It is. When we look at the establishment of the nation of Israel, that nation that received its civil law directly from God, we find that that law left the citizens of Israel free to buy and sell as they wished. The only exception was with respect to the law by which God forbade His people to sell their inheritance in perpetuity. Otherwise, agreements were just that, agreements. If Abishai is willing to pay ten shekels for a bushel of olives and if Zunni is willing to sell a bushel of olives for ten shekels, the deal happens.
This, in the end, is precisely what we mean by free markets. It describes the freedom we ought to have to make our own decisions with respect to all that God has put under our care. As stewards we remember that He ultimately owns all things, we only proximately. He has not given the government the freedom to dictate the economic decisions of the citizens. When governments take it upon themselves to dictate those decisions they are no longer ministers of justice but injustice.
The new covenant teaches the exact same thing, though without the law of Jubilee. Where does it do so? Matthew 7:12, where we are commanded to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. What does that have to do with economics? Everything. Economics is nothing more nor less than the sum total of economic decisions made by individuals. Each of us wants the freedom to make our own decisions. We ought then to want our neighbors as well to be able to make their own decisions. Enjoining the state to force my neighbor to make economic decisions they would otherwise not wish to make is failing to love our neighbor.
All of us want to be able to enjoy goods and services at no cost to ourselves. All of us want to be able to sell the goods and services we have, including our labor, at infinite cost to our neighbors. Abishai wants olives for free. Zunni wants a cajillion shekels per olive. When an economy is free, we all seek to find the intersect between what we’re willing to pay and what we’d like, what we’re willing to sell for and what we’d like. If that intersect is found, the sale freely takes place. If that intersect isn’t found, the sale freely does not take place. In either instance each party is free. Each is choosing what they wish.
Doesn’t the Bible teach that people are bad? Indeed it does. Which is precisely why it’s not safe, wise or biblical to give bad people the power to make other bad people do what they don’t want to do. “But sin” isn’t an argument against free markets but an argument for them. God knows what He’s doing. We should do as He says.
If you’re interested in learning more about the moral issues embedded in questions of economics, I’d commend my series Economics for Everybody, and/or, as discussed last week on the Jesus Changes Everything podcast, The Law by Frederic Bastiat.
Is it the incessant push to have a take? Is it communications reduced to 280 characters? Is it political polarization pushed by algorithms driving us all into our respective echo chambers? How, I’m asking, do we account for our increasing inability to reason our way out of a paper sack? What is dumbing us so far down? I don’t know the answer but whatever it is, one of the ingredients is our foolish pride tempting us to believe we have all the answers. To put it another way, we are slow to listen, quick to speak and quick to become angry.
For instance, how many of you, I’m wondering, are reading along, shaking your head and laughing, thinking, “Yeah, what’s wrong with people? People are the worst.” Why are you laughing? I’m talking about you, and me, and even Paul Washer. This, like most problems, is an us problem more than a them problem. We jump to conclusions like champion hopping frogs. We refuse to listen like an ostrich with its head under ground. We reason with all the care of a neo-orthodox theologian visiting an ashram. We assign motives to our ideological foes with all the grace of something with very little grace.
It is always easy to descend into the mosh pit, to somehow reason that if we don’t get rid of reason like our opponents have we’re bound to lose the battle, forgetting that the battle is to hold on to reason. We do not win our enemies by being like them but by being like our Hero. Yes, there were plenty of moments when He answered fools according to their folly. And just as many where He did not. He is Wisdom incarnate. He also had a significant advantage we lack- He was without sin.
What we need then is to increase in humility. Not, you understand, by dissembling on what God has revealed. His Word is true. It’s all of us who are liars. We need to not be so quick to reform the arguments of others into something we have a ready answer for. We need to learn the informal fallacies not so we can embarrass others by pointing out when they commit them but so we can not embarrass Jesus when we commit them. We need to trade in our ready supplies of snark for the precious spice of grace.
Here’s a helpful resolution for the new year for every believer- I resolve in 2022 to reason more carefully, affirm more humbly, speak more slowly, listen more quickly in both the cybersphere and the real world. I resolve to be a part of the solution and when I fail I resolve to repent. I resolve to post as if Jesus is looking over my shoulder, because Jesus is looking over my shoulder. Let’s be careful in here. And remember, don’t do it to them when they do it to us.
There are any number of ways that cultural confusion always walks down the aisle with relativism. Divorce, in this instance, isn’t an option. If, for instance, we all agree that there is no such thing as right and wrong, then what do we do with, say, people who like to torture animals? Or, better yet, what do you do with people who like to hijack airplanes and kill thousands of people? After all, jihad against Americans is “right to them.” How can we object, when all we object against is objecting?
The same is true theologically. Time was that even those outside the church were interested if not worried about the proliferation of various cults. But how does a nation that holds this truth as self-evident, that no religion is more or less true than another, distinguish between a religion, or a faith-group on the one hand, and a cult and cultists on the other hand? The broader culture won’t draw the line at the doctrine of the incarnation or the Trinity. (Indeed, many inside the church won’t make that their line in the sand either. Several of the most influential “evangelicals” of the past thirty years have denied the doctrine of the Trinity.) So where will they draw the line?
The mark of a cult, in the western mind in the twenty-first century, isn’t the assertion of gross error, but the gross error of assertion. Respectable religion is that religion that is held loosely, that may, if it must, assert this belief or that, so long as it does not deny any other assertion or belief. Rome gets a pass because its leadership affirms that there are many pathways to heaven, that what counts is sincerity.
The sad truth, however, is this same thinking has found a home in the church. We don’t determine something is a cult by the doctrines it affirms, but the way in which it affirms its doctrines. The distinguishing mark of the cult is authority. Once cults were defined by a failure to submit to an objective standard. Now a cult is that place that affirms the existence of an objective standard. Which ought to help us understand the true nature of our culture’s embrace of relativism.
Relativism isn’t merely an errant philosophical understanding of epistemology and ethics. It isn’t a mere wrong turn in someone’s sincere journey looking for the truth. It isn’t a silly, yet benign, embracing of folly. It is instead a false religion. Irony of ironies, it comes with a confession of faith, and law written in stone. The confession is this, “All confessions are not true.” The law affirms this, “Thou shalt not affirm anything.” Failure to keep the law will bring forth at least social ostracism, and at worst, jail time. And no religion has proponents with greater evangelistic zeal. They will not stop until everyone affirms in unison that each of us constructs our own reality. They will tolerate no intolerance, except of course their own.
They are winning. Already, according to George Barna’s polls, more than 50 percent of people who describe themselves as evangelical Christians, affirm as true the claim that there is no objective truth. That number will surely climb, as the rest of us more and more get marginalized first as fundamentalists, then as extremists, and finally, as cultists. Our calling, however, isn’t to paint ourselves as reasonable. We don’t whip out our relativist credentials, and insist that we are no danger to the reigning religion. We confront the false religion. We tear down the stronghold. We take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We do this, because we fear no man; we fear God.
Our calling is to believe this objective truth, that those who are persecuted for His name’s sake, are blessed. Our calling is to confess that name before men, not as an option, not as God-to-me, not as something true in my heart. No, we must confess that Christ is Lord over all, that He speaks all truth, and that we must obey — right away. To put it another way, we must confess before men that He is the way, not a way, the truth, not a truth, and the life.
There are ultimately only two ways by which prices are determined, by market forces of supply and demand, or by government forces imposing themselves in markets. When the nation experiences the pain of rapid price increases it does not take long for people to grow angry at the oil companies. They become the scapegoat. Those slightly more sophisticated may give the oil companies a pass, but blame oil speculators, or futures traders. Neither, however, are to blame.
Prices are determined, ultimately, by the consumer. When prices go up, and we don’t change our behavior, we end up paying more than we’d like (which we always do. We’d all like everything we buy to be free) but not more than we are willing. When prices go up and we change our behavior, whether by car-pooling, fewer or shorter trips, or driving cars with better miles-per-gallon, we are decreasing demand. We demonstrate our unwillingness to pay x for y amount of gasoline.
In between prices set by the market and prices set by the state, are prices set by the market, where the state is interfering. Right now prices are rising because of geo-political issues in the Middle East. Iran rattles its sword at Israel. Washington rattles its sword at Iran. And those trading in oil futures think there is some chance that the result of all this will be decreased supply, which will create higher consumer prices. They then are willing to pay more for futures contracts (agreements to buy oil at a given price in the future) which makes prices rise now. In like manner, when Washington refuses to allow drilling in its vast holdings, or refuses to allow an oil pipeline to cross our border with Canada this too suggests less supply in the future, pushing prices up.
Doesn’t this mean the speculators are to blame? By no means. Speculators are not economic vampires sucking the life out of us. They perform an important economic service in spreading risk. Oil producers begin exploring a given region, looking for oil. They don’t know what they will find, nor what what they find will be worth when they find it. A futures trader, however, can guarantee a specific return on their investment by buying the contract. The futures trader also cannot predict what gas will be selling for when the gas is delivered. He is taking a chance, shouldering some of the risk. Sometimes he wins; sometimes he loses.
Why is it, I wonder, that those who complain against the oil companies or futures traders when gas is going up in price never sing their praises when prices are going down? When consumers grumble about greed, at least in a free market, they don’t realize that their own greed is showing. We are not owed gas, at this price or that price. No one is cheating us or gouging us when we freely buy their goods, whatever the price. Our calling, at all times, is to give thanks. There is one who knows not only today’s and tomorrow’s gas prices, but knows that we need food, and clothing. And He told us to stop our fretting, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Would that we hungered for these more than we hunger for lower prices.
I have, for more than 25 years ago we sought to help Christians live more simple, separate and deliberate lives to the glory of God and for the building of His kingdom. I learned quickly how people were apt to respond to this expression. No one objects to deliberate. There is no faction of the church, or even outside the church that takes the view that we ought to act without thinking, that random is better than thoughtful. Separate freaks people out, mostly I fear because we love the world and want to be a part of it. Simple, however, simply puzzled people.
Some thought that a call to live more simple lives involved a commitment to agrarianism. But I’ve always insisted that simply simply means seeking to serve but one master, the Lord Jesus. Our lives, I argue, are tiring and complicated in large part because we don’t believe Jesus when He tells us that no one can serve two masters. When we destroy the idol of our day, the god of personal peace and affluence, we find blessing and simplicity.
There is, however, a second nuance to that commitment to simplicity. While I certainly love sound and rigorous theology, I’m also persuaded that our total depravity, the noetic effects of sin, have caused us to miss the power of some pretty obvious truths. One can, for instance, get so lost in the nuance of the truths of the Reformation, that they cease to be stunned by this simple truth, that Jesus died for sinners. At Dunamis we are passionate about helping Christians regain their passion for the glory of God’s grace toward us.
Consider then my title for this brief piece- God is good. If our principle mode of dealing with God is as an object of study, a locus where we demonstrate our own erudition, these three words, God is good, are banal, even tautological. Of course God is good. He is, after all, holy, set apart, the very Platonic ideal of every possible perfection. But, if we look at ourselves as sinners before we look at ourselves as scholars, these words take on a whole different meaning. They drive us to tears, rather than to yawns. These three small words carry with them the shocking truth that I am a sinner, that I rebel against the majestic glory of the living God, and that He, in turn, showers me, by name, with His tender love and care.
Now, you can put on your academic robe and take up a defense of theological academics. I don’t mind at all. Or, you can enter into simplicity by entering into gratitude, and rejoice that God is good. You can remember His goodness, kissing your wife, hugging your children, raising your arms in Lord’s Day worship, shocked and stunned that whatever else is going on around us, however bad the news might be, God is good. This changes everything. God is good. May He bless you all.
