To Rev. Ben Johnson and his blogpost about David Bentley Hart’s article on the evils of wealth and class problems. This appeared in the Acton blog.
With growing wealth disparity in many nations that have adopted neoliberalism (a.k.a., Acton's free market economy) as well as growing wealth disparity between nations, perhaps we should look at what the Scriptures say about wealth and David Bentley Hart's assertion about wealth..
James 2:1-7
My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 2 For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, 3 and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? 7 Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?
James 5:1-5
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure! 4 Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.
I Timothy 6:9-10
9 But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Matthew 6:19-21
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21 for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Ecclesiastes 5:10
10 He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is [n]vanity
Hebrews 13:5
5 Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you,”
Matthew 6:24
24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and [m]wealth.
I Timothy 6:17-19
17 Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. 18 Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good [m]works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
When we read the above Scriptures, can we say that David Bentley Hart was that far off when he called wealth an 'intrinsic evil.' OF course, if we don't want to take the warnings and instructions that the above Scriptures give about wealth, let's consider some Church history. During the pre-revolutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain, the dominant branch of the Church had sided with wealth and power. And thus when those respective revolutions came, the Church was prosecuted and the reputation of the Gospel was tarnished. We might want to note one other thing, class envy is a reaction. It can be, and often is, a reaction by those in the lower classes to being exploited by those in the upper class. So while the title implies that class envy is an evil, it neglects to mention that class envy is sometimes caused by evil.
We seem to have a repeat in America regarding the dominant branch of the Church siding with wealth and power. While the Roman Church sided with wealth and power during the pre-revolutionary times of France and Spain and the Orthodox Church sided with wealth and power in the pre-revolutionary times of Russia, it is the conservative Protestant Church, assisted by conservative Catholics, that is siding with wealth and power. This sets the Church up for unnecessary persecution and the Gospel up for discreditation in the future. Who would have though that that could happen in America?
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Feb 6
To Joseph Pearce and his article that celebrated Brexit and its breaking away from the Big Brother of the EU. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.
I supported Brexit and I wasn't the only leftist who did. But not all people supported Brexit for the same reasons. Despite that, the Brexit decision provided an example of victory of democracy over an economic siren call.
What we see in Pearce's article here is what we saw in Trump's Presidential campaign when he opposed the TPP. While correctly noting the danger of one big brother, he pretended that no other big brothers were left to come calling. But there were. In fact, Trump's stand against the TPP and criticisms of NAFTA didn't imply that he even stood against every global big brother (see https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/trump-challenging-neoliberal-agenda/ ) contrary to what he wanted us to believe.
What we see with Trump's approach to the economy is an effort to let other big brothers take the place of the big brother who was standing behind the curtain Pearce was pointing at. Those other big brothers benefit greatly from the elimination of regulations that was protecting the environment and workers. In addition, the bulk of the the benefits of Trump's tax cuts go to these same other big brothers. And lest we blame everything on Trump, we should note that these same other big brothers had already been receiving plenty of attention from our elected leaders to the tune of forming an oligarchy (see http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 ). And all of that was before Trump became President.
Too many times, we are told to believe that there is only one big brother to be leery of. In reality, there are too many big brothers all of whom want to watch over us. Some of the big brothers compete with each other to be our rulers while others secretly collaborate to share power over us. This analysis is not a sign of paranoia; rather, it is recognition of the corrupting power that the love of money has over all of all of us. And the only way to beat back all of the big brothers vying to rule over us is for us not try to be big brothers over those who are in lower economic classes than we are. We need to value people as being more important than things. Here we should note that Martin Luther King Jr told us what constituted those things: gadgets, profits, and property rights. For as long as those things are more important to society than people, then society will be looking for a non-empty set of big brothers to look and rule over them.
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To R. Scott Clark nd his blogpost quote of a judge’s decision that exonerated the decision of a Christian baker to refuse to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. This appeared in heidelblog.
The religious freedom to do what? The comparison with selling tires to an LGBT customer is provides a more valid comparison than the judge recognized. Just as selling tires is not something sacred, since the cake is used in a reception rather than a worship service, there is nothing sacred about the cake either. In addition, the comparison made with a hypothetical baker who favored LGBT rights being forced to make and sell a cake for a Catholic wedding is not a good comparison to use to support Miller's refusal to create the cake. For favoring LGBT rights does not make one object to heterosexual weddings in any Church let alone the Catholic Church. Rather such a comparison illustrates a case where one is forced to provide goods and services with a group one hates. Thus, that comparison provides some insights into either what the judge saw in the defendant Cathy Miller or the judge's own attitudes toward the LGBT community.
Likewise, finding who suffers the greatest is not well thought out if the rights of the same-sex couple are being violated. For being refused the provision of goods and services that are provided to the general public because of the group one belongs to can cause great harm. The marginalization suffered by Blacks for being refused the provision of goods and services during Jim Crow caused great internal harm. That factor alone seems not to have entered the judge's consciousness.
In addition, it would be interesting is to determine whether Cathy Miller's company baked cakes for heterosexual weddings that she had religious objections to. For if such examples can be found, then it would be clear that Miller refused to design a cake because of the sexual orientation of the couple for whom the cake is designed rather than for the religious reasons that were claimed.
The views expressed by the judge grants religious freedom to be used as grounds to discriminate. And it is that association of religiously conservative Christianity with discrimination that is plaguing our faith. It produces stumbling block after stumbling block to non-conservatives who might otherwise listen to the Gospel while many a religious conservative feels religiously righteous in discriminating that might be motivated by a desire to prove one's religiosity. But here, we must hasten to remember past displays of religious expression used to discriminate against others. For not only were religious beliefs used to defend the discrimination practiced during Jim Crow, Martin Luther called on all German Christians to punish the Jews for their refusal to believe in Christ. He stated that if these German Christians did not do as he suggested, then they would be complicit in the refusal to believe in Christ practiced by many Jews. That same fear of complicity seems to be the reason that Cathy Miller and other Christian vendors, who have found themselves in her situation, are employing in her refusal to provide cakes for same-sex weddings.
The issue that the judge did not take up is how should we share society with protected groups with whom we disagree. For if we do not seek to share society with them as equals, they will correctly interpret our actions as efforts to seek privileged places over them by either elevating ourselves or lowering the status of those protected groups we disagree with.
