Is Capitalism Un-Biblical?

Is Capitalism Un-Biblical? August 21, 2014

Wealth SecretI teach a weekly Sunday School class at our church. Usually we take a question each week from my “Banned Questions” book series and talk about it. But this past week was different. I simply couldn’t sit through half of a day in a context of discipleship and worship and not talk about the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO.

We talked about privilege, systemic oppression and violence, and a poverty of hope. We discussed the fallacy of living in a post-racial context, and about opportunities for nonviolent engagement with injustice such as these.  As is always the case, our dialogue was rich and enriching for all of us, given the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds we come from. But a comment from one woman who had never come to the class before has stuck with me ever since.

“I think a lot of this connects all the way back,” she said, “to when we chose to move away from an economy of abundance and toward an economy of wealth. In that one decision, there are seeds for so much inequity, envy, resentment and even violence.”

At first, the capitalist part of my brain sort of minimized her statement. Abundance and wealth are essentially the same, I said to myself.

But they’re not.

We were born into Eden, Paradise, into an economy of abundance. Our fundamental needs were met, and there was enough for everyone. Sure, there were things we could think of that we might want and not have (take that shiny, seductive piece of fruit on that tree over there, for example), but we needed nothing.

The problems arose when abundance wasn’t enough. Not only did we feel entitled to the things we wanted (even if we didn’t need them); the power of that want over us diminished the value of the real abundance, all around us. And it was especially bad if our neighbor had the thing we wanted.

Wealth, it turns out, is subjective. It’s comparative by nature, measuring what we have against what others around us have. And it turns out that, while a restless wealth mentality can fuel the machinery of capitalism to nearly infinite degrees, the peace of a state of abundance doesn’t drive an economy. So, not surprising, the wealth economy wins out.

But then there has to be specific ways to measure such wealth, to control its flow and to amass it to achieve desired ends. And so we place a value greater than life itself, in some cases, in these rectangular pieces of paper and little round coins in our pocket that the government tells us (and we agree to comply) is the thing with the real value. 

The thing is, once their is an external system by which wealth can be controlled, it will inevitably lead to inequality that doesn’t need to exist in an economy of abundance. In fact, in a wealth-driven economy, it’s acceptable to pursue your own infinite wants, while others still struggle to have those basic needs met that were provided for, back in the beginning. And then we’re surprised when such disparities lead to tensions, to violence and to aggression between haves and have-nots. We judge those whose abundance has been robbed from them, suggesting it’s just “in their nature” or “a part of their culture” to act in ways we consider uncivilized.

As if we wouldn’t do the same thing, or worse, if the tables were turned. And as if we hadn’t already done the same, or worse, in helping create the system of wealth that caused many of the problems in the first place.

I don’t know if that woman will ever come back to my class, but she’s given me plenty to think about. There’s still a lot of untying of this knot for me to do, but at the moment, I can say with some degree of certainty, that she was acting as a prophet that particular morning.

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