charity, Economics, Faith, Holiness

Economics in a Genesis 3 World

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Genesis 3:19 (ESV)

We sometimes assume that the Bible says very little about “non-religious” topics such as economics and politics. Of course, there are many who assume that the Bible says more than it does about these topics, but it is a bit of an overstatement that the truths of scripture have nothing to say about the economics we follow, and more importantly about the economic decisions we need to be making. 

Genesis 3, and especially 3:19 tells us a truth about the world after the coming of sin into the world through Adam’s rebellion to God, namely that in the world we now live, scarcity is a real thing. This is said as God tells Adam that an economic good (food) will have to come about as the result of “the sweat of your face”. Where once the only necessity for finding food was simply reaching out and taking, now in order to produce those economic goods, there was going to need to be work, and as a result, there would be scarcity based on the amount of sweat that was willing to be put into the production of the economic good.

Thomas Sowell, as far as I know not a Christian, but a noted economist puts it this way when he defines the concept of economics itself:

Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses

Thomas Sowell Basic Economics p.2

He also expands this into a necessary corollary, that when it comes to economic problems, there aren’t solutions, only trade-offs. If I want bread, I will need to put in work, if I want to be lazy, I can get excessive rest, but I will have the trade off of being hungry. The result is that I will need to balance the level of tiredness I am willing to put up with and the level of hunger I’m willing to deal with. In a land outside of the garden of Eden, we as humans are left making decisions as to how to use our resources to get to the conclusions we want.

This means that as Christians face the world around us, we will have to accept that until Christ returns, there will always be poor around us, there will always be illness, and there will always be death. When we work to love our neighbours (and even our enemies) we will have to accept that our love for them cannot solve all of the problems, because there are simply more needs and wants than there are resources to deal with those needs and wants. Our faithfulness will not save people in the ultimate sense, but only alleviate suffering. It also means that since the resources are limited, we will have to learn how to be faithful with the resources God gives us so as to best provide for the needs of those around us. 

Utopia is not something Christians build, but something that God gives. In the meantime, in the world where we eat beead by the sweat of our brow, we need to be faithful to God’s goodness with what we are given. 

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Uncategorized

Bible Reading Plan 2024

Hey dear readers. 

So you may know that I do a (mostly) daily livestream on youtube, facebook and X (twitter), where I reflect on some segment of the Bible. The Bible Reading plan I’m using is the same one being followed by my local Church. If you’re interested in keeping up with that reading plan, here it is

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Civility, Clarity, discernment, Holiness, Laziness

Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger

We have it on good authority that Socrates believed that the unexamined life was not worth living. 

I’m not sure he was right or wrong, but I am sure that our unexamined conversations can be very dangerous.

I’m honestly not sure, when I think about it, that our conversations are usually menat to communicate anything as much as they are often dances of rhetoric meant to help us maintain our own presently-held prejudices. So often very complicated ideas and concepts (even good ones) are boiled down to slogans, not so that people can understand what we’re saying, but more so that we can be more assured in our own correctness, even with people who disagree with us.

The same bombastic statement can serve multiple roles in doing that. When I say that “Socialized medicine is a right”, while the statement is a meaningful claim that can have merits and demerits, I’m not often asking to hear them. More likely I’m trying to get people who already think like I do to affirm my position, and to anger and disgust those who do not agree with me. In the first case, I will get wise knowing nods to my statement, and in the other I will get snarky (or even angry) counter-claims. In either case, I’m not actually communicating as much as seeking affirmation (from the enlightened people who agree) and identifying an outgroup (seeing those who disagree with me to be the unthinking brutes that they are).]

Yet, I’m commanded in scripture to have a different goal:

James 1:19–20 (ESV) — Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

In context, James is speaking about the need for believers to submit to the teachings of God, first by working to understand them, and secondly by avoiding the ways we can avoid being taught (such as through speaking too early and so losing the opportunity to hear what is being taught, or by just getting angry and so closing our ears to something we may need to hear).

The Christian is meant to be seeking the righteousness of God, and that requires that I not skip the all-important early steps in a conversation. First that I seek to understand what the other person is saying. This means breathing when we hear the slogans of the other person and try to understand what might actually be wisdom in what is being said. If we can’t see it, we can ask questions to learn from the person what it is they mean, and give them the time to express it before coming to the conclusion that they are wrong. After all, even if we have heard the same slogan a thousand times and each of those thousand times defended poorly, it may be that this time the person has thoughtfully come to a conclusion, and the fact is there may be something correct in what they say that will lead us to greater righteousness. A place that our anger will rarely bring us. 

In short the first step is to assume that the person is at least as thougtful and knowledgable as you are, and even if they are not, to recognize that they may have wisdom to impart to you. God has developed that person to the place they are, and has put them into our lives as a gift. It is best we use the gift well. 

Of course, this is not to say that we are never to speak, and never to anger. There are very foolish ideas around, I know, I believed many of them at various times in my life. But James is wise in telling us to be quick to hear and sloe to speak and slow to anger. There is a time for speaking and anger, but only after we have heard. 

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Bible, Christianity, Confession, repentance

Advocacy isn’t itself action.

One of the greatest dangers for the pastor comes from the very role that we have in teaching the Gospel to people. We are called (in many places scripturally) to preach the Word of God to those around us. We are told not to neglect it, we are told to strive at it and we are told to do it with patience. With all that as central to the role of whar we are called to do, it’s interesting that in Timothy and Titus, when Paul sees the need to express the necessary qualifications of the elder, we are faced, not with a skill set, but with a character set.

There is a clear reason for this, one that comes to mind to me now only after I’ve been angered by the way people in my own culture can use the idea of calling for some social change as the same as working to bring about that social change. So often we pretend that protesting and calling on the government to end homelessness, or lower the cost of living or some other perceived social need, is the same as actually working to make those things come about. There may be some minor utility in such activity, but overall it’s unlikely to change anything because of the simple fact that telling other people to do something does not in itself cause the thing. 

It is always much easier to call on someone to do something, and it can even make ourselves feel better about ourselves, but that is not the same thing as doing something. Telling the government (or the church, or a social group) to help the poor is not a replacement for actually helping the poor. Saying that there should be help for people who are caught in loneliness is a lot less helpful than visiting the lonely, and thinking, praying and loving people in hard situations is going to help more than saung that something “should be done”.

This is the same for those of us who call others to repentance as part of our calling. That I call my neighbour to turn from wickedness and trust in Christ is not itself me doing that. I still need to make a practice of holiness, and a practice of turning from, confessing and repenting of my own sin. 

Calling for something to be done is not the same as doing it, and we are called to be not merely hearers (or even speakers) of the Word, but doers of the Word.

SDG

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Bible, Trust

Tempted in Every Way?

Scriptural translation is (like most translation work) not an exact science. The fact is that translations from one language to another can have a lot of difficulties, and can result in confusion about what a text actually means theologically. 

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.

Hebrews 4:15 (NIV)

This translation of the text adds a few questions we’d need to deal with since it is unlikely that Jesus dealt with specific sins that we would have. He could not be tempted to covet his coworker’s new computer, nor could he be tempted to anti-native Canadian racism, both because the opportunities did not present to him in 1st century Palestine. More to the point, the reference to Jesus not having sin would also mean that the specific forms of sin that come from addiction would likely not be part of Jesus’ experience, because he had never (for example) drunk alcohol to excess with enough regularity to become addicted to it, since with drunkenness being a sin, Jesus Christ would not have ever been drunk.

More difficult would be the questions of issues such as anorexia, bulimia, cutting and other similar behaviours. While these are not listed as “sins” in scripture, they are clearly temptations that people can struggle with and have very negative results in the destruction of a person created in the image of God. Did Jesus when he was human have temptations like these? 

I am going to have to say “yes” and “no”. Part of this answer comes from looking at the translation of scripture itself. Here is the likeliest Greek construction of the verse that the NIV translates with “tempted in every way”.

οὐ γὰρ ἔχομεν ἀρχιερέα μὴ δυνάμενον συμπαθῆσαι ταῖς ἀσθενείαις ἡμῶν, πεπειρασμένον δὲ κατὰ πάντα καθʼ ὁμοιότητα χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας.

Hebrews 4:15 (NA28)

The phrase in question is “πεπειρασμένον δὲ κατὰ πάντα καθʼ ὁμοιότητα χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας.”, which is (based on my terrible translating) “tested according to all varied likenesses, yet separated from sin”. The ESV translation team (made up of scholars much smarter and well-trained than I) rendered it thusly:

 but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 

Hebrews 4:15b (ESV)

I think this gets us closer to an answer for whether or not Jesus would have struggled with self-destructive addictions. The text is not saying that Jesus has every individual temptation that we do, but that in every class of sins, he has that experience, and so is able to sympathize with our temptations. I think that includes the temptations that come from physical and psychological dependencies.

Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry would have had all of the weaknesses that flesh is heir to, and thus would have dealt with similar temptations to those created by physical dependency (which is the level of some forms of alcoholism). From the way it feels, I’m told that there’s little difference between a physical and a strong psychological dependency, and we do have an example of Jesus recorded as having dealt with having to resist what would have been, in his context, a sinful dependency, namely his temptation to break his fast in the wilderness in a sinful way. 

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ”

Luke 4:1–4 (ESV)

Jesus could have sated his hunger by sinfully turning a stone to bread, but that would have ended the fast he had intended for Godly reasons and done it in a way that would have misused his power as God. Jesus had a physical need for food, and yet was unable to fill that real felt need in a Godly way, and managed to defeat the temptation. In the sense of dealing with a dependency that could only be filled by sinning, Jesus was in fact tempted that way and did not sin.

I think this is actually akin to the experience felt by those dealing with addictions and self-destructive compulsions. It feels like a very real need from the inside (and in some cases may actually be a real need in the case of physical dependency), but to fulfill that need by the easiest felt means would be sinful (whether by cutting, purging, or dangerously refusing to eat, and thus damaging or destroying a person created in the image of God). Jesus does not need to have struggled with the specific sins (drunkenness or self-destruction) to have dealt with the class of sin, and thus to meet the encouragement intended in Hebrews 4. 

The upshot is that if you are dealing with an addiction, a psychological compulsion, or any other compulsion that can lead you to sin, the Christian claim is that Jesus has dealt with similar strong temptations, and so is able to sympathize when you come to him to ask for help to deal with the temptations you’re facing, and even to grant mercy and forgiveness when you fall into the sin. He knows the power of sin, even as he has not fallen to it.

SDG

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