In my last post, I wrote about appropriating Old Testament laws by imagining the guiding principle behind the law by thinking about ways of appropriating a law in that way. Clearly, Jesus summed up that principle in two commandments: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).
One of the unique features about human beings is that we alone can imagine or contemplate from a different perspective. In other words, we have the ability to realize that things could be different. They don’t have to be the way they are. So we can visualize different scenarios.
Being our country is in one of the worst recessions in years, the economy is a pretty hot topic right now. Now the Bible doesn’t really have a lot to say about “the economy” as a function of society. But reading these laws, we see that, again, there are certain basic principles: deal honestly with your neighbor; no dishonest weights; pay people what you owe them in a timely manner, especially if they need the money. Perhaps the most interesting (and certainly the most troubling) law, from our modern perspective, is the law banning “usury,” or the taking of interest. Simply put, the Bible outlaws banking. Using money to make more money was not an option.
Now the Bible doesn’t say a lot about this, beyond banning the practice. But we know from other ancient sources that the primary reason charging interest was taboo was that it was seen as a perversion, as a corruption of the true purpose of money in particular and of economics in general. (If this sounds Aristotelian, it’s because it is.) Simply put, economic activity, the buying and selling of goods in society, serves the purpose of making sure that people could get those things (food, clothing, shelter) that they needed to live. Money was a way that the distribution of goods could be done efficiently; if done right, everyone could live comfortably and society would prosper. Now certainly if someone worked hard and was good at his or her trade, he or she would prosper and may even get rich. But the point is that making a lot of money or getting rich was never seen as the basic goal of the economy. In the Bible, anyone who was in business solely for that reason was described as “greedy for gain,” which is roundly condemned in the law and the prophets as a form of institutionalized violence.
I think that this is one of the major flaws (though certainly not the only one) in our current debate that has contributed to the financial crisis we’re now in. I recently read a blog post that described the “free market system” (that institution that we all know and love and that some of us value with a reverence that approaches worship) as the best economic system ever developed to amass huge amounts of money, not to mention that it does so through efficient distribution. Now I’m not denying that that’s true. The fundamental problem with that line of reasoning, however, is that making money should not be the primary function of the economy. I’m not an economic expert, but I’d be willing to wager that Adam Smith never made that argument. And making money from money compounds the problem even more, because that inevitably has led to decisions that focus on what’s the best approach to increase profits and not what’s best for making sure people get the things they need to survive.
Taking this discussion one step further, we have become so focused in our society on this warped understanding of what the function of the economy is (making money), that we now use it as one of the primary criteria in how we judge the success or failure of our governments. The question, Are you better off [read, “financially”] now than you were four years ago?” has become a staple in our political discussions. Again, ancient people (and plenty of moderns) would see this a perversion, a form of violence. The purpose of government is to ensure a harmonious society. Perhaps an aspect of that might be that we all become more financially secure, but that should never be the primary concern.
I often like to joke that there seems to be an underlying assumption in the Bible that “a people get the government that they deserve.” Perhaps that’s the case.