http://www.sltrib.com/news/4386439-155/new-mormon-church-owned-skyscraper-brings-high

The howls of outrage have already commenced, many of them (if not most of them) coming from people who don’t contribute to the Church.

This is a misuse of tithing money, they say.  (Actually, it probably doesn’t involve tithing money at all.)

The more rhetorically powerful objection, though, is this:  The money should have been given to the poor!  Jesus wouldn’t have invested in a high-rise (or in a shopping mall)!  Think of the good that these funds could have done among the starving in Africa!

While the wisdom of any particular investment can always be questioned until it actually pays off — stock-pickers on television business shows typically recommend different stocks and fault the recommendations of their onscreen colleagues — objecting to investment in principle strikes me as, very often, unreflective, superficial, and economically misguided.  And that’s to the extent that it’s not largely motivated by reflexive anti-Mormon animus that hates everything the Church says, teaches, and does.

A few quick observations:

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The fundamental issue, it seems to me, is whether the Church should spend all of its income immediately or save and invest some of it.  Once it’s decided that, as a matter of responsible stewardship, the Church should save and invest some of its income — as a prudent means, for instance, of preparing for sudden needs, creating a reserve against the inevitable economic downturns that will adversely affect income from tithing and other sources, and growing Church funds for future use — it’s only a question of which investment vehicles to choose.  (Recalling, too, that diversification is one of the prime rules of investing.)  And there’s no obvious moral superiority, in my judgment, of bank savings accounts or bonds or stocks over real estate.

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Investing isn’t the same as consuming.  Saving (in whatever form, whether it be stocks or bonds or less liquid forms such as real estate) isn’t the same thing as spending.

Those complaining about the Church’s investment at City Creek or in this high-rise building frequently seem to miss the distinction between, say, spending money on a Lamborghini and putting the same amount into a mutual fund.  But, again, a mutual fund is really no different, in a fundamental economic sense, than a bond or a rental property.  And, whereas money spent on a vacation or on a fancy dinner at Spagos is genuinely gone, money that’s been invested isn’t gone at all.  It’s just been saved in a particular form.

At Luke 15:11-32, it’s the Prodigal Son who blows through his inheritance and winds up penniless, destitute, and despairing.  Granted, his elder brother eventually comes in for condemnation.  But not because that elder brother worked hard and faithfully.  And the Prodigal Son’s reckless spending is never commended.

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Contrary to the assumptions or implications of some critics, it doesn’t appear to be true that Jesus and his apostles gave away all of their money instantly.  (Nor is it clear, for that matter, where their money came from.)  The gospel of John reports that Judas was in charge of their money bag or box (γλωσσόκομον), which means that they kept a reserve of cash for expenses.

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Speaking of Judas, John’s gospel portrays him (at 12:1-6) in a way that, viewed in the light of current criticisms of the Church over the City Creek Mall and, now, this high-rise building, is quite striking:

 Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

 Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him,

 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

 This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

And John 13:27-30 is also interesting in this regard:

 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.

 Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him.

 For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.

 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.

It depicts Judas as having enough money for the group that he could give charity from it, and also plainly implies that the money could conceivably be used to buy food for a “feast.”

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Did Jesus and his disciples “invest” their financial reserves?  The New Testament doesn’t say that they did or that they didn’t.  But probably not.  There were, after all, no banks in the modern sense of the term, and no stock market or bond funds.  But would they have had a principled objection to such investment?  I see no particular evidence that they would have.  And such passages as Matthew 25:14-30 (i.e., the Parable of the Talents) might seem to argue for investing.

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The Church has a real interest in keeping the downtown area around its headquarters and around Temple Square and the Conference Center and the Church museums clean and attractive, both out of respect to the sacredness and historical significance of some of those places and out of a desire to provide a welcoming and impressive venue for the many tourists and others who come to the area every year.  (Temple Square typically draws between three and five million visitors annually, which is more than all five of Utah’s National Parks — Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands, Arches, and Capitol Reef — combined.)

Inner cities in many American metropolitan centers have been seriously decaying for at least two or three generations, even despite massive outlays of federal “urban renewal” funds.  Downtown Salt Lake City is not decaying.  That’s a good thing.

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The Church is sometimes derided as a net drain on Utah’s economy, because the tithes of Church members are often used to fund chapels and temples and missionaries in far distant places.  It’s ironic, in this and similar cases, to see it derided for massive contributions to Utah’s economy.  This building, for example, represents a major investment that employed large numbers of construction workers, that will provide jobs for a sizable group of ongoing employees, and that will (and probably already has) attract tenants (some from out of state) who will pay well for the privilege of acquiring space at this excellent facility at this excellent address.

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I suspect that the “city set on a hill” at Matthew 5:14 is an allusion to the hilltop town of Sepphoris in the Galilee.  It was a booming new area during Jesus’ lifetime, still being constructed, and it was within walking distance of Nazareth.  The town of Nazareth itself was too small, probably, to sustain a “builder” (tekton) like Joseph.  (There’s little wood in Palestine; he almost certainly wasn’t a carpenter.)  But Sepphoris offered plenty of employment, and the young Jesus may well have walked over with him and helped.  References in the New Testament to corner stones and to building houses on rock rather than sand and so forth suggest some possible background, on the part of Jesus, with stonemasonry.  Which would mean that Jesus was, with his father and before his ministry, something like a modern building contractor, and that he may well have been involved with the construction of what were, by the standards of his day and place, some rather luxurious buildings.

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The common image of Peter and the other apostles as penniless Galilean peasants is very likely wrong.  The sons of Zebedee, for example, seem to have owned several boats and perhaps to have employed others in their fishing enterprise.  Moreover, fishing at Capernaum wasn’t merely a subsistence-level activity; it was an export business, shipping dried fish from nearby Magdala to Tiberias and, via the Wadi Hammam, up to Nazareth and even beyond.  And the ruins at Capernaum that are commonly identified as those of Peter’s house — an identification that I find plausible — seem to suggest that, by the standards of his time and place, he was reasonably successful, perhaps of the Galilean Jewish “middle class.”

The romanticizing of early Christian poverty appears to have little basis in actual historical fact.

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I, for one, am glad that the Church is administered by good people who, in many cases, have considerable business experience and financial savvy.  That reassures me that what they do is likely to be competent, as well as well-intentioned — and that, thereby, it will maximize the good, over the long term, that the Church can do.  The Lord’s admonition at Matthew 10:16 (admittedly, to our ears, rather strangely expressed) is not only to be “harmless as doves” but “wise as serpents.”