May 11 2014
Where are we in the mad maze of magic money?
David Attenborough once famously said: “Anyone who believes in infinite economic growth on a finite planet is either a madman, or an economist”.
Perhaps we all are mad. Perhaps we all need to be detoxified. We may deny that infinite growth is possible, but, really, when it comes down to it we love to see expansion in the place we work, because that means security and perhaps promotion. Our entire world, the way we shop, the way we move about, the way we live is premised on the basic fact that economic growth is forever.
It even applies to ecclesial organizations. When a new church is built or when a religious organization makes elaborate plans for the future, of course lots of prayers are offered, but the untold basis of all this is economic growth, the ability to make the supporters believe that the future is rosy and pledges will be the responsible thing to make.
It’s not only that economists say this and base their entire models on this supposition. The entire ‘science’ of economics as taught in the most prestigious universities is based on the irrefutable fact that growth can and will and shall and must continue. And politicians too bank on this.
Never mind that all this is a very asinine assumption. Economists are not only useless but also dangerous because they have titles and receive Nobel prizes, reason why people listen to them and entire government policies are built around what they say.
Politics and Economic Growth
Where I live, in Ontario, Canada, in about 4 weeks – June 12 – we have an election because the budget proposed by the ruling minority party was not accepted by the opposition. That this budget only increased the already large deficit was not the reason for defeat. All parties religiously accept that growth will happen whether they are Liberal, the current rulers, or Conservatives, or the Socialists. In politics, as in economics, growth is regarded as a physical law, similar to gravity. Never mind that in physics, eternal growth is seen as absurd, but if absence of growth takes place in an economic system, it must be because the wrong policies have been applied. Economists will then prescribe the right recipe, after which growth is certain to return. So the politician who comes up with the most plausible promises will take his or her turn, and the same policies, which did not make sense before, are again implemented.
Fact is that we all are meandering in the mad maze of magic money, and totally lost there as well, because the only exit out of this labyrinth is blocked by our complete lack of direction, as we prescribe policies that did not work yesterday are seen to be the cure for tomorrow.
Yes, we are all mad, mad because we live in the age of Mammon. The pursuit of happiness has now become the pursuit of money. The bible tells a different story: “The lust for money is the root of all evil.” And the money can only come from one ultimate source: further exploitation of a finite earth.
Solomon and Friedman
Just think about that for a minute: our constant desire for greater wealth forms the basis of all the world’s ills. Solomon, who was the Bill Gates of his days, “the richest man on earth,” actually did not like his status all that well if his claim in his Proverbs is correct: “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.” In those days a king’s real place among the nations was determined by the number of wives. Solomon had a 1,000 of them, which, probably, gave him second thoughts about being so well off.
Contentment is our greatest treasure, but, thanks to television – Mammon’s most effective pulpit, preaching the gospel of More 7/24/365 – money is seen as the main source of happiness.
Milton Friedman, who died a few years ago, is still our money prophet. His teachings governs the monetary policies of our reigning economists, including Canada’s very own Stephen Harper and especially the Christian Republican Party in the USA where such matters as minimum wage and old age provisions, are rejected, because they obstruct the free flow of capital. “The best government is no government” is their motto. Tim Hudak, the Conservative man vying to become Ontario’s Premier, wants to fire 100,000 civil servants, his first step to create 1 million jobs, which makes perfect sense in his mind. I wonder whether he has ever heard of the domino effect: eliminate one well-paying job and another position disappears as well. Never mind: outsourcing is all the rage, even in war. The market is God and price is the only criterion for value. In Friedman’s words: ”Everything that makes human life livable in this world must be enclosed by the high fence of price, a cage with a lock that can only be opened after dropping a coin.” According to this man, enjoying sunshine, admiring scenery, visiting a park must always come at a monetary price. Watch fees rise.
This capitalistic notion is evident everywhere: in Indonesia, in South America where rain forests are clear-cut; in the oceans, sucked dry of fish, in the mountains, leveled for gold, in Alberta’s rivers, emptied to give the oil companies free water to boil the oil sands; in the greater Toronto area, with the best farmlands converted to subdivisions. Behind all this cosmos-degrading is the ‘lust for money.’
Money versus Nature
As economies expand, politicians simply promise more. As governments grow bigger, debt grows even faster. Even when times are hard governments cannot cut back: as environmental challenges increase, public reconstitution, in the form of payments for storm, water and other damage, also become bigger. As citizens become older and more frail, and but also live longer, medical and pension obligations mean greater monetary outlay.
All this means that debt always goes up, but we also know – and are now discovering – that our practices go against the natural system we live in. When we look around and observe creation we see that the amount of fresh water stays pretty much the same. In fact, aquifers may deplete if we over-use them, or water becomes polluted, as in China. The amount of topsoil stays pretty much the same, unless we damage it or make it subject to erosion. The amount of wood available stays pretty constant, unless we over-use it.
Nature, instead of having an agenda of growth, operates with an agenda of diminishing returns with respect to many types of resources. When we set out to produce more of a resource, the cost tends to rise: deeper wells, more remote raw material, Arctic drilling and deep sea exploration are just the most obvious.
The result is that our economic system becomes less and less efficient, as it takes more resources and more of people’s time to produce the same end product, measured in terms of barrels of oil or gallons of water. With stagnant wages, with higher fuel costs, with food inflation, due to drought or other weather-related damages, our costs of living increases, even though the Government controlled Cost of Living Index shows little change, all part of the increasing level of fraud perpetuated on all levels.
There comes a time, and I believe it is already here, when, due to shrinking income, higher cost of living, greater unemployment, government intake – based on an ever-expanding-economy – drops, posing a real threat to our medical-pension-social welfare-system and to the entire money system when extra debt has negative results, and debt cannot be repaid.
What does the Bible say about all this?
We are at the end of the money line because the premise on which we have built our society no longer works. We are there now, because the world-wide creation of magic money in the form of trillions of dollars, Japanese yen, euros, Chinese yuan, no longer produces results.
No, the Bible is not a text book for economics. Yes, there is a Christian answer to this, an answer that will not please a lot of people. Let’s start with Jesus. In Matthew 6: 24 he calls money Mammon, an Aramaic word that usually means “money” but also can mean “wealth”. Here Jesus calls money by its real name, considering it a sort of god. This personification, this affirmation that we are talking about something that claims divinity reveals something exceptional about money. In reality Jesus is saying that money is power, a force capable of moving other things. Jesus also is saying that money is autonomous, a law unto itself. Because of this God as a person in Jesus and Mammon as a competing god find themselves in conflict. Mammon can be a master the same way God is; yes, Mammon can be your or my master. I think we all struggle with this because we claim that we only use money even though often it is money that uses us. By bringing us under its law we become its servants.
Revelation 18: 11-13 describes our situation today where retailers have a difficult time: “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore- cargoes of —and you fill in your favorite products or toys, such as cars, cruises, and beach houses.” Then, at the end this text includes in the items which find no buyers the bodies and souls of men.” The author of Revelation sees people here as objects, not to glorify God- which is our first duty – but people placed under a false authority, one that is not God. Jesus himself was bought with a price, foreshadowed by the story of Joseph who was sold by his brothers.
Jesus is usually portrayed as meek and mild-mannered. He, however, got really worked up by the church authorities of his day, the Pharisees, who failed to proclaim the Coming of the Kingdom. He also agitated violently against the profaners of the temple, those who brought business to the place where God’s grace should shine through in all its manifestations.
The Hebrew law, in its entirety, protects human life from the devastating influence of money. The Year of Jubilee comes to mind, where property is restored to the original owners every 50 years, negating the accumulation of excessive wealth and alleviating poverty. We see today more and more that money is a force of destruction. The curious characteristic of money is that its power originates with the issuers. Money would be nothing, materially speaking, without human consent. The mad maze of magic money is just that: its magic is that we give value to something which by itself has no value of use or of exchange, especially today when most of the money is simply an entry or figure on a computer screen. The mad maze is evident in the universal fraud that entails money today.
The entire concept of money is completely unexplainable and irrational. Nothing, whether in human nature or in the nature of things, whether in technology or in reason, can rationalize the original act of creating and accepting money. Nothing can interpret the blind confidence we maintain in money, in spite of all the monetary crises. The only acceptable explanation for this absurdity can be traced back to the spiritual power of money. Only because money is a spiritual power penetrating our very being, enslaving our hearts and minds, replacing God’s spirit in us, prevents us from detecting this ultimate madness.
Our disregard for his creation, our callous conduct in connection with environmental degradation, all point to our love for money. How can we say that we love God when we destroy his work of art?
Of course money in itself is not evil. It could be argued that debt is evil, because it makes us dependent on money. I see debt also as applying to environmental matters because depleting natural resources entails a debt for future generations. Loving our neighbor also includes those who will come after us: our neighbors in time. Our sins literally cry to heaven, therefor God’s judgment will focus especially on our treatment of the cosmos, because John 3: 16, loving the world and all it contains is so central to salvation.
Grace is what saves us, grace, derived from the Latin word ‘gratia’ of which the plural is ‘gratiis or gratis’ which means ‘for nothing’. We are saved not because we have done something that redeems us, but because Christ has set us free.
Next week the final instalment of Where are we?
It will also be the final blog I will post or send. The garden beckons, weddings coming up, birthdays to celebrate, family to visit.
Occasionally, as the Spirit moves me I will add to my blog ‘www.hielema.ca/blog’.
Look forward to August 30 when Eerdmans will publish
Between Beginning and End: a radical Kingdom Vision.