A Christian worldview regarding the economy is essential if America is to recover its eroding economic leadership in the world. A Christian worldview of economics is predicated upon the fact that man is born sinful (Ephesians 2:3), does not prosper by injustice (Ephesians 4:28), should work (2 Thessalonians 3:10), should not be dependent on anyone (1 Thessalonians 5:11-12), respects private property (Exodus 20:15), prospers through diligence (Proverbs 21:5), resists the envy of other people’s property (Exodus 20:17), believes that rich and poor are esteemed the same by God (Exodus 30:15), and that righteousness can yield abundance (Proverbs 16:8).
The Christian worldview also elevates the power of freedom. The Bible espouses the freedom to choose (1 Corinthians 6:12), that God makes us free (John 8:36), that freedom requires morality (Psalm 119:45), wherever God is honored there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17), that true freedom is based upon love (Galatians 5:13), that freedom requires discernment (1 Corinthians 8:9), and that the truth will set you free (John 8:32).
Some liberal Christians like Jim Wallis believe that the Bible prescribes socialism in Acts 4:32-35 and social justice (redistribution of private property), but this represents a failure in hermeneutics. This is a failure in thinking because the example presented in Acts 4:32-35 is characterized by the volitional decision to share private property. The passage is explicit in that the property shared is privately owned (antipodal to the state-owned model of socialism) and that the redistribution is not compulsory (also antipodal to state-run socialism). There is no Biblical support for state-run socialism. Those who try to twist the scriptures to support socialism neither understand the meaning nor understand how the world operates.
Capitalism is an economic system where production, distribution, and trade are privately owned to yield a profit for those who have made the investment to support that objective. It should be done in a largely free marketplace where the government respects private property and the legal system protects contractual law. Problems arise based upon the moral and ethical failure of owners (committing fraud), the market (committing theft), or the government (limiting freedom and violating property rights).
Winston Churchill eloquently observed that “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” Thomas Jefferson rebuked the notion of government control: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” Margaret Thatcher said that “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”
God blesses people and nations according to His will (Psalm 67), and He is not accountable to man (Romans 11:33) and is sovereign (1 Chronicles 29:11-12). However, Christian stewardship requires a responsibility to God for decisions and behavior. Biblical stewardship believes that God is the owner of all things and man (individually and collectively) is His steward. When man abandons the authority of God in such affairs, he risks danger as Lord Acton stated: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The status of the current American economy is precarious. One of the best measures of a country’s economic health is the debt-to-GDP ratio, an indicator of the relationship between debt and production. The official US debt is approximately $16.3 trillion, while the US GDP is approximately $13.6 trillion (http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls) constituting a ratio of approximately 120%. Furthermore, the unfunded liabilities (obligations without funding sources) is well over $100 trillion. This includes Medicare Part A at $36 trillion, Medicare Part B at $37 trillion, Medicare part D at $15 trillion, and Social Security at $17.5 trillion for a grand total of unfunded liabilities over $105 trillion. America has economically fallen far in the past few years. This suggests that absent draconian measures to cut entitlements (currently above 60% of GDP and growing), the United States may face an environment of bankruptcy and/or broken promises. We cannot grow ourselves out of this mess without concomitant entitlement reform.
The US government spending as a percentage of GDP has reached an all-time high (excluding World War II). This has happened as more politicians promise more benefits to more people who vote themselves larger abundance. It is a failure of leadership and of the governed. It is both unsustainable and a moral failure of epic proportions. At the time of Jesus, Rome imposed a 5% inheritance tax and a 1% sales tax (compared to the average state sales tax in the US of 5.6%). Currently, the US government taxes estates at 35% for those with estates over $5,000,000. Suddenly, the oppression of Rome doesn’t look so bad.
What is the Biblical worldview of economics? It is based on the Judeo-Christian principles of morality, freedom, and protection of private property. Capitalism is the economic system best suited to address the tenets of a Biblical worldview.
What should the individual do in response to the precarious nature of the US economy and the increasing role of the state? We should recognize that there are seasons of feast/famine where saving is essential to survive the bad times (Genesis 41:34-36), that debt can create bondage (Proverbs 22:7), that ignoring the signs of the times can bring disaster (Proverbs 22:3), and to trust in the Lord (Proverbs 3:5-6). Finally, the Christian should not run to the state (man) for rescue but to God (Jeremiah 17:5). Therefore, it is prudent to prepare for difficulties ahead, restrain personal spending and borrowing, strengthen savings behavior, embrace the morality of individual responsibility in uncertain times, and get involved in the culture to assure we have righteous leaders and economic practices. Ethics and engagement matter. We are called to redeem the culture (Acts 15:1-31, Colossians 3:17, and Genesis 1:28).
So many Americans now seek state solutions as the preferred path without realizing it is a path of broken promises that may jeopardize their own freedom as well. Karl Marx saidL “There is only one way to kill capitalism- by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.” Abraham Lincoln said: “You can not help men permanently by doing for them what they could do and should do for themselves.” Thomas Jefferson said that “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”
Ethics and morality are indispensable supports for a sound economy. The road we choose as individuals will determine the road we take as a nation. America has changed because its people have changed. Our leaders reflect the best or worst in us. Currently, it is the latter. We must restore the hearts and minds of people to a proper worldview if we are to restore America to its former greatness.
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Although Mr. Hughes, you touched upon those who employ a faulty hermeneutic to arrive at their unbiblical positions, there is an immensely dangerous pseudo-intellectual infection underlying the irrational reasoning of those who would depart upon a path of such faulty hermeneutical assertion.
The radical historical-critical schools of textual criticism, (Form criticism, “modern” criticism, “higher” criticism, Documentarians, Source Criticism, etc.), deny the inspiration and authority of Scripture and base their conjecture on entirely fabricated, fantasaical, non-existent documents: the infamous J/E/P/D structure of purported source documents.
Then they proceed with their Sitz en Leben (spelling??) contentions–their assertions of a “creative community” with its needs. Contrived Fairytales!
Many years ago I read Josh McDowell’s ‘Evidence That Demands a Verdict’ and was enlightened as to the illegitimate, unsubstantiationable nature of the arguments of the so-called ‘higher’ critics.
How tragically ironic that the Graff-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis should have been spawned from Hegel’s adaptation of the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, which replaces God as Creator, to literature; and especially biblical source documents.
At the very core, those who espouse the unbiblical economic principles you identify in your article arrive at their position firstly by rejecting that which needs must be rejected in order to embrace a lie: the Truth.
Even Brothers in Christ did not seem to recognize the gravity of the criminal illegally occupying the Oval Office deleting the word “Creator” from his quotations out of the Declaration of Independence; the “Creator” from whom all men are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, as it were. Even Christians today are ignorant of the need for liberal-socialists to not only disregard the Lord Jesus but impugn Him as irrelevant. Foundationally, their argument is nothing new; it’s the same old insidious assertion in the form of a rhetorical question: ‘Did God really say?”
Unfortunately, the Body of Christ, His Church militant, chooses to engage the serpent in dialogue as our great, great, (or not so great depending on how you look at her! Hah!), grandmother Eve did, and likewise, whenever elements of the Bride of Christ engage in dialoguei with the devil there is compromise–there is a watering down of the Truth–as in the way the Republican party has simply become an accomodating wing of a bi-winged secular-humanist beast, instead of following the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, (the Creator I might add), and rebuking the devil with the unadulterated Word of God. You feel me?
I resent this idea. Christianity was a Roman republican and jewish resistance revolutionary movement against polytheist Roman imperialism. When the last polytheist emperor converted to Christianity all was lost because the tiranny of despotic imperialism was now Roman catholic. Shortly after the Eastern Roman empire Christians in Syria and Iraq etc. were betrayed twice when Islam murderous terror disguised as an Abrahamite religion came over them.
2. Christianity as the Jewish faith is a moral philosophy over matter of life and death. When is killing justifiable and when not ? This can not be defined by science and is protected within (republican) secret one man one voting process. 3. There is no such thing as moral economics let alone Christian economics.
Christian economics is liberation theological Marxism developed by Chrutsov and applied in South Africa of Frank Chicane and Desmond Tutu and their Kairos Document, the Belhar confession Zionist Apartheid etc. .
Economics is capitalist in nature. Capitalism is ever evolving goods (products) and value (worth)
A capitalist economy has producers (owners or proprietors by contract of means of production .. machines, buildings and raw materials) and reproducers (laborers) .
Marx tried to define the laborers as owners of means of production naming the laborers muscle strength and the laborers wage contract … but labor strength cannot be consumed by consumers. Saying that muscle strength is consumed by the capitalists does not make muscle strength to a consumer consumed product but a producer consumed product. Saying that the muscle strength has transferred into the consumer consumption products is not true.
100 % of the laborer strength is still in the laborer.
The owners or proprietors by contract of means of the production machines, buildings and raw materials are split into two opposite groups or classes of capitalists.
1. the crony syndicalist capitalists orienting to state contracts like railroads, coal, oil, steel, military etc. Crony capitalists invented the trade unions in the 19th century to force stable low wages and later used quasi communists at the top to lead the laborers.
2. Innovative entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Innovation is the only source of wealth. Innovation needs people’s savings to create the fund of investment into research, inventions.
These two are the real each other opposing classes of producers … and the workers as reproducers are not a class. The crony capitalists accepts the workers as a class …against the innovative entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
The worlds economy is in a crisis because the world is flooded with an ocean of US dollars creating inflation and stagnating innovation.
The inflation economics of the Keynesian liberals (democrats) is oriented on more consumption of the same products for more people.
Since the fall of the berlin Wall the innovation stagnated while the arms and space race ended.
The peace dividend became poison. Innovation is new products, new production techniques and lower consumer prices.
Types of products are Thorium and Gen4 Very high Temperature Reactors, Hypersonic Scramjet air- and space planes, Nuclear thermal Rockets, Carbon Nano Tubes for extreme low weight automobiles, air and space planes, ships, skyscrapers etc. quantum computer chips, human neurologic implants etc. Mankind is at the brink to terra form Mars. To mine Helium-3 from the Moon for Nuclear Fusion etc.