Should Christians concern themselves with the economy? Is interest in economics a sign that you are a lover of money and that you are putting your hopes in financial security? Is a free-market economy inherently evil and socialism inherently good? Does the Bible advocate socialism? These questions and more will be addressed in today’s With All Wisdom podcast.
Transcript
Derek: Should Christians concern themselves with the economy? Is interest in economics a sign that you are a lover of money and that you are placing all your hopes in financial security? Is a free market economy inherently evil and socialism inherently good? Does the Bible promote socialism? These questions and more will be addressed in today’s With All Wisdom podcast.
Welcome back to the With All Wisdom podcast where we are applying Biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown and I am pastor and elder at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California and academic dean at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And I’m here again today with Cliff McManis. He is pastor, teacher at Creekside Bible Church and professor of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary. And today we want to talk about economics and the Bible. But before we dive into our topic for today, I want to highlight our website withallwisdom.org where you can find a large and growing collection of resources on a variety of theological, church, and social issues to help you think Biblically about all of life for the glory of God. And in particular, I want to draw your attention to a recent article by one of our contributing editors J.R. Cuevas. The article is called “Eight Protective Measures for Your Marriage.” You can go online, you can search for it, it’s right there, you can scroll down, you should find it on the most recent articles. And this is a very helpful and important article that you will want to read if you’re already married and if you’re planning to be married. One of Satan’s main strategies is to undermine and destroy Christian marriages and J.R. equips you with several counter strategies to help you guard your marriage from our great enemy. And with that, I want to now turn to our topic for today, the Bible and economics or economics in the Bible. And you might be wondering why on earth would two pastors be taking up the issue of economics in a podcast? And let me offer you a few reasons. First, one of the things we keep on emphasizing in this podcast is that scripture, because it’s God’s word, explains all of reality.
In God, we, quote, live and move and have our beings, Paul says in Acts 17. And his word tells us about life and ultimate reality. This means that Christians have vital, essential knowledge about creation, the nature of humankind, and a hundred other relevant aspects of our lives in the world that inform our judgment of right and wrong, truth or error. And we can speak those truths into the world and to other people. And you may have never thought about it from this perspective before, but the topic of economics actually intersects with a biblical worldview at multiple points. Economic models and policies are built on assumptions about the existence and providence of God, the purpose and goodness of creation, the nature and purpose of humankind, the reality of sin, the dignity of work and private property, the role of government, the direction of history, and how to effectively care for the poor. Each of these categories are deeply theological. Once we see this, the question isn’t why should a Christian be interested in economics, but how can a Christian not be interested in economics given its connection with a biblical worldview? So again, on this podcast, we’re trying to explode the idea or the notion that scripture speaks only to a narrow portion of life isolated from much of real life, and that you can’t take biblical truth into the public square, into your conversations with others. We want to help you as a Christian develop a biblical worldview so that you can see all of life through the lens of scripture and practice genuine discernment, which Paul describes in Romans 12.9, and abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good. He repeats a similar statement in 1 Thessalonians 5.21-22, but test everything, hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Paul universalizes these instructions to include everything we experience in this life, whether it has to do with the doctrine of the church or policies in the public square. You don’t have to be an economist or even spend a lot of time on this subject, but we want you to see that scripture is relevant to all of life and that Christians can speak truth into many different situations. And there’s a second reason why we want to have a conversation like this today. It’s because socialism, an economic model we will discuss in a little bit, has re-emerged with some vigor in the national conversation, especially among the so-called millennial generation, and even some Christians are being swept up in the tide in advocating for socialism because they view it as the, quote, Christian economic model. It’s the one that the Bible advocates, so we need to talk about that.
For example, there’s the Institute of Christian Socialism, you can find their website online. They describe themselves this way, quote, the Institute of Christian Socialism is an ecumenical institute founded on the conviction that socialism of the gospel is irreconcilable with capitalism and demands Christian participation in the emergence of new forms of political economy today, end quote. This group is liberal in their theological convictions, so you might think that liberal theology and advocacy for socialism go hand in hand, and they usually do, but even among some professing evangelicals today, there appears to be some soft spot for socialism, and you can find an example of that in an article at Christianity Today back from last November by Heath Carter entitled, Does Socialism Have to be Godless, where he reviews a book on socialism? And so in this podcast, we want to focus our conversation specifically on the topic of socialism and distinguish it from a free market economy and see how scripture informs these distinctions and see if a biblical worldview actually leads us to embrace one model over the other. So this is going to be a practice in biblical worldview, biblical discernment. And so this all brings up the issue of expertise. As I’ve been listening to some of the public conversations about race, politics, economics, science, and so on in recent days, I’ve noted a refrain from a few folks who suggest that pastors specifically and Christians generally must be careful to, quote, stay in their lane. Maybe you’ve heard that expression before, and not to speak in areas where they have no expertise. We can’t challenge the experts, it’s said, because we are not experts. Now on the one hand, I hardly agree with this principle. If we’re talking about economics, we can’t pretend to be experts in a field that we’re not experts. I think that goes without saying. That would be a kind of dishonesty. So hopefully we will avoid waxing eloquent on elements of economics that we are unsure about or unstudied on.
But on the other hand, we have to remember that Christians generally and pastors specifically occupy a unique station in the world. We have the Word of God and the Spirit of God. We have access through faith in His Word and the illumination of the Spirit to knowledge of ultimate reality. We have knowledge of truth that intersects with every branch of human learning. Because of this, we can know something about every branch of human learning. So not every Christian is an economist, but every Christian is a theologian with access to theological truth about reality. And as we’ve already seen a moment ago, economics is deeply theological. As a pastor especially, we are tasked with thinking theologically about the world and teaching our people how to think theologically about the world. So although neither of us are experts in economics, we are highly trained in theology and we can certainly speak to this important topic as we think theologically about it. Cliff, do you have any thoughts on this issue of expertise and the Christian’s ability to speak into areas where he may not be an expert?
Cliff: Yes. Oh, you said some important things there, Derek. I think of your quote where you said, we can’t challenge the experts. Derek, did you major in economics in college?
Derek: I did not major in economics in college.
Cliff: Neither did I. Do you have an MBA by chance?
Derek: I do not have an MBA. No.
Cliff: Or a CPA in a way?
Derek: I don’t.
Cliff: Neither do I. So I am not an expert in economics. So regarding your reminder that you just gave the repeated refrain from many in the world who want Christians and particularly pastors to keep their noses out of the public dialogue on these issues, because they really want us to keep our noses out of public policy. That’s the end result. With the refrain telling us that we can’t challenge the experts. We’re actually hearing that right now with COVID. We’re not medical experts. Therefore, we have no say. But with respect to economics, we can’t challenge the experts. I had a few thoughts in light of this idea that we can’t challenge the experts. Well, my first thought is that Satan is an expert. He’s an expert on a lot of stuff. Another thought I had was, well, experts can lie and mislead people and many times deliberately. You have expert politicians. You have expert propagandists like Joseph Goebbels and others. And then my third point was that God is an expert. As a matter of fact, he’s an expert on everything. And he’s given his authoritative expert opinion to his people in writing in his word in the Bible. And one of the responsibilities of pastors is to know the Bible, to know the whole counsel of God. The way Apollos did, he had a mastery of the scriptures. And we have to as well for our own spiritual growth as Christians, but also in terms of training and protecting and teaching our flock, our people to be discerning. I liked your verse there that says it all was 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 21.
That is our mandate as Christians, where Paul said, examine everything carefully, and it actually meant everything. And economics and money is in every area of our lives. Every single day, no person is exempt from that. So this verse applies to that as well, but examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good. So God is the expert when it comes to money and economics. He’s given us much information from Genesis to Revelation on money, economics, and all those different philosophies, and we need to become conversant with it and then apply it to the world in a discerning manner with his help. So that’s why you and I, who are not experts in economics, we can talk about economics, examining it from a biblical perspective and Christian worldview. This made me think about how you and I, we both graduated from the same college. One time it was called the Master’s College, now it’s the Master’s University. And one of the goals at the Master’s College is, and I tell you upfront, if you go there four years, you’re going to graduate with a minor in Bible, and then there’s required classes you have to take. And one of them is Christian theology, where you get an overview of what the Bible teaches, but also Christian worldview, one of the most beneficial classes that I took. And it teaches you to think comprehensively through the grid or the lens of the Bible about every area of life. And that was profound, and had a huge impact on me. And I know that you and I kind of have the same benefit from that, of graduating from the Master’s College. We walked away with a very specific and deliberate Christian worldview, and that we discern everything through the lens and grid of scripture. And then we became pastors and we ended up at the same church, and so now we’re shepherds and elders at the same church, and we have to shepherd our people, and one of our greatest responsibilities is to teach them to think and to teach them to be discerning.
And one thing that I’ve noticed over the 14 years now that I’ve been at this church is we live in an area here in the Silicon Valley, a very highly educated area here in America. And so literally at our church, we have members from the most prestigious, is that how you pronounce it? I think some of the most prestigious universities in America, if not the world, who have become members at our church over the years, we’ve had members with several of them graduated from MIT, Stanford, because we’re in the backyard of Stanford University, and Berkeley. We have members from many who came from UCLA, USC, Yale, Cornell University, Columbia University, and I’m probably missing several. One thing that I’ve noticed from many of these young people who are recent grads from these schools is they come, become members, and I’ve noticed that they have not been trained in a comprehensive Christian worldview at these prestigious universities, because these prestigious universities are secular to the core, and they are inculcating and teaching their students an ideology at bottom that is in total conflict with the Bible in a Christian worldview. But they’re Christians, they love the Lord, they’re sincere, they believe the Bible is inspired, yet they don’t have a comprehensive Christian worldview by which to analyze the issues of the day, including economics, or is socialism good or bad? And many times, these young Christians, they think about Christian issues in a categorized kind of way, or compartmentalized way. And this hit me about, I don’t know, 10 plus years ago when one of these young, bright graduates of one of these prestigious schools became a member of our church. We were talking, I don’t know what we were talking about, but it ended up on politics or something like that, and economics, and I had an inkling that they viewed socialism favorably, so I just asked them, so did you ever study about Karl Marx? I said, yeah. I said, well, let me ask you one question. Was Karl Marx a good guy or a bad guy? And they said, well, he was a good guy. That said it all. And I said, no, no, no, no, Karl Marx, he was a bad guy. And they were quite surprised. And they asked me, so pastor, why are you saying that? And I said, well, let me ask you first, why are you saying he’s a good guy? Well, that’s because that’s what I learned at my university. I took one class on, it was a required class, Gen. Ed. class, and he was portrayed as a good guy. It’s like, oh, okay, well, you were misled and told a lie, and I’ll tell you why. And just over the years, here’s other similar comments that some of these young folks have said to me that I believe in Jesus, but abortion is okay. Had students say that. Or I believe in the Bible, but evolution is true. Another one, this was recent. I believe the Bible is the authority, but gay marriage is okay.
And so, this reveals that they do not have a comprehensive Christian worldview by which they are assessing everything. And so, I don’t need to be an expert in economics to know that Karl Marx was evil to the core, and that what he wrote, taught, and stood for was hostile to the truth. And so, our goal as pastors and our goal as Christians is to speak for, and on behalf of the one expert that really matters, and that’s God. And so, that’s why I think it’s valid for us to be in this discussion.
Derek: Amen. Well, and I agree with that. And what I’ve seen is that, and why I wanted to bring it up at the beginning, and while we’ll continue to press this point, is that economic policy, when you’re making those policies or developing an economic theory, every part of it, you’re making assumptions about things that are clearly taught in the Bible. So, you’re making assumptions about the nature of man, the role of government, whether or not God exists. And I think that’s why it becomes easy for people to compartmentalize, because they don’t realize that these aren’t just facts or truths that people are throwing out there. They’re, in fact, based on assumptions of ultimate reality. And that’s why they’re making these statements about economics or whatever it might be.nSo, I agree, that’s helpful. And that’s what we’re going to press on the rest of this time, is to help you see where, in fact, economic policy is built on assumptions about ultimate reality. And of course, the Christian has something to say about that because we have the Word of God. So, where do we start? Well, let’s start with some definitions. Simple one, Merriam-Webster defines economics. This way, a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Okay, that’s one definition. Lexico.com defines economics as the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. And then Lexico.com defines an economy as the wealth and resources of a country or region, especially in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services. So, economics, I think we see just from those two basic definitions, has to do with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. And it should become immediately apparent then that economics is a vital aspect of our lives, as one economist has put it. The economy is how people eat. So, we’re talking about very basic elements of our life here. Biblically speaking, the basic elements of economic activity are found in the first chapters of the Bible, believe it or not.
God creates man in his own image and assigns him the task of multiplying and exercising dominion over all the earth. This exercising of dominion would include bringing forth food from the ground and creating useful resources from the earth. The earth is very abundant in its resources. We know God created it that way so we could take those resources and use them. The moment that man and woman are created, they would have had an interest in the quote production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services because it was part of God’s design and their lives depended on it. As the man and woman multiplied over the earth, the discovery, creation, and exchanging of resources would have also multiplied. People would settle in cities and develop crafts according to their own skills and opportunities. And actually, you see this specialization very soon in the biblical record. Abel was a keeper of sheep, Cain was a worker of the ground. Jubal, a descendant of Cain, would be the father of, quote, all those who play the lyre and pipe with Genesis 4:21. Tubal Cain, another descendant of Cain, was a forger of all instruments of bronze and iron and that’s Genesis 4:22. Then from Genesis 4 onward, we don’t see much in terms of detail but we do find elements of economic activity throughout the Genesis record. Just as a couple of examples by way of description, Abraham possesses goods and wealth and exchanges that wealth for other goods like a field to bury his wife. So he purchases some property that’s Genesis 23. This exchange involved the ownership and transfer of personal property. And then we see in the story of Joseph, a situation where he was able to help Pharaoh navigate a famine by the careful preservation of resources. That’s Genesis 47. This event involved governmental procurement and distribution of goods, which we’ll talk about in a moment. When God established Israel, he instituted several economic policies. He instructs his people to not steal from each other. That’s an economic policy, which implied that Israelites had personal property that belonged to them. He gave them laws concerning restitution for the destruction of personal property. That’s Exodus 21 through 22. He gave them laws about how to care for the poor in the land. That’s Exodus 22:25 through 27. He gave them laws about work, Exodus 23, and the proper care of their resources. The building of the tabernacle implies significant economic activity since Israel would have needed to produce many goods and provided many services in order to provide material for the tabernacle. That’s Exodus 35. The nation was given instructions on how to give offerings to the Lord, which would have come from their own management and production of their fields and flocks. That’s Leviticus 1 through 6. When God promised blessing for obedience, these blessings were usually in the form of economic prosperity, which were fulfilled in abundance during the reigns of David and especially Solomon. And it would be Solomon who would pen multiple Proverbs, many of them on economic themes. The diligent man will experience some measure of economic prosperity, where the sluggard will be beleaguered with poverty. That’s Proverbs 13:4 and 21:25 and many others. Merchants must deal fairly with their customers.
That’s Proverbs 11:1. That wealth must be built slowly over time, not all at once. That’s Proverbs 13:11 and 21:5. And then after Solomon, Israel’s economy struggled, eventually being overturned by foreign enemies. Nevertheless, when his people were captured and brought into Babylon, God instructs him to seek the welfare of the city, which had clear economic implications. And you can read that in Jeremiah 29:5 through 7, where God tells Israel to his people to plant gardens and eat their produce, to take wives and daughters, to seek the welfare of the city, to build homes and live in them and so on. As we move through the New Testament, there’s abundant economic activity and discussion. To start with, Jesus was a carpenter’s son who called fishermen, highlighting two common trades in Jesus’ day. Jesus spoke often about greed and the danger of a love of money, which implied that economic activity was taking place and that his disciples needed to think hard about their relationship to this economic activity. We looked at this passage a few weeks ago, but Luke 12 told a story, Jesus told a story about a man whose field produced abundantly, but that what actually Jesus warns in that story, that this man though, his field produced abundantly, that he stored it all for himself and was not rich towards God. But there you, the implication is that there was great economic activity, which is what allowed him, his field to produce abundantly. In Acts 2:4 and 5, passages we’ll come back to in a little bit, there’s the selling of property and the giving to those in need in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Paul instructs Christians to work hard and earn their own living. And then at the end of the, towards the end of the Bible in Revelation 19, we find out that when God judges Babylon for her idolatry, the punishment consists primarily in the devastation of her economy. It says in Revelation 19 that Babylon, the great city, will be thrown down with violence and will be found no more and the sound of harpists and musicians of flute players and trumpeters will be heard in you no more and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more and the light of the lamp will shine in you no more and on and on. So I just, I just give this quick overview and there’s, there’s much, much more we could, we could pull from Scripture, but I just give you this biblical overview to simply say that there are many elements within the biblical storyline that are related to economics. Some of it’s prescriptive, like the commands given to Israel, some of it is just descriptive where we’re not told directly whether it was, what was happening was good or bad, right or wrong, and some of it comes in the form of instruction about how we are to think about our own relationship to money and to the poor, but here’s the most important point and this is where I want to take the conversation. All of this economic activity is built on Genesis 1 and 2, where God creates man in his own image to exercise dominion on the earth, subdue it and to bring forth from the earth goods useful to oneself and to other humans. Out of this production would naturally come the exchange of goods based on specialization, we talked about that earlier. In God’s design, he created us fellow image bearers to have a mutual interdependence on one another and to serve one another through our work of subduing the earth. So at its very basic economics and economies exist because God created mankind in his own image and then tasked us with exercising dominion on the earth. So Christians should care about the economy because the economy relates directly to our calling to subdue and steward the earth. And here’s a key piece, too. Humans were made to serve and bless one another through exercising of dominion. That’s how we see our work when we do it. It not only provides for our needs, but it also blesses others. That’s according to God’s design. Wayne Grudem is a theologian who is not by training an economist, so you might say he’s not an expert in economics, but he’s done a lot of work in this area, a lot of helpful work, and we’ll go back to him in a little bit. But one quote I want to take from his book, Politics According to the Bible, he comments on this idea of stewardship from Genesis 1:27. He says, this response, quoting him now, this responsibility to subdue the earth and have dominion over it implies that God expected Adam and Eve and their descendants to explore and develop the earth’s resources in such a way that they would bring benefit to themselves and other human beings. The responsibility to develop the earth and enjoy its resources continued after Adam and Eve sin for even then God told them, you shall eat the plants of the field. Grudem notes that God’s command to his image bearers to subdue the earth and exercise dominion in Genesis 1 would have not only benefited them, but benefited others.
God’s original design in the creation prior to the fall was that man and woman, as they multiplied across the earth, would have not only provided for themselves, but served others in their labors as they made the earth useful. God’s image bearers were entrusted with a stewardship of subduing the earth and making it useful to themselves and others. And this is where I want to take the conversation. I believe the topic of economics for Christians is, at basic, an issue of stewardship. And I was really helped by an article in Desiring God, by a man named Dale Arand. This is the name of it: “Why Christians Care About Economics, Five Reasons.” And he begins it by saying this. He says, good stewardship includes taking care of the economy. In Israel, people provided for their families utilizing land, capital, which would have been tools and animals at that time, and their own labor. Prohibitions against theft, laziness, and moving boundary markers, and here’s the key sentence for me, were designed to maintain everyone’s ability to steward his allotted piece of God’s creation. So the reason why God put these economic policies in place was to enable his people to fulfill their—one of the reasons, at least, was to enable his people to fulfill their calling and their responsibility to steward their allotted piece of God’s creation.
Cliff: Let me interject on an important statement, because you’re talking about stewardship, which I think I agree with you. It is at core in the discussion here, stewardship. So how would you define, in a sentence, stewardship, or what a steward is from a biblical point of view?
Derek: A steward is someone who has been entrusted with something, in biblically speaking, something from God that they are to take care of, they are to multiply, they are to make useful for the glory of God. So ultimately, it’s something that’s been entrusted to a person from God for his glory.
Cliff: Exactly. Yeah, and that’s why I think this is going to be so important in the rest of our discussion. Christianity has a theology of stewardship, and that plays into economics and even socialism, and how it should be assessed, because stewardship is taking care of somebody else’s property, managing it, having freedom to manage it, having freedom to invest it, having freedom to enjoy the fruits of investing it, and also being held accountable for how we managed it. And from a Christian point of view, God owns everything. So every human stewardship responsibility comes from the baseline presupposition, foundational principle that God owns everything, in contrast to socialism that says pretty much, whether it’s socialism or socialism going towards its ultimate goal, which is communism, which says government owns everything. And those are completely antithetical. God owns everything, he is sovereign, or government owns everything. And that’s really the clash of the views that we’re talking about.
Derek: It is, and it’s not without coincidence, then, that the socialist policy as an economic model, where it’s been implemented in various countries, Soviet Union and so on, has to begin with atheism. Because, like you said, God owns everything. Well, you have to remove God in order for the government to own everything, and that’s not a small point. So that was very helpful to define what a steward is and what stewardship is, because that’s where I think we need to take this home. I’m glad you pointed that out, Cliff. So our concern over the economy is a concern over my ability and your ability and my neighbor’s ability to steward our, quote, allotted piece of God’s creation. So I’m deeply concerned about the economy because I’m deeply concerned with my freedom to fulfill my calling as God’s image bearer to work and exercise dominion, which is precisely why I am a proponent of a free market economy and a strong opponent of socialism, the economic model we mentioned earlier, and that we’ll talk about in some detail later. And so, again, the issue of stewardship is where I think we need to start and end our discussion. Okay, here’s an issue, though. Some folks might point out that the New Testament admonitions about not loving money and not storing up treasures on earth and so on suggest that Christians shouldn’t be so concerned about economics because they shouldn’t be so concerned about money. And there’s a sense in which I want to agree with that kind of admonition. We must heed Jesus’s warnings that we can’t serve God and money, and a love of money will ruin us spiritually. Our ultimate hope is not in this life and in the stability of our economy. Paul himself said this in 1 Timothy 6. He says, quote, As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, not to be proud, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. But this is exactly why I think we need to root our conversation in Genesis 1 and 2 and the biblical teaching on exercising dominion, work, and stewardship. Actually, economic models in and of themselves cannot solve materialism or greed or the envy problem because these are heart issues. These are sin issues. But there are ways that will argue of structuring an economy that either promote or inhibit our freedom to fulfill God’s calling to work, exercise dominion, and subdue and steward the earth. So Cliff, I want to ask you, can you comment on this issue of stewardship and how it relates to economics just a little more in a little more detail? Is this a good starting point for our discussion? And how would you respond to someone who says that Christians shouldn’t be so concerned about the economy because Christians shouldn’t be so concerned about money?
Cliff: Yeah, this is where we need to start the conversation. And at root here, one of the issues, just being a pastor for going on many years now at several different churches, but at this most recent church for 14 years, I have come to the conclusion that Christians have a lot of funky views about money. You think you know somebody, you think you know your sheep or your congregation. And then when you’re pressed up against something very personal about their finances or money or their possessions, you realize, oh, I don’t think I really knew that person as much as I thought I did. You start looking at their pocketbook or how they spend their money and allocate their funds and their attitude towards sharing and sacrifice. And they are all over the map, which makes sense. It’s pretty representative of human nature, really. So we need to have a very clear biblical view of money. And hopefully as a result of this conversation, we’re going to be heading in that direction, talk about some key biblical principles regarding money, finance, and economics. But just your last question there, Christians shouldn’t be so concerned about the economy because Christians shouldn’t be so concerned about money. And I just ask, going back to stewardship, as stewards, we are responsible for everything that God has entrusted to our care. Our children are a stewardship responsibility. God owns our children. We have to take care of them. And then we’ll be held accountable for how we took care of them. Every material possession we have is a gift from God, and we will be held accountable. Christians will be held accountable. That’s part of the judgment or in the next life where there’s going to be a formal reckoning of account we have to give to God for everything that he entrusted to us. Paul says in Corinthians, and other New Testament writers say it as well, that what do you have that you didn’t get as a gift from God? Everything we have in our life that is good is a blessing and a gift from God given to our temporary stewardship responsibility that we’re going to have to give an account to. And money is a part of that. Money in all of its forms, money in the money that we invest, the money that we don’t have, the money that we have in hand, cash, everything else, capital that we have accumulated, et cetera, et cetera.
We have to give an account for it. And God cares about money, therefore, we need to care about money. And you’ve already referred to some scriptures and you’ve got more scriptures, particularly some of the proverbs that you were going to share, that clearly God cares about money. So as Christians, we need to be caring about money. I might a little later extrapolate a little bit more about Christian’s proper attitude towards money. Is it inherently evil or not?
Derek: Well, let’s talk a little bit about these two economic models we’ve mentioned. We’ve mentioned a free market economy and a socialist economy. What do we mean by these two terms? And first, we will define a free market economy. And this is an economy where, quote, and now I’m going to quote from a book called Poverty of the Nations, which is written by Barry Asmus, who is an expert in the field of economics, and Wayne Grudem, who’s a theologian. And I would actually encourage you to purchase and read that book. I think it’s very helpful in understanding this topic.
Cliff: Let me stop you there, Derek, just because I’m curious. For our listeners out there, are there good resources for the Christian that talk about economics and socialism and capitalism, all that stuff, from a biblical point of view that are reliable? And what would be maybe your top few?
Derek: Yeah, so the one I just mentioned is excellent. Poverty of Nations by Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus. And then another great one has been, For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty. So the question of how to serve the poor is intertwined with the issue of economics. And actually, this book was very helpful in understanding a proper interpretation of Acts 2, 3, 4, and 5 in terms of how the church was responding to those who were in need, and defending the idea that Scripture is not teaching a socialist economic model. So this talks about the goodness of business, the goodness of entrepreneurship, the goodness of a free market, and supplies you with many biblical principles. And so in terms of, and then Wayne Grudem also has his book, I’ve mentioned already, Politics According to the Bible. He has a section on there, a big long section on economics, which is very helpful. And he talks about it also in his big book on ethics, which recently came out. And so those are a few of the resources. And then you can find various articles online, which I’ve mentioned one on Desiring God, but there’s also the Acton Institute, which is a helpful resource for thinking.
Cliff: How do you spell Acton?
Derek: A-C-T-O-N.
Cliff: Okay, good. So Wayne Grudem, that’s probably a familiar name to many. So that’s from the theological perspective, strictly, because he’s a theologian, very helpful stuff that he’s been writing for years. Some of my favorites would be David Noble. He’s a worldview guy, been around for a long time, and he does a lot of stuff on socialism, capitalism, economics, also kind of from a theological point of view, biblical point of view. From an economics side, some of my favorites, and I think this has been one of yours too, is Thomas Sowell, written many books on this, S-O-W-E-L-L, the Hoover Institute, and he’s probably in his 80s now. No, he’s 90, I think. Still writing good stuff. You can find his YouTube videos, and then Walter E. Williams. Just recently passed away. Just passed away. Excellent stuff on YouTube. Called himself a believer, a Christian, particularly at the end of his life. And then Milton Friedman, which you have one of his books. He’s always fun to listen to as well on YouTube, Milton Friedman. So those are some of my favorites. Interesting note about Milton Friedman. He did not begin his journey in economics as a free market promoter. That would be true of Walter E. Williams and Thomas Sowell, both of them.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: In their teens and in their early 20s, they were rabid socialist Marxists, and then they changed as they studied the truth.
Derek: Another resource I would recommend that’s not a book, but is a periodical, is World Magazine.
Cliff: Yes.
Derek: They engage with this issue a lot, and I think is very helpful. So that’s another resource I’d point you to. They’ve got a podcast, “The World and Everything In It,” and they also have their magazine and their website, so I’d encourage you to check that out, too.
Cliff: Absolutely. And then one last one. Think Biblically by John MacArthur and the faculty of our alma mater.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: That’s what it’s called, because they have a chapter on government and economics in there.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: Good stuff.
Derek: Good. So Barry asked Wayne Grudem to find a free market economy in this way. It says, quote, decisions about economic production and consumption are made by the free choices of individuals, not by the government. That’s just kind of the basic description. What does that mean? The market consists of individuals and companies that consist of individuals producing goods and services, lawfully earning money, then freely choosing on what to spend their money for other goods and services. In this system, individuals are making decisions about what they need and want and what they are willing to pay for what they need and want. The means of production are privately owned by individuals and it is protected by the state from theft. Just basic description of a free market economy. We’ll actually go into a little more detail on what that means later. Then a socialist economy is, quote, an economic system in which the government owns the means of production, the businesses and the farms and so on, and goods are almost entirely produced and distributed by government direction. Now, the goal in a socialist economy, at least, is to eventually distribute the means of production to, quote, the people, and that’s in capitals, the people because they have a particular vision about what that constitutes, so that the workers own equal shares in the means of production and all inequality and class structure is abolished and the state only acts as a guide for the people. But in order to achieve this utopia, the state must direct things in the beginning and they end up directing things altogether, as we’ll see in a bit. But now, the appeal of socialism for many is the idea of equality for all people. As you look out across a given country, you see rich people and poor people and the poor people are struggling, the rich people are doing well and just getting richer, and it just seems fair and right and just to equalize that kind of situation and abolish whatever creates this inequality, namely private ownership of property and the means of production, and put everyone on the same economic page, generally speaking. And I say generally speaking because even within socialist countries, there was never any such thing as absolute equality. But I want to ask you, Cliff, why do you think socialism, the socialism model appeals to so many today? Because it still does, even though you have years and years of empirical evidence that it doesn’t actually work in practice. Why does it appeal to people today?
Cliff: Yes, I remember in the early 90s when the Soviet Union got dismantled and collapsed and people were saying all over the world that socialism has failed. That was in the early 90s. Socialism has failed. It’s gone from history. It’s proven that it doesn’t work. Okay, 25 going on 30 years later, socialism is alive and well all around the world, and socialism is alive and well in America like never before.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: The top Democrat candidate in 2016, at least one of them, Bernie Sanders was an overt, avowed socialist, atheist. Hugely popular. So that reflects on our country where we’re at. And on the one hand, people say, well, 90% of Americans say they believe in God and a huge percentage of them say socialism is good. But to answer your basic question, why does socialism model appeal to many today, including, like you said earlier, even Christians? And I see this all the time. I would say because of the promises that it makes. I would say the false promises that it makes, but here’s what socialism promises. Fairness, equality, justice, helping the needy, which is compassion, and sharing. These are biblical virtues. These are Christian virtues. Problem is they have a totally different definition attached to those words.
Derek: Exactly.
Cliff: Just like a cult or a false religion would do. They co-opt our terminology and infuse it with completely unbiblical meanings. And that’s why so many Christians are led astray. And just the American people who don’t know any better. So it’s attractive because the promises it makes to bring about fairness and equality. Everybody wants it. Who doesn’t want equality?
Derek: Right. Exactly.
Cliff: As a matter of fact, is it Kamala or Kamala Harris?
Derek: I’m not sure.
Cliff: Anyway, but not long ago during the campaign, she could be our next president, which I believe you called about a year and a half ago.
Derek: Really?
Cliff: Yeah. You told me that.
Derek: Oh, I must have prophesied. I know.
Cliff: No, you did. You told me that and I never forgot it. Anyway, Kamala said about two months ago that she would aggressively promote equal, not opportunity, but equal outcome. That’s impossible. But that is the promise of socialism. And that sounds appealing to everybody.
Derek: It does.
Cliff: So those are the positive promises they make. Then there are negative promises they make that compliment the positive ones. Socialism, here’s the other. These are things that socialism would eliminate from society that appeal to people. Socialism promises to eradicate poverty.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: I mean, who wouldn’t want to eradicate poverty?
Derek: Right.
Cliff: They promise to curb greed.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: A quote from Bernie Sanders. I’ll just give you the beginning of the quote. He called them the evil capitalists or the evil corporate leaders, et cetera, et cetera, because he’s saying they’re greedy. But anyway, socialism promises to curb greed. It promises to punish oppressors and get evenism.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: Also, he even extends beyond that socialism that we’re getting today, the green socialism, is they promise to get rid of bad weather and natural disasters.
Derek: Right. It’s called environmental justice.
Cliff: Yeah, there you go. And so you got a hurricane over there in Florida, and you know whose fault it was. It was its global warming and the capitalists’ fault. That’s why we have earthquakes and bad weather today. And they can solve this with socialism. So that’s the simple answer. Socialism has these promises. I say they’re false promises. And really what they’re promising is they’re promising heaven on earth.
Derek: Yes, exactly.
Cliff: Heaven on earth or, and I was thinking about writing a book titled this, Your Best Life Now. That’s what they’re promising.
Derek: You’re thinking about writing a book.
Cliff: Your Best Life Now. Or no. Oh, somebody already wrote that one.
Derek: That’s right. I was going to, sorry to burst your bubble. And I think that’s exactly right. In fact, that’s what we’re going to look at. So again.
Cliff: Oh, one thing I forgot to say.
Derek: Oh yeah, go ahead, please.
Cliff: So on these promises of socialism, promises to eradicate poverty, we know basically from the Bible and Jesus in the Gospel of John, he said, the poor will always be with you.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: So what Jesus declared as the God-man is you cannot eradicate poverty. You cannot eradicate greed. You cannot eradicate the bad weather because these will always be with us until Christ returns. So as a Christian, that’s just basic and fundamental. You just discern it. No, that is fallacious. That’s wrong. That’s a lie. That’s a charade.
Derek: Interesting about that statement from Jesus is God in the Old Testament, when he was hands-on with Israel in their economic situation, God himself even said, you will always have poor in the land. And Jesus is affirming that and saying that to his disciples.
Cliff: Why is that true, Derek, did you say? Why will we always have poor in the land?
Derek: The basic reason is because of the fall and because of the curse and we live in a fallen world. And that’s the basic reason. And you can’t eradicate that as a human. Only God can change that. And which is why that leads us, I think, into seeing socialism as a kind of Christian counterfeit, which I want you to talk about a little bit. But these policies, these economic models are not developed in a theological vacuum. They are built on assumptions about reality. You mentioned heaven on earth. I think that’s it. I think socialists want the kingdom without Christ. And so I want to offer you a few of these, a few quotes from proponents of socialism as they were coming back. So these are actual quotes and whether or not, I’ll let you know. But these are actual quotes from socialist proponents. They were called pilgrims as they travel over to these socialist countries and come back and report what they saw. And I just want you to listen to the language because I’m going to break these up into theological categories. The first one Cliff’s already mentioned, the first category is kingdom. Socialism has a theology of the kingdom. And here’s what it sounds like. This is someone who came back from the Soviet Union and they said this about it, quote, the characteristics of Soviet communism exhibit as distinct unity itself in striking contrast with the disunity of Western civilization. The code of conduct based on service to the community and social equality and on the maximum development of health and capacity in every individual is in harmony with the exclusion of exploitation and the profit making motive and with the deliberate planning of production for community consumption. So this kind of idea that she went over or they went over, can’t remember if this is a man or a woman, they went over and they saw this remarkable kind of almost utopia like setting. Now, whether or not they really saw this or they just chose to see it is another discussion. As we come to learn about all these countries, they just had devastating, socialism had a devastating effect on the country. But nevertheless, this is what they’re seeing there. And this is what socialism is seeking. It’s seeking a kingdom on earth, the kingdom without Christ or heaven on earth, a utopia. Another proponent speaking of the Soviet Union, quote, for the first time I saw the greatest of human dreams assuming the shape of reality, men, women and children were uniting in their efforts into a gigantic stream of energy directed toward destroying the evils of life toward creating what was healthy and good for all. That sounds like the kingdom, a kind of warp sense of warp view of it. And you might be familiar with Pol Pot’s plan for Cambodia. This is how one socialist proponent explained that he was building a, quote, kingdom of justice. You’d already mentioned that word justice. The old society is gone. Before Pol Pot, there was luxury and fine wines and the sweet life for a selected few, but the people had it hard. Now everyone can satisfy their hunger and all can cover their nakedness. There is rice and there are clothes. Twice a month, it is said, everyone is able to eat dessert. A few have it worse, but most have it better. Justice prevails. Referring to North Korea after a pilgrimage to the country, one socialist proponent said, we will tell the American people of the glorious victories of socialist revolution of the miraculous economic construction that has built a paradise, a paradise. No other people in history of the history of the world have been able to achieve such fantastic results in all areas of the economy at one time. And then another description of North Korea went like this. These economic arrangements give rise to a society characterized by all-around harmony in which social conflicts, crime, and disaffection all but disappeared.
Cliff: Wow. Now justice prevails when you have dessert twice a month.
Derek: Apparently.
Cliff: I insist on dessert every night, so I must be living in the third heaven.
Derek: But anyway, you know, again, though, we have the empirical evidence of history that says that these were either there as willful. We don’t know what was going on, but this is some kind of willful blindness because at the least after they came back, the full effect of these social socialistic policies came to bear. And these countries are presently in a terrible situation like North Korea, or they were devastated like the Soviet Union and Cambodia and so on. So that’s just that’s a theological category. So again, the point is to show us that these economic models, they’re not built within some sort of theological vacuum. There are theological convictions that undergird these policies and these theories of how economies best work. And so you have the category of kingdom. That’s what we just looked at. You have another theological category. That’s Christ. There needs to be a Christ or Messiah. Here’s a description of Stalin. During his time in overseeing the Soviet Union, quote, here was one who was wise and good, the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance. Tens of millions have sung and sing now and will sing his praise in song and story. Glory to Stalin forever. His name will be honored and beloved in the lands. He leaves 10 millions all over the earth bowed in heartache and grief. That’s when he had died. And that is looking to this particular person as your savior, your Messiah, your leader in heaping upon him praise, remarkable praise. Here’s a few descriptions of Castro in Cuba. Quote, talking to almost any Cuban about Fidel, it soon became clear that they did not see him as anything more than extraordinarily intelligent, exceptionally committed and extremely warm, extremely warm human being. Fidel was their leader, but most important, he was their brother in the largest sense of the word. And I just think of how Christ is described as our brother in Hebrews two and so on. But here’s someone who’s just, he’s the embodiment of all that’s good and desirable in one human being. Another one, Castro seems, first of all, utterly devoted to the welfare of his people and his people are, are the poor, not the rich. When he speaks, it’s as if his own dedication and energy were being directly transfused into his listeners with an almost physical force. There’s this kind of spiritual sense. You could always say that there’s a Holy Spirit theology here of some sort, how the leader transfers his, his desires and his, his desires to the, to the people.
Here’s another quote about Fidel Castro. Fidel sits on the side of a tank rumbling into Havana, girls threw flowers, throw flowers at the tank and rush to tug playfully at his black beard. He laughs joyously. Fidel lets a gun drop to the ground, slaps his thigh and stands erect. The crowd is immediately transformed. I mean, this is, this is language about a man. And so here’s, and this man is the one who is the leader, the guy, the one who guides the country into this utopia. So he would be this, he would be a Christ, a Christ figure.
Cliff: They adore, they revere, they give loyalty to, they even sing praise to this socialist leader as though he is the Messiah. That reminds me of 1 John. You’ve heard that antichrist will come, but just so you know, there are many antichrists already in the world and will continue to arise. These are false Christs. These are false Messiahs. Just like Hitler made the youth sing to him. Saddam Hussein made the youth sing and praise him. And we’ve been studying Revelation and we see that he’s going to make the world sing and praise and worship him.
Derek: Here’s another category. They have an anthropology and a salvation, a soteriology. Speaking of Cuba, there’s a phrase at the end here that is remarkable, but listen to this. Here people are high on their lives all the time. That much unadulterated emotional give is almost unbearable. I begin to really conceive of being part of a current that is in the process of a revolution and you are both very important and at the same time very small. We’re talking about something bigger than all of us and that is the transformation of an entire people, the beginning of building the new man. I mean, that’s biblical language right there. The new man and you being part of something that’s bigger than you. So these are convictions about the nature of man, the nature of what constitutes salvation and so on. Here’s another category. I call this one the church. This is a counterfeit church, you might say, describing Cuba. Oh, I guess I want to go back to say one thing. One of the best pieces of feedback for an economy or a country and how well it’s doing is their immigration, so the people leaving. I’m not sure that the stream of people flowing out of these countries, Cuba and East Germany and others, where people are actually allowed to leave or there wasn’t much. Actually, I’ll back up. In most cases, part of the socialist economy, you’re required to keep people in.
Cliff: Yes.
Derek: But you have in these countries people longing to get out and they escape and so on.
Cliff: They want to force them and keep them in by coercion.
Derek: Right, exactly.
Cliff: Just think about our last 50 years. Where have all these people been fleeing from? Socialist countries from the Soviet Union to China, even today, to North Korea, to Venezuela. And where are they going? Well, the number one place that people want to be is the United States.
Derek: And one book I read just noted this is a common sense thing. That is the best feedback for a country’s economic policy, is who’s flowing in and who’s flowing out. So, just wanted to make that point. The church. So, these places, they try to develop a kind of church-like atmosphere. Here’s one person describing Cuba. Truly everyone is an extended family and has concern for everyone else’s welfare. They are interested in each other’s life in a brotherly way. And then, describing the Soviet Union, talked about there’s almost a kind of I would say a church discipline kind of setting where you had people, if they weren’t following, if they’re lazy or they weren’t following what they’re supposed to be doing, there would be kind of this kind of pressure within the collective to make sure that that person was doing what they were supposed to be doing. It’s almost kind of a counterfeit church discipline, you might say, where there are people within the group who you’re trying to train to get to perform a certain way.
Of course, the church is not like that, but you have what we see are counterfeits to that in people in these communities and the desire to develop these kinds of communities thinking that they are what are best for people. And then finally, a theological category, the doctrine of sin. An author described the Soviet view of sin, quote, crime in their view was not committed out of base motives, but as a response to social justice. Since social justice no longer existed under socialism, crime was merely, I’m sorry, since social injustice no longer existed under socialism, crime was merely a hangover from the pre-socialist period, which would eventually die out. So in socialism, the theology of sin, the doctrine of sin is that crimes are committed because there are social inequalities. And if you remove those inequalities, then crime will no longer exist. And so there you have it, there you have a policy or a theory about an economy that’s based on how you view sin to function in the world. And in the case of socialism, sin doesn’t come from the human heart, sin doesn’t come, it’s not native to the human heart. In all cases, it’s actually simply a situation where there are social injustices which cause people to commit crimes. And so again, the point is simply to show that socialism is actually a counterfeit of Christianity in a significant sense. You have a messiah, the state leader who has worshiped and praised and sought for wisdom. You have a utopian kingdom that you’re trying to establish on earth. You have an anthropology and a soteriology. You’re seeking to create a new man, one who’s only concerned about the collective and is willing to own nothing and live in a classless, moneyless society. This vision of society is built on a doctrine of sin that sees criminal activity only as a result of social injustice. The country begins to work like a church where everyone is like an extended family and so on. And so Cliff, could you just talk in more detail about and make some comments on the idea that socialism is actually a Christian counterfeit in some significant ways?
Cliff: Yeah. First, I want to say that as categories, we can’t say that socialism and capitalism are like comparing apples with apples, because they’re not the same in terms of a category. It’s more like comparing capitalism and socialism is like comparing apples with a durian fruit, that one that really smells and stinks that fruit. They’re not the same because capitalism is just a very narrow worldview primarily about economics and money, capitalism. And it’s neutral, depends on how you use it. You can use it, you can abuse it, but it’s very narrow in terms of its focus on economy, economics and money and those kinds of things. Socialism actually is more broad than capitalism. As a matter of fact, it’s all encompassing. It is a world in life view. You just laid it out. It actually has all the categories of a religion that you commit your entire life to in every area of life. That is socialism. That’s why it’s the perfect candidate for the Christian life, because the Christian life affects every area of our life and so does socialism. At bottom, the state is God in socialism. It has replaced God. The state is to be revered. The state is to be served. The state is to be obeyed. The state in socialism is the sovereign provider. The state is the ultimate judge. The state or the government is what I mean, has the goal of ushering in utopia. That’s an eschatology. The state or the government serves because it has the goal of wanting to usher in a utopia and teaches that to their people. That gives them a motive for living daily. We’re all in this together to usher in the utopia. In the end, the state replaces God first and foremost. The state is Lord. Jesus is not Lord. That’s why Bernie Sanders is the perfect socialist, because he’s an atheist.
Derek: But here’s the reality. Socialism has never, ever worked. History is replete with the empirical evidence, the real world evidence, the real time evidence. The Soviet Union under Stalin, China under Mao Zedong, East Germany, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, and most recently Venezuela. All of these countries have attempted to implement socialism, but it has only led in some cases to widespread genocide or struggling economies or both. But why has it never worked? Often, the response by contemporary socialists in the last 150 years of socialist failure is due to one of three factors. This is what they’ll say. In fact, if you bring up any of these, you’ll get an eye rolling and be like, that’s a straw man. These are all straw men. Why? None of those examples were true socialism, so that’s why they didn’t work. They weren’t true socialism. We’re still waiting for a country to emerge with a true socialism, and when that happens, it will work. Number two, socialism wasn’t implemented correctly in some cases. This is a matter of method and not philosophy. So now the philosophy, pure socialism in terms of economic theory or all of life theory, as you mentioned, it’s sound. It’s just you haven’t had anybody in the last 150 years who’s implemented it the right way. Or three, Western free market promoters somehow corrupted the minds of the people in those countries so that they never fully bought into the system. So you’ll get one of those three answers from socialist proponents as to why it never worked. But here’s the beauty of looking at these issues theologically, and this is where we want you to hopefully really grasp the joy of being a theologian, whether you are a trained theologian or you’re just a lay Christian who tries to think biblical about things. Here’s the beauty of it. As Christians, we know why socialism has never worked and we know why it never will work. So we can say that emphatically, that it will never work because it is an economic system built on principles that are contrary to reality. That’s why it will never work. How do we know this? Because socialism is based on faulty assumptions about God, man, work, justice, sin, and so on. In other words, socialism fails for theological reasons, which is exactly why Christians should reject it wholeheartedly and beware of its encroachment in our own country, and not just for economic reasons. We need to be concerned about socialism for religious freedom reasons too. See, the goal in a socialist system as we’ve seen is to obtain a kind of utopia, a nation in which class inequalities are removed, no one is in need, and a man resides perpetually in his most optimal state. But in order for this utopia to be realized, the government must gain and retain full control of production and define the standards of equality. So it’s no coincidence, and we’ve touched on this already, that where socialism is reigned, atheism is the undergirding theological principle. In place of God, the state resides as leader, protector, provider, and source of all wisdom. For example, the responsibility of the Cambodians, according to Pol Pot, was to, quote, love the Anka, which was the name of the state, sincerely and loyally. Anka, the state, would control all property, remedy laziness, and lying by destroying offenders and provide for its people’s needs. Of course, if anyone collected their own store of food and didn’t save it for the collective, they would be crushed for betraying the community. Where you have growth in socialism, you always have a decrease in religious freedom. Why? Because the system depends upon the state being the leader, protector, and provider, and source of all wisdom, and the one who defines the standards of equality. Those who dissent from the state’s wisdom and standards for equality must be silenced because they are seen as saboteurs of the system. And I think if we’re paying attention, you can see the beginnings of that already in our current setting. So as Christians, we should be concerned about socialism not only for economic reasons, but for religious liberty reasons. Where it continues to gain a foothold, you will lose your religious freedoms. So question, does the Bible advocate socialism? Quick answer, Cliff?
Cliff: Absolutely not.
Derek: Okay. I thought you might say that. I was confident you’d say that. Sometimes it’s taken from Acts 2 and 4 where the Christians are together, the Pentecost has happened, the Christians are together, the church is growing, they’re gathering together, and they’re worshiping the Lord, and they are studying the Word, and they’re sitting under the Apostles’ teaching, they’re praying, and there’s worship. It just seemed like a very sweet time. And what you had was, is it says that the early church, quote, held all things in common. And this is claimed to be a biblical endorsement of socialism, and something that we should, in fact, follow. But there are, I just want to point this out, in Acts, there are several features in this narrative that are often overlooked when these passages are used as proof that the Bible is socialistic. First, the believers did not sell all of their possessions, nor were they required to do so. For example, Peter tells Ananias, who apparently wanted to make it look like he was giving more than he really was, or he and his wife really were, that his property was his to do with what he wished. That’s in Acts 5:3-4. He was not obligated to sell it or give it away. The believers also continued to meet in homes, implying that some of them were keeping their houses and selling extra property. Second, in Acts 4:32-35, the text says that, quote, no one of them claimed that anything belonging to them was his own, but all things were common property to them. The point is that these believers did not view their possessions exclusively their own in the sense that they could be used for the benefit of others, not that they did not care for personal property rights or the protection of those property rights. Thus, it is best to understand the previous verses that we just mentioned as describing the voluntary generosity of the early church. They were not giving a prescription for all Christians at all times. In a book I mentioned, For the Least of These: The Biblical Answer to Poverty, Art Lindsay says this, he says, quote, the early sharing was voluntary without state coercion, and it did not necessitate that believers give up their rights to private property, end quote. Furthermore, there is no evidence in the remaining portions of the New Testament that Christians are obligated to give up their personal property to community control, even if for the sake of argument the church was requiring believers to sell their possessions and relinquish them to the Christian community, which we saw that wasn’t the case, even for the sake of argument. This would not be an endorsement for state-run socialist economy. Cliff, is this a fair reading of Acts 2 and 4? Do you agree that these passages don’t teach socialism as a Biblical economic model? I mean, you gave me your short answer, but can you tease that out a little bit?
Cliff: No, you’re right for choosing this passage because you made reference earlier to so-called Christian socialists. There is no such thing. And if they try to incorporate the Bible, they are twisting the Bible. But this would be the number one passage that you use. Oh, look at, the early church practiced communism or socialism.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: Acts 2, Acts 4, Acts 5. But I’ll just point to maybe two verses that expose that as a manipulation of Scripture. So Acts chapter 4, you got Barnabas, godly man, was one of these. He was apparently wealthy, he owned land, and he also loved Christ and loved the saints. So he was going to do the Christian thing, that’s give to the needy, because he loved Christ and he loved the body of Christ. That was his motive. So already that’s different than socialism, which says, you give what the government tells you to give out of coercion and fear of the state, fear of repercussion. He gave out a motive. His motive for giving was love, love for Christ, not fear, not fear of the state. So that’s a huge difference right there. But it says that Barnabas and others, for there was not a needy person among them, this is the early church, for all who were owners of land, landowners, which would be Barnabas.
Derek: Right, yeah, he was.
Cliff: He was a landowner. So he owned private property. That is not condemned by Scripture, that is condoned by Scripture. Socialism says, well, actually, what’s the difference or what’s the same between socialism and communism? Well, one of the things that’s the same between socialism and communism is that both would say there’s no private property because the state owns everything. That’s completely against the Bible. Just the Ten Commandments, the last six, every one of those implies and condones private property and private ownership. Thou shalt not steal, well, because it’s not yours, somebody owns it. That’s completely contrary to the antithesis of socialism. So Barnabas owned land. He was a landowner. He owned private property. He was not a socialist. He was a Christian. Like you said, he sold the land. He didn’t sell everything. He sold it on a volunteer basis. He wasn’t coerced by the state. It wasn’t mandated, nor is this mandated anywhere else in Scripture as a mandate for all Christians to do. It’s a heart of love seeing the need. He brought the proceeds because he owned it. And get this, verse 35, he laid his money at the apostles’ feet. He didn’t lay it at Caesar’s feet. He didn’t lay it at the state’s feet, the government’s feet, the IRS’s feet. It was the apostles’ feet, meaning he laid it at the leadership of the church. So the local church had authority and autonomy over that which was given to them to use as they saw fit, not being dictated or coerced by the state. And Karl Marx would roll over in his grave at that notion that people sell their stuff and give their money to the church. That would be the last thing he would want to happen. So that’s just a few things, but so much more could be said about that passage that saying that Acts 2, 4, and 5 teach socialism is completely turning the Bible on its ear.
Derek: Yeah. Great. That was really helpful to walk through those passages in a little more detail. Well, what about a free market economy? Does God lay out for us in scripture this model? Well, technically, no. If you buy that, you mean that God has laid out and given us all kinds of detail with regard to a particular economic model for the nations. God was hands-on, as it were, with Israel, and there are wise principles that we can draw from his direct intervention with his nation state. But beyond that, God doesn’t give us details about how nations should craft their economic structure and policies. But you can’t then, therefore, say that the Bible says nothing about these issues, because as we have argued, the Bible does provide several important truths about creation, work, the nature of man, the role of government, and so on, all of which are categories essential to economic models, so that we can make wise judgments about these economic models. And when we consider these truths about God, creation, man, work, and government, I am persuaded that a free market economy best coincides with these biblical truths. And referring back again to Wayne Grudem, his book, Politics According to the Bible, he lays out several ways in which a biblical worldview coincides with a free market economy. The first one is the biblical teaching on the role of government. That’s his first reason, because scripture assigns the government a very narrow role. They are to punish evildoers and praise those who do good for the sake of an orderly society, that’s Romans 13. And there’s nothing in scripture that implies or directly states that a secular government’s role is to take over ownership or control of private businesses, which Grudem notes, quote, would have included farms and traders and small shops in the ancient world. So the first thing you have to consider is what does the Bible teach about the role of government? And the scripture does not in any place indicate that the government, the secular government, is to take control of the ownership of the means of production and in private property and to take it for themselves. They have a very limited and narrow role. It is to actually, we’ll see that their role is to actually protect, should be to protect property rights and to make sure that people aren’t stealing and so on. But so that’s the first point. Second point is the biblical warning to leaders who use their own power to take what belongs to others. And an excellent example of this is in 1 Samuel 8:11 through 17.
Samuel is warning, so that Israel wants a king. They want a king like the nations. And Samuel says, well, okay, well, you know what he’s going to do. He’s going to take from you and he’s going to use it for himself and for his leaders and he is going to take possession of what you previously own. I’m just going to read that passage. And he says that about these upcoming kings. He says, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. And he said, these will be the ways of the king who will reign over you. He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots, to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties and some to plow the ground and to reap his harvest and to make implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and your cooks to be bakers, or your cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks and you will be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. So they want a king. Samuel says this is how it will go for you with your king. He’s going to take what belongs to you. You’re going to recognize that, hey, we don’t like that. You’re going to cry out to the Lord and he will not hear you. So the implication here is that it’s not right or good or desirable that a leader in a nation would take all of these things that previously belonged to you and keep them for himself or hand them out to his servants. So that’s the biblical warning. There’s other warnings you could look at. Deuteronomy 6:19, Psalm 26:10, Proverbs 15:27 and so on that talk about the misuse of leadership, taking bribes, and so on. Number three, the biblical teaching on the goodness of private property. We’ve covered this a lot already. You just mentioned the Ten Commandments. Those imply the reality in goodness of personal property that people should and can own things and that you shouldn’t steal them. And then four, the biblical emphasis on the value of human liberty. Human freedom is a good thing. In fact, God rescues his people out of Egypt, out of slavery. They’re in bondage and it was a good thing that they would be taken out of that slavery. And then that implies that the loss of freedom is a curse and something to be avoided. It’s not a good thing that they were promised that they would be taken into bondage and taken into exile if they did not obey the Lord. So actually the loss of freedom was shown to Israel as something that was not to be desired, something to be avoided. So a free market economy, we would argue, best coincides and respects these realities and allows image bearers the freedom to fulfill their calling to exercise dominion on the earth to subdue it and make it useful for themselves and others. So this is Wayne Grudem’s definition of a free market in light of these biblical truths. Quote, free market is a wonderful God-given process in human societies through which the goods and services are produced by the society, which makes up the supply, continually adjust to the exact match of the goods and services wanted by a society, that’s the demand, at each period of time and through which the society assigns a measurable value to each good and service at each period of time entirely through the free choices of every individual person in the society rather than through the government control. And then he adds, but this process needs some government regulation to prevent wrongdoing such as theft, fraud, and breaking of contracts, which is entirely within the purview of government and something desirable that God actually wants for governments to carry out. Now when we defend a free market, we are not defending criminal activity within a free market, we are not defending individuals or companies that exploit and cheat others for personal gain, we’re not condoning materialism and greed. All these things are wrong. Criminal activity, exploitation, materialism, and greed are all sinful, but these sinful elements are not exclusive to a free market economy, they exist in every economic structure because of individual sin. But a free market economy doesn’t require greed as part of its very essence, a success, which some I think will often argue that it actually is the case, it’s not the case. A successful business person can be motivated by things other than greed.
Cliff: Yes, that’s where I would have to take issue with Walter E. Williams. He used to say that a lot. He was being facetious, but he still said it.
Derek: Yeah, so a successful business person, they can be motivated by things other than greed. I’ve met, personally, I’ve met many people who own small businesses who are clearly motivated by a desire to earn a living and to serve their customers with a quality product or service. However, what a free market can do far more effectively than socialism is channel a greedy person’s motive, so we have to account for sin, there is sin in the world, there are greedy people, but what a free market does is it channels a greedy person’s motives to socially useful ends. Within a socialist economy, a greed’s only outlet is exploitation because everything has been, is coerced, it’s controlled, so that’s your only outlet, or theft. But in a free market, a greedy person can start a useful business that will serve others and he must maintain his integrity and check his greed or else individuals who make up the market will no longer use his products or services. But again, noting how a free market can rechannel a person’s greed to be useful for society, we’re not suggesting that greed is a good thing. We are only noting that a free market tends to make productive use of that greed where socialism only stifles it and causes it to flourish among the few who have power. See, every economic model must take account of man’s sinfulness. Socialism fails because it locates the sin problem in unjust social structures.
The argument goes that once you change those structures through socialism, crime should no longer be a problem and people will happily live and give all they have for the common good. The problem is that with socialism you have to, you must concentrate power in the government, at least to start with, and because sin is native to the human heart, leaders with absolute authority tend to act for their own advantages rather than the people’s. That’s exactly what we’ve seen in the last 150 years in the countries that have attempted to implement a socialist economy. Now, another reason why proponents of socialism think it is a superior economic model because capitalism, they would argue, promotes materialism and there is more to life than amassing wealth, and you do find this, you find this among socialists how they talk about the wholeness of life. There’s more to life than amassing goods and wealth, and as Christians we would agree that there’s more to life than amassing wealth, right? We certainly agree with that. In fact, we are warned against that very thing by Jesus. We are to store up treasures in heaven and not treasures on earth, but Cliff, I want you to talk about this because when we are discussing this topic and how to go about this topic, you made a really insightful comment, just a common sense observation that was very clarifying for me, and so I want you to touch on that. Would you take a moment to help us understand the distinction between a free market economy, or some would call it capitalism, help us understand the distinction between a free market economy and materialism? Can a Christian in good conscience support a free market without promoting materialism?
Cliff: Capitalists are greedy. That actually is Bernie Sanders’ main mantra. Newsflash, isn’t Bernie Sanders like a millionaire? He’s quite wealthy.
Derek: He made a lot of money on a book.
Cliff: Yeah, he’ll write several books and sell them and make gazillions of dollars, and he likes money. That’s the dirty little secret. Socialists, one of their mantras, their main appeals to the masses is they believe and promote equality for everyone, and every major socialist leader that I could think of was filthy rich, way more than the masses. Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and his 80 palaces. Did you know that Adolf Hitler was a socialist? People call him a right-winger. He was a flaming left-winger because socialism is all about concentrated power completely in the government. That’s what Hitler was. No private property. Hitler was filthy rich. Xi, over in China today, filthy rich. If you look at his palaces in China, the leader of North Korea today, filthy rich. What is the most socialist country on planet Earth today? Probably Venezuela, and it is the most decrepit country on planet Earth today, and their leader, who’s a socialist dictator, filthy rich. When I’ve been to Ukraine, Ghana, Honduras, a couple other places, my hosts would drive me to … They knew where the presidents and the leaders lived. They’d be these palatial walled palaces, and down at the bottom of the hill are the masses living in the gutters, and they were all socialist leaders and socialist dictators, and they’re filthy rich. I just want to make that point very clear. They’re just complete total lying hypocrites to the core, and there pretty much aren’t any exceptions to that. The Roman dictators were no different. They concentrated all power into the state, calling themselves gods, so really they were socialist. Socialism has one of its end goals is assuming and amassing and concentrating all power in the state, common denominator. But anyway, getting specifically to your question about the free market and materialism, two things. You’ve got to understand the proper definition of free market on the one hand, and also a biblical view of materialism. With regard to a free market, I just zero in on that term … free. What do you mean by free market? Well, a free market is something that has some … It’s got liberty, it’s got flexibility, and something isn’t inhibiting it and slowing it down and creating roadblocks. Well, what’s it talking about? Well, what it’s talking about there is that a free market in terms of the economy and individuals and their money means that a person or a business is not hampered by government intervention, that’s illegitimate, when it comes to buying, selling, investing, or get this, sharing your own property. In other words, how you handle your money. Do you have freedom to handle your money the way you so choose? Because God gave it to you, that’s Deuteronomy 8:18, part of the Christian worldview, that it is the Lord who gives the power to make wealth. That’s what it says. It’s not the state gives the power to make wealth, the Lord does. And he chooses to give stewardship responsibilities at different rates to all of us. Some get one talent, some get five, some get 10. That all comes from the Lord, and then we are responsible as stewards to manage it accordingly, and we’re accountable to him, not to the state. So a free market is that freedom, we don’t have the government inhibition slowing us down. And what socialism, one of the reasons I reject categorically socialism from a biblical point of view is because socialism at its core and communism violates clearly Romans 13, blatantly, because God created government. God created government the way we know it in Genesis chapter 9, post-flood, with Noah and the nations. It’s very clear. And God created the boundaries and the responsibilities of government, secular civil government, and it’s very narrow. And Romans 13 is clear, as well as 1 Peter, that the government was created by God, and it has basically two responsibilities, and that’s to protect innocent people and to punish wicked people. Part of protecting innocent people is protecting their private property. And you laid it out there that government leaders are not supposed to usurp or abuse their authority, which they do all the time. They get power hungry. We’re seeing that right now, especially in California. These leaders are going crazy with their authority and power, and they are exceeding the bounds of Romans 13 that God, in terms of the legitimate authority he gave to them. So, the free market is biblical. It’s kind of funny how Wayne Grudem says, it’s a wonderful, God-given process. But I agree that biblical principles definitely would under good, I heard this free market idea that it’s from God, it’s a gift, it’s a blessing, and we’re responsible for it, and we have to give account back to him for it. And the government is not allowed to intrude in that illegitimately with their usurping power, and they do through socialism. Then with respect to materialism, Christians need to have a biblical view of money. Money is not evil. That’s clear in the Bible, 1 Timothy 6. Money is a root of all kinds of evil, but money is not evil at all. Money can be a very good thing. And here’s that famous quote, money is a necessary evil. That’s not even a correct quote, because money is inherently evil. Money is a mechanism or exchange of commodities that God has given. It’s one of the rules of life in living in earth. You can’t escape it. Jesus talked about money all the time in very positive terms, in parables. The Bible talks about money from Genesis to Revelation, many times very positive. Genesis 24, for example, and Genesis 26. Genesis 24, two times, says that God blessed Abraham and made him wealthy. Two times. And then in 26, it says, God blessed Isaac and made him wealthy. And then Jacob looked at the end of his life and said, the Lord has blessed me. He has made me wealthy. Job was blessed by God, for God made him wealthy. Joseph of Arimathea, the godly man who took Jesus down from the cross, was a wealthy man blessed by God. So Christians gotta get, it sounds spiritual to say, oh, I don’t like money here. I don’t like to talk about money because that sounds spiritual. No, not at all. That’s either ignorant or self-righteous. So that’s what I would say about free markets. They definitely, the principles of the Bible support free markets. I think the principles of the Bible categorically reject socialism. And we need to understand the difference between materialism and working hard for money. And being a good provider. A good point you made that greed is not the only motive for capitalism and working hard and making money. As a matter of fact, I could work hard and for a lot of money, just for the sheer motive of I love God and he tells me to work hard. Or I love my family and I love my children. I want to provide for them. And that’s what the virtuous woman did in Proverbs 31. They weren’t living in rags, but silky clothes, nice and fine. She loved the Lord and she loved her family.
Derek: That’s right. Yeah, and that’s, I think, that’s exactly why we’ve tried to bring this discussion back to an issue of stewardship and being created in God’s image, being entrusted with this stewardship. And we want to think about economics theologically in a way that is biblical, but that if we do, then what it’s going to do is going to protect our ability to steward what God has given us. And so, when I think about it that way, the issue isn’t materialism anymore. It’s a matter of fulfilling this calling to be a steward, to subdue the earth, to exercise dominion, and so on. And God is so designed that when you seek to be faithful in that area, that he is going to provide for you. And that is how He’s designed it. He does provide for us through our work, through our stewardship. So, well, there’s a lot more we could say. This is a huge topic, and we would love to talk more about it.
Cliff: I’ve got a final thought. Yeah, please, Derek. And it just goes back to how you started out the program. The mandate of the Christian, the first Thessalonians 5, it says examine everything carefully. We need to be discerning Christians. And that’s what we keep coming back to be discerning with a Christian worldview, examining everything. And Paul says examine everything carefully, cling to or hold fast to that which is good, and abhor or abstain from everything that is evil. And I would say socialism is an ideology.
Derek: Yeah, it is.
Cliff: And it’s evil to the core. And 2 Corinthians 10 is explicit about what we do with evil ideologies. We expose them, we smash them, we destroy them. And that was my goal today.
Derek: That’s great. And I think, hopefully, what we’re enabling our folks who are listening to do is to have confidence that they can speak about these things in public settings. They don’t have to hide or think that what they think is irrelevant. In fact, it’s very relevant. And when they’re discerning and taking account of what Scripture says on this, they’re able to speak biblical truth into the public setting. Why? Well, because God has given us his Word that explains all of reality. So his Word is going to be relevant on these kinds of issues. So there is much more we could say, but we hope that we’ve at least encouraged you to engage this topic with some biblical rigor and be aware of philosophies, even economic models, that are built on assumptions about reality that conflict with God’s Word. That’s what we hope we are equipping you to do. We also encourage you to head over to WithAllWisdom.org, where you will find a large and growing collection of resources to help you apply biblical truth to your everyday life. We’ll see you next time.
