Continuing from yesterday’s part I on Economic Justice: God and our Money

The story so far: On Tuesday nite i attended an evening with some friends, largely from Christ Church Kenilworth, looking at Economic Justice. One of the statements the speaker Alan Storey made, was relating to how little Jesus spoke about sex and how obsessed the church often is with focusing on that, while how often Jesus [and the Bible] spoke about Economics and how the only time the church ever seems to speak about money is when we’re asking for it.

Alan continued looking at the Lord’s Prayer with the phrase: Forgive us our debts [reminding us that was the original word, which we have conveniently changed to ‘sins’]

He spotlighted a Proverb i’m sure i’ve read before but never actually had jump out at me like this:

Two things I ask of you, O Lord;

do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;

give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise I may have too much and disown you

and say, “Who is the Lord?” 

Or I may becomes poor and steal,

and so dishonour the name of my God.

[Proverbs 30.7-9]

Falsehood and lying – imagine we lived economically just lives simply by spending time redefining the words ‘need’ and ‘greed’ and how they relate to us [bonus point from me, don’t blame Alan for that one] and were honest about the fact that we gravitate towards comfort and excess over simplicity and enough. Even in the face of those who have nothing.

But then that idea of a request for only my daily bread – enough – because if i get rich i might think it was all about my skills and disown God… and if i have too little i might resort to theft and everything that comes with that.

Alan touched on the idea of ‘Shalom’ which is badly translated as ‘peace’ where we think of peace as ‘an absence of violence’ but rather Shalom speaks of an abundance – of a presence of goodness and rightness and wellness. And how Shalom in South Africa can not be possible until there is Distribution… 

He spoke about Holy Communion being a reminder to the children to make sure all our brothers and sisters have enough [returning to yesterday’s point that everyone is our family, not only those who live in the same house as us]. The bread and wine are merely symbols pointing to that Holy Communion.

homeless

Alan shared a story about communion at the church he pastors in town. How if they give the homeless free reign at the coffee table [“You know how many sugars they have!”] that pretty soon there are church members who spend coffee time round the corner at a coffee shop drinking lattes and only the homeless people are left in the church. How communion time in one sense is safer because it’s quiet and you go up one by one and there is no interaction. But if you’re having coffee with a homeless person there is the chance of bumping into someone and having to speak to them or awkward interactions and so on. He closed by saying that God is not as interested in the communion time in his church as He is in the coffee time.

Alan spoke about how the Ten Commandments are mentioned twice in the Old Testament. In Exodus with the message that the 7th day is holy so keep it holy. But in Deuteronomy the reminder is that you used to be slaves and not have rest: remember that. Which is a great perspective to think about in our country.

He spoke about Jubilee, that beautiful economic practice meant to take place every 50 years which basically pushed reset – land was returned, slaves were set free, debts cancelled. And yet no real evidence that Jubilee was ever effectively carried out by the Israelites, because people. Which doesn’t make it a system that doesn’t work – just one that was maybe not tried.

The command back then to not harvest everything but to leave the edges of your field for what Alan called the Old Testament Trinity: The widow, the orphan and the foreigner. And how that might look to people running businesses today – to not harvest everything – seeing that all of the profits of your company are not yours and how can those be levered to point them in the direction of widows, orphans and foreigners or others in need? If we’re talking about creative solutions for South Africa’s problems, this is one way where people could model dramatically counter-culture ways to pour profits into people and not retirement sailboat accounts.

THE ECONOMISTS

He spoke of two people, Adam Smith and Karl Marx who had tried to reform economics. Adam Smith giving huge emphasis to FREEDOM with the hope that things would align and everything would turn out okay. And Mark with an emphasis on EQUALITY also hoping that the goodness of people would make it all work out. Alan spoke a bit about how an economic system that focuses on one at the exclusion of the other is always going to fail and how we need to perhaps look at something that works FREEDOM and EQUALITY together.

He ended off by saying that we need to come to the place of hopelessness that the system is NOT working. Which all sounded quite negative. But then he linked it to the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous and how their first step is to admit they have a problem and the second step is connecting to a higher power. We worship growth. But we need to realise that a system that focuses on growth CANNOT be sustainable because sooner or later stuff runs out…

He mentioned a guy called John Rawls who said when designing a new system you need to climb back into the womb [we were hoping this was a metaphor]. The idea, going back to our table-holding analogy of yesterday, that if you design a system that has some people standing at the back, some people squished around one table, some people carrying tables and a few people lounging comfortably at the front, that you don’t know where you are going to arrive in the system. So if you start at that point of not knowing where you fit into the system then you will design a system that favours the least because there is a chance that you might be the one who arrives in that group.

SOME CLOSING POINTS ALAN MADE:

# We need people who are going to get creative

# This is not going to be simple. In fact it’s an uphill battle and it’s so complicated with everything else that is going on plus just trying to get by day to day. It’s going to take work and effort and buy in.

# As churches we need to stop talking about sex [or stop obsessing with it] and start talking about these things [which are so prevalent in our Book anyways]

One thing he said which i know is a particular ARGH point for tbV [and me] was this: Could it be that the things we call ‘blessed’ should be the very source of our shame? You know when you’re scrolling down Facebook and you see someone standing next to a new car, their very first new car, and saying how blessed they are [Thank you God!] for giving them a new car… or “blessed” to be going on this Europe trip… or “blessed” because they finished their masters and have found a job. So often the things we call “blessed” seem to be throw-offs from our privilege, upbringing or lucky opportunities… while people in Khayelitsha venture out at night in the rain just to go to the toiler [if we’re blessed they must be cursed, right? Because they didn’t try hard enough?] As Christian types we need to be very careful how we throw around the word ‘blessed’.

And then cheesy bumper sticker of note, but i love the point, Alan said: If you want to follow Jesus you’ve got to look good on wood. He calls us to die after all [Luke 9.23] And the question, is there nothing worth being crucified for in this world?

We need to come together and confess our addictions: I don’t think I have enough!

TWO FINAL THOUGHTS TO GET OUR MINDS AROUND

[1] We don’t live in innocence – we all have our own hypocracies – i [brett] think it’s important that we continue to revisit those as opposed to resigning ourselves to them – “Oh two Vida E coffees is my thing.” Sometimes just doing the maths will help on that. But things like recycling, meat eating, the clothes we buy, the greenness of products and so on – there may be some changes we need to make.

[2] We need to be givers of life – WE DON’T NEED TO LEAD THINGS.  There are people doing these things much better than we are and so we can walk alongside them and learn and jump in and be led by them.

Such a challenging evening and worth spending some time with wrestling and having a dinner conversation with your family and friends on the points that jumped out at you. What was there from this post that particularly struck you? Anything your eyes were opened to for the first time? 

On the 7th of June, CCK will be hosting their next talk in this series and my friend Jonathan Jansen from Manenberg will be sharing and it will undoubtedly be another evening not worth missing out on. Hope to see you there.

[If you missed part I, click here]