a fantastic author and speaker by the way). He was talking about “Wine and Heaven” a few weeks ago, and I came across this passage in his sermon:

Now a barter economy in the ancient Near East meant that everyone contributed their portion.
There is this delicate balance that occurs in a barter economy because she generates this particular thing, and she generates this and he generates this and then from your bounty you would engage in “well, I’m a little lacking here, can you help me out.” And if he can’t pay the bills one month, they all say, “well, that’s okay, next month will be better.” And they take care of him anyway.
So the whole barter economy is built on trust. And not just trust, not just “I know he’s not out to get me because he’s going to give me a fair price because he needs what I have.” So we all need what the other has.
If one person starts to accumulate way way too much at the expense of others, this person is actually going to feel it, because then they’re going to say “Wait, Wait, this isn’t working right.” So obviously the distribution of stuff is connected with our hearts. And so there is not only trust but a sense of the common good. He produces the tomatoes but he needs fruit because you can’t just eat salsa all the time.
There is this delicate balance. In fact, the word economy in our language comes from the Greek word “oikas,” which means house or household. And so even the word economy comes from the word household, all of us having what we need.
Now what happens when you begin to talk about God’s economy is some folks say “Well anyone who just has a bunch of stuff ought to give it to everyone who has nothing.” But the problem is, a barter economy is not built on “Let’s just reshuffle the deck.” Its built on the ability to generate. A barter economy is built on the ability to generate a crop of figs, to generate fruit. Sometimes what happens is people who are in business begin to feel like second class citizens because they aren’t doctors, lawyers, or pastors. And so ever so subtly, this guilt thing “well, you just make money.” And what we need to make sure we understand is that business is an ancient, sacred profession. That the managing of an economy in which everyone has what they need built on a far price and trust. If you were a business person and felt like, “Well, maybe if I just went to Africa and gave everything away I’d be okay.” We need you to generate, because the economy only works when people are generating. That’s why when we talk about the under resourced families in West Michigan or in Burundi, of course we want to be generous and if we have way more than we need, give it away. But the larger issue is empowering people to take part in the oikas.

At Calvin College, there is a festival every two years called the Festival of Faith and Music. Laura Winner gave one of the keynote speeches which I listened to online and got this about economy and Christianity:

“We live in a secular world governed by a capitalist model of scarcity. There’s never enough money in our world, there’s never enough time, all of our resources are scarce.
But by contrast, our God gives us a very different economy. Our God is a God of overflowing creative fecundity, a God of inexhaustible Eucharistic offering, a God who after all multiplies loaves and fishes. So to borrow Marva Dawn’s phrase, “one thing that marks us as followers of that God is the consistent practice of being royally wasteful, of wasting time by praying and worshiping, an activity that by the world’s standards is at least unproductive and possibly psychotic. We all might be in a room talking to ourselves.
Christians need not, because of our God of abundance, always be concerned about the evident utility of everything we do. We are instead called to worship a God who is interested in whimsy and not just utility. Cultivating art is one of the ways we do that because art is not done in the service of utility.
Now, I should just say for clarification sake that I am not suggesting some absurd scenario which the church spends every cent of it collective coffers on artwork and never feeds the poor. I am rather suggesting that the logic of scarcity in our surrounding world is different than the Christian logic which is a logic of abundance. And one of the ways that we can testify to that abundance is through our devotion to art.”

Not really exactly what you always think of when you think of economy.