2 minute read
There’s an old joke among NBA fans about players taking “No! No!… YES!!!” shots. It’s when fans collectively yell, “No! No!” about a bad shot selection… until the celebratory “YES!!!” when the ball unexpectedly goes in. I’ve had the reverse experience with clergy talking about an abundance mindset vs. a scarcity mindset. I think, ‘Yes!’ as they’re critiquing the Myth of scarcity.1 It’s an inward ‘Yes!’ again about the alternative Myth of abundance.2 But then it’s a sorrowful, “NO!!!” as the teaching on an abundance mindset suddenly gets linked with secular capitalism and greed.
The Scottish moral philosopher, Adam Smith, is widely regarded as the “Father of Economics.” He practically invented capitalism in his seminal work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The trouble is that Smith wrote an earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that’s largely ignored by today’s economists. A book about moral philosophy? Pssh. Irrelevant! These geniuses fail to grasp that the first book provides the essential moral guardrails for the second. Stripped of its theistic ethical constraints, secular capitalism goes off the rails.3
No longer moored by a theistic worldview as Western society has steadily secularized, capitalism’s original economic principles are in turn no longer constrained by such derivative moral virtues as love, charity, and dignity. Today’s secular form of capitalism succumbs to a fiscal utilitarianism where profit alone is ultimately important. Meanwhile, prosperous Jesus followers are uncritical of their enculturation. That’s how we got to the place where huge swaths American Christians now believe in the infamous line from ’80s movie villain, Gordon Gekko, that “Greed is good.”
Take a moment to let that sink in because it couldn’t be more important. That mantra from Wall Street is completely contrary to The Way of Jesus. Greed is intrinsically evil and wholly contrary to human flourishing.4 Jesus was right. We cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. Too many U.S.-based Jesus followers conflate the American Dream with the Gospel. Don’t buy the BS: it doesn’t require radical Marxism to acknowledge the obvious excesses and abuses, corruption and suppression, idolatry and inhumanity that have arisen from secular capitalism’s radical greed.
The original beatniks reached their countercultural zenith a decade after Mahatma Gandhi’s 1948 assassination. So far I haven’t been able to find evidence directly linking his spiritual economics with their fierce critiques of the Western capitalistic system, so I don’t want to suggest a historical connection that doesn’t exist. What I can say, however, is that beatnik Christianity wholeheartedly agrees with Gandhi’s statement, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” That’s the nuanced Myth of abundance that clergy should be teaching.
As Walter Brueggemann has pointed out, this Myth is often used to exploit and subjugate.↩
This view teaches about the generosity of God’s creation and the faithfulness of God’s provision.↩
Anyone who thinks moral philosophy has virtually nothing to do with economic principles is ignorant and/or dangerous. In my opinion, abridged versions of both books should be required of grad school students in business and economics.↩
It’s categorically and violently anti-Christ. Greed may be effectively channeled in certain helpful ways, but it is never a virtue and is always a vice. That’s the crucial point many Christian-ish Republicans have forgotten.↩
