Recently a friend of mine messaged me to ask me what I thought about this article.

Things got a little out of control so I decided to post it since I’d spent so much time on it.

Let me begin by saying that I don’t believe the scriptures endorse any economic system, and I believe a case could be made that it rejects all of them in some sense.

It probably won’t come as a surprise to you, but I’m a little stunned at how terrible this article is. The author’s bio seems to indicate he’s a Jewish Rabbi who has lead congregations but I feel like this level of misunderstanding of scriptures is usually one seen only in publications that are overtly secular, with no understanding of scripture outside of a few verses casually read. Take for example, his use of the scripture “six days ye shall work”. The claim made is that this is an affirmation “that on a day-to-day basis work is the engine that brings about man’s inner state of personal responsibility”. However, this is the opposite intent of that scripture. Now, I don’t know precisely which scripture the author is referencing because that phrase is used approximately 9 times in the Torah. They are the commands concerning the Sabbath. And generally they go something like this: “You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working. This gives your ox and your donkey a chance to rest. It also allows your slaves and the foreigners living among you to be refreshed.”

What was unusual about this command was not the command to work, as the author claims, but rather the day of rest. The ancient world in which the scriptures were birthed wasn’t really filled with lazy people. For example, the Romans had a five day week, and you worked all five days. The command to take a day off each week was extraordinary. So extraordinary that in Exodus 31.17 God tells his people that this day off each week is “a permanent sign of my covenant with the people of Israel” Not only was this an act pointing to God as creator, but also as provider. It was an acknowledgement that even when it would benefit survival to work all the time their faith in God is such that they will take a day off out of every seven for worship and rest, and God will provide for them. The claim that this command is an endorsement of work misses the point of one of the central commands of God to his people. Coming from a Jewish source I can’t believe this came from ignorance or only casual familiarity with scripture. I suppose I’ll have to be gracious and believe that it comes from being blinded by his commitment to an economic theory over and above his religious commitments.

You probably overlooked this statement (or I should say I overlooked it the first two times reading through): “Regarding mankind, no theme is more salient in the Bible than the morality of personal responsibility.” Frankly, this is such a misjudging of the scriptures its breathtaking. The story of the scriptures is of God working to free his people. From stories like God sending home most of Gideon’s army, to David defeating Goliath, to the work of Christ himself the theme is that God is powerful and God saves his people. A Bible that is thematically about personal responsibility is a Bible in which everyone is abandoned by God.

Let’s shift focus to the author’s view of money and power. The author takes as an assumption that the accumulation of money and power are desirable. Look at his endorsement of a powerful military, as well as the assumption that the best economic system is the one that produces the highest GNP. These assumptions are easy ones to make in our present day, however, they were also easy ones to make when Jesus burst on the scene. That was, after all, precisely what the Jewish people were waiting for. A king, a military commander who would make the streets run red with Roman blood, and bring about a larger GNP for the chosen people. We see this expectation run into the buzz saw of Christ’s goals in John 6.14-15:

When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.

What Christ continually teaches is that he came to establish an entirely new order. One that was based on servanthood, and denial of self, rather than building up the self as glorious, and powerful. What the Jewish people wanted was to out Roman the Romans. What Christ wanted was to be the anti-Caesar of a new Kingdom that would be the anti-Rome. In Matthew 20 Jesus teaches explicitly about it: “But Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. 26 But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. 28 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

In light of this teaching, is it faithful to the scriptures to say that an economic system should be evaluated by the light of scriptures based solely on its ability to garner GNP, and produce a military capable of shattering rivals?

The author also makes a claim that capitalism is obviously Judeo-Christian because Judeo-Christians created the US, and the US is capitalistic. This paragraph is the one I refer to: “No country has achieved such broad-based prosperity as has America, or invented as many useful things, or seen as many people achieve personal promise. This is not an accident. It is the direct result of centuries lived by the free-market ethos embodied in the Judeo-Christian outlook.”

Is the Judeo-Christian outlook also overtly racist? You know where I’m going with this just by that question. The reality is that America has been a racist country from its outset. And the less Christian it has become overall, the less racist it has become. I would, personally, deny that racism and the scriptures go hand in hand, but if you accept that the state of America defines what is Judeo-Christian as the author does when it comes to capitalism, then it is consistent to reason in the same way when it comes to things like race.

While I agree that being made in God’s image means we are creative, and that work is good, I disagree with his characterization of entrepreneurial creativity as the norm for capitalism. Obviously, there has been some of that as we have things like sweet little coffee shops, Findley Market, Etsy, and a variety of other such endeavors. But the norm has been to treat humans as labor units. Coal miners, factory workers, assembly lines, and other such machines of economic activity all were focused on humans as labor units and nothing else. It took government involvement such as anti-trust legislation and the NLRB to get anything resembling fair treatment of workers. And, I would add, this has continued as much of what we laud as creative enterprise such as Apple is only made possible by viewing a massive Chinese workforce as units of labor and nothing more.

The author sneaks into his writing the idea that only a capitalistic society believes people should work. He spends a lot of time linking the idea of work to scripture and then through scripture to capitalism. However, a survey of collectivist oriented cultures would demonstrate that’s just not true. The only difference is the motivation. Working for family, city, and country is the motivation rather than for self through earning money is found throughout collective thinking cultures, many of which are found in the east and so are not Judeo-Christian in addition to not being capitalist.

One final point that I think caps off the view that this author has allowed his idealization of capitalism to overwhelm all other views, obligations, and scripture itself. The author states: “More than any other nation, the United States was founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective.”

Really? So all those countries that rose to power and political independence in the wake of the Reformation like Germany, France, England and Spain are all less founded on broad themes of morality rooted in a specific religious perspective? Countries founded with state churches, where the churches wielded actual political power weren’t founded with morality with a specific religious perspective above and beyond that of the United States? The more I think about this the more absurd it gets. I can’t not think of countries that were founded with morality with a specific religious perspective.

There are certainly cases that can be made for an individuals’ participation in capitalism, but this isn’t a source for those arguments, in fact, I’m not really sure what this is a source for other than misguided application of scripture.

I want to start a discussion on what it means to live as a disciple of Christ. To get it started here’s a comment I made in a discussion on my facebook page.

I really don’t see any kind of radical difference in the church. I mean really, living out the resurrection of Christ means you don’t cuss? Seriously? You don’t go to rated R movies? Or does it mean you reject things that most people take for granted. Like the great many careers that are lucrative, but anti-Christ, or the basic premise that acquiring stuff is a good thing (again, like Lloyd this is a tough one for me, but one that God has really smacked me around with for the last year), or the treatment of aliens.

Let me put it this way. While James might be able to debt collect in a Christ-like way (I find it hard to believe you could last long in that industry doing so, but I could be wrong on that), how was that debt incurred? Most Christians I’ve read and talked to assume that its legitimate debt that was incurred by irresponsible people who are deadbeats, who should be dragged into court and have their children sold to pay off the debt. But the flip side of it is that there is a vicious, anti-Christ system that created that debt. You’ve got various credit extending institutions that target people for the use of their instruments, including the naive like college students, who bury their terms in the fine print, and generally squeeze as hard as they can to the extent that they’ve been recently smacked down by congress. On the consumer side of things you’ve got companies aggressively marketing their products, high pressure sales pretty much everywhere (speaking from retail experience here), and extremely shady practices on every level.

So who’s to blame? The answer is: it doesn’t matter. The entire system is anti-Christ, but instead of refusing to participate in it, the American church has generally been approving of it, denouncing those who have been victimized by it instead of denouncing the core of the sin.

I have an iPad. It’s a great tool for a counselor. There are so many ways it has helped me in my practice. An added bonus is that my kids have a “computer” to play with that is pretty easy for me to monitor. The drawback of this arrangement is that they have figured out how to take pictures and make movies on it.

I mean literally thousands of pictures and videos.  One daughter took 189 pictures of just her right hand. It’s kind of fun to scroll through them.  Many of the pictures are too distorted to actually be of any value. Of course, if you and I are facebook friends, you’ve had the opportunity to see some of the videos.

Today, as I was preparing for my daily sessions I hooked the iPad upto my computer and began to look at the new pictures. Some made me laugh. Some I couldn’t quite figure out.

One made me stop dead in my tracks and swallow really hard. There was a picture of my daughter and my friend’s daughter. My baby didn’t look like a baby anymore. She looked entirely too grown up.

Lately, I’ve been more aware of this truth. My girls are growing up.  The day is probably coming when they won’t want to spend as much time with me as they do now. I want them to stay this small longer. I want them to need me longer.

Of course, I really don’t. That’s not actually the answer. That’s a recipe for emotionally stunted adults who don’t know how to function.

What I want is to soak up every minute I have with them. To gaze on each smile, and catch the glint in each eye. What I need to do is be present every moment that I am with them.

My time with them is limited. Today I will see very little of them. There isn’t much that I can do about that. Tomorrow, I will have the opportunity to make them a part of my entire day. They can help me weed the garden, mow the grass (mostly just riding in the wagon behind me) and I can play with them. Or I can choose to do other things that need to be done. I can be distracted by the pressures of life.

Here’s hoping I choose to be present with my girls. In fifteen years, I doubt I will remember the chore that I didn’t get done today. I doubt that I will remember the stress of today.

I am quite certain I will miss my girls. Tomorrow I will have the memories that we create today.

“Frightened people were great believers in guilt by association.”
- Under the Dome, p. 510

I just finished Love Wins. The first 3/4 bored me. As Bell points out, nothing he’s writing is revolutionary, its re-hashed, and any familiarity with Christian belief outside of modern day American protestantism is likely to render this into yesterday’s news. So why are so many criticizing this work, kicking Bell out of Christianity, and in general having a fit over some warmed over theology? I believe the answer is in the last quarter of the book, where Bell takes aim at some sacred cows (reference to Hinduism intentional, as these holy bovines are wholly outside of anything approaching Christianity).

A quote that cuts to the heart of the matter:

When people use the world “Jesus” it’s important for us to ask who they’re talking about. Are they referring to a token of tribal membership, a tamed domesticated Jesus who waves the flag and promotes whatever values they have decided their nation needs to return to? Are they referring to the supposed source of the imperial impulse of their group, which wants to conquer other groups “in the name of Jesus”? Are they referring to the logo or slogan of their political, economic, or military system through which they santify their greed and lust for power?

Love wins on the eternal timeline. But in the present day, culture is winning.

I’m currently employed by the Catholic Church.

For those of you who know me, you know this is quite a change. Don’t worry, though. I’ve not swam the Tiber, I’ve only changed professions. I’m not going to go into the details, but I will say that this has been a very good change, though it didn’t feel like it at the time.

In the past year or so I’ve read two books that have opened my eyes to the situation of the poor. The first is Under the Overpass. The author writes from a perspective within the church, and walks a couple of miles in homeless shoes as he lives as a homeless person for months. In this book are many observations that touched my heart, and also many observations that made for easy ways a church could care for people who find themselves homeless. For example, like me when you think homeless you probably think food. The authors observed that basic hygiene such as showers, teeth brushing and deodorant were just as needed and often overlooked. How hard is that to provide?

The second book I read is Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This book is similar to the first in that an author infiltrated a sub-culture in order to write about it. In this case, the author, who has a PhD in biology took on jobs close to minimum wage in order to see if it were possible to get by on those types of jobs. What she found was a lot of indignity and expense. More expense than if she were well off. And again, though this book was written by someone outside of the church, I found a perspective in which a church could minister if it so chose. The needs are more expensive than the homeless, but would it really be impossible for a church to, in some way, provide day care for working single mothers, or work with local landlords to provide a deposit for poor working families who otherwise are left paying weekly for hotels/motels that ultimately are more expensive than an actual apartment.

Recently, I’ve been conversing with what was once a very close friend, but we’ve grown apart through time and distance. We’ve been discussing Rob Bell. One of the things he’s disturbs by is when Bell says or writes things like the resurrection or the fall or some other piece of theology isn’t just a historical event, but something that happens now, in our lives.

I understand Bell entirely.

At one point, one of my fellow pastors in the town I lived and served had founded a soup kitchen to serve low income and homeless families and people of our community. The thing is, that we had problems recruiting enough people to serve this weekly soup kitchen. We needed around 5 people per week to provide the volunteer help. While they had to do all the work of providing the meal, they didn’t have to pay for it themselves. He served a church of 150, I served a church of 250 (this was attendance on a weekend, not the total number of “members” on the book). That means roughly 60% of our church attendees would have had to volunteer and every single week would be covered. The thing is, we couldn’t come up with enough volunteers from every single church in our city. Not just our two churches, but every church in the city.

So when Bell admonishes the church that the resurrection is something that should be lived now, that the Kingdom of God is something ongoing, I get it.

And so, now the Pope pays me roughly 1/2 of what a Protestant church was paying me. I get to go home at night knowing, instead of hoping, I made a difference in the lives of the poor, and powerless. And through all this change, and difficulty I can state definitively that the American church doesn’t have a belief problem, it has a doing the belief the problem. Because I’ve run into far more people that have a problem with Rob Bell than have no problem with serving in a soup kitchen.

Is it weird that I’m offended by chocolate crosses, but would at least consider buying a chocolate empty tomb?

I’m not sure why this is.

“We have become a culture of cultural critics and a church of church critics. Perhaps more of us need to be quick to convert our concern about the moral failures of others into body pleading for them instead of public words against them.” (Fasting, 42)

“Until you see the cross as that which is done by you, you will never
appreciate that it is done for you.”–John Stott from here.