Wishing for Wealth

Sometimes, as Jesus said to Saul, you ask, "Why should you kick against the pricks?"

The thing is that the circumstances of life can be resisted if you assume the existence of free will. Indeed, if the will has some freedom, you have a duty to use it, since freedom of will differentiates you from inanimate matter.

However, sometimes it doesn't make sense to strive for things that cannot logically be attained. For example, hoping that everyone will be rich is silly, because humans always rank each other, and if everybody is rich, nobody will be happy.

The pragmatist idealists then reply, "Yes, but surely we can hope for sufficiency, that everyone will have enough?"

Certainly! The problem is that a significant number of humans are unhappy about mere sufficiency. Indeed, many of those in the grey zone between poverty and wealth are very, very unhappy even though they are not poor. They subsist, survive, have enough... but it is never enough.

As Jesus also said, "The poor you will have with you always." There will always be those who claim they are poor when they aren't, and resent those who are rich enough to give their excess to the truly poor.

Strikingly, the people who want to eliminate the very wealthy for 'Christian' reasons are also the people who don't want the wealth redistributed because that would be Marxist. Well, it should also be noted that Marx got his ideas from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 2 and 4.

Go figure.

The Legacy of Simon Magus

I think Christian education, sadly, is becoming an oxymoron. To be Christian is more and more to deliberately embrace ignorance of the Word because 'knowledge puffs up'. But knowledge of the Word is specifically seen as one of the marks of a believer's maturity (even though it is not the only mark).

To be exact, the phrase quoted comes from I Corinthians 8, and it is part of a longer argument. What is argued is that some people are not as learned, and have simpler consciences, so what is acceptable practice to the learned may be injurious to the less learned. Therefore if you find that you can adopt a pagan practice and there is actually nothing in the scriptures against it (for example, smoking cannabis), you may be free to indulge, but this might cause those with a more sensitive or less educated conscience to sin in one of several ways. Paul says that he would even stop eating meat, if eating meat would make his brother stumble in the faith.

The problem of course lies in the context. If there is knowledge which the Scriptures confirm to be theologically true (for example, that Jesus is Saviour for all Christians), then it is not the kind of knowledge that puffs up, but the kind that must be used for teaching (i.e., doctrine), for correction, for reproof, and for training (i.e. instruction) in righteousness (see II Timothy 3:10-4:5).

This is where many who espouse some form of prosperity gospel are completely and sinfully wrong. The warnings against it are absolutely clear, whether in Greek or in English. Here is I Timothy 6:3-10, the words of the apostle Paul himself:

If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself.

Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

If the apostle argues 'we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out', what could he possibly be saying about the prosperity gospel? Do you think he is in favour of such a doctrine or not? And what 'all kinds of evil' is he talking about?

One particular word that modern Christians should retain in their (in recent years) emaciated lexicon is the word 'simony'. For some reason, it seems to have been forgotten; I suspect it is because this word seems rather unpleasant to the modern materialist ear. Simony is actually one of the great sins which the Lutheran reformation was opposed to. It comes from the attempt of Simon Magus to procure the gifts of the Spirit by purchasing them with money, as recorded in Acts 8:9-24.

I mention it here because it is very clear that the apostles were quite contemptuous of money and material wealth. In fact, they were pretty much proto-Communists in that they believed in redistribution of wealth from those who had excess to those who needed it (see Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:34-35).

In fact, there is no scriptural justification at all that wealth is the necessary consequence of God's favour, although wealth (like any other material thing) can be a blessing. It is easier to argue that martyrdom is a more common reward for using the gift of prophecy, for example, or that the gift of tongues is the least important of all gifts, used more for a sign to the unbelieving than for the edification (i.e. 'building up') of the faithful.

A Civil Society Forever!

Over the last few days, the idea of civil society and civil institutions has taken a hammering, or at least been struck like a gong. The reverberations still continue, but I think it is a kind of healthy clangour.

Let me describe the situation. A local women's-rights organisation was taken over at its AGM by a group of women who turned out to have a general commonality: a bunch of them were from the same Christian church from down the road. As the details emerged through the cloud of fine spittle that tends to develop around the hissing of the faucets, it turned out that a number of emails had been exchanged among some members of this latter group describing the original institution as... well, perverse in terms of sexual mores, I suppose.

This was deemed reason enough for a takeover. Many days and mutual recriminations (some probably slanderous) later, an EOGM was held and vociferously attended. The newly elected executive committee was roundly defeated in a vote of no-confidence and the old organisation, newly overturned, was back to its old self again.

The vote of no-confidence succeeded by the large margin it did simply because it had a huge and even newer coalition supporting it. Apparently, the threat of a church-based takeover of a secular organisation had stirred the pot so much that secular forces had decided to get their own back. And so they did.

Personally, what I found alarming was the fact that persons X, Y, Z and so on could just blithely take over an established institution and decide to destroy its culture because they thought it was a good idea. It happens a lot, but never with such naked and unrepentant zealotry.

So, who was right and who was wrong? Or, who was right and who was left? It is tempting to cast everything in some sort of Foucaultian power/society/sexuality/institutionality sort of model. But I think that quite simply, it is generally a good sign for those who are hoping that Atlantean society develops balls the capacity for a healthy degree of internal disagreement, debate and discussion.

What I don't agree with is that churches should be tainting themselves by taking over secular organisations. There is no Biblical precedent for it; rather, Christians are exhorted to be in the world but not of it, and to free themselves from conformity to the world and its institutions. In this, I use the word 'taint' in the sense of 'tint, colour or dye', a perfectly legitimate usage from the 16th century. Christians aren't supposed to be part of secular sides, but separate from all to the same degree.

Actually, proto-Christians were also supposed to be proto-Marxists, if you read this passage (and this one) clearly. I've always thought that Marx had cribbed his famous 1875 slogan off somebody. Naughty man.

But I don't think I saw any of the church people rushing to sell their stuff for redistribution. The American religious right tends to talk about Godless communism. I wonder if they've ever considered Godly communism before. What a powerful social framework it would be! Heh.