Daily Meditation

The Purpose of Prosperity

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Ephesians 4:28)

John Piper

There are three levels of how to live with things: (1) you can steal to get; (2) or you can work to get; (3) or you can work to get in order to give.

Too many professing Christians live on level two. Almost all the forces of our culture urge them to live on level two. But the Bible pushes us relentlessly to level three. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Why does God bless us with abundance? So we can have enough to live on, and then use the rest for all manner of good works that alleviate spiritual and physical misery. Enough for us; abundance for others.

The issue is not how much a person makes. Big industry and big salaries are a fact of our times, and they are not necessarily evil. The evil is in being deceived into thinking a six-digit salary must be accompanied by a six-digit lifestyle.

God has made us to be conduits of his grace. The danger is in thinking the conduit should be lined with gold. It shouldn’t. Copper will do. Copper can carry unbelievable riches to others.

Perspectives

Merrie England

We are accustomed to think of our present and recent centuries as the biggest and the brightest and the best of human civilization.  It behoves the dominant evolutionary world view so to assume and delve for corroboration at every turn.

Robert Tombs, however, produces a picture which would be at substantial variance to this established modern narrative. He writes that in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (post Black Plague) was a time of substantial economic growth.  The picture he paints is intriguing, if for no other reason than indirectly to recast our own times as somewhat less singular or exceptional.

Here is the general picture of economic and social progress in England, post Plague, painted by Tombs:

Top of the Pops

Some End of Year Good News

The Legatum Institute has rated New Zealand as the most prosperous country in the world.  NZ was ranked first out of 149 countries.   Not sure how significant it is, but there you go.

Here is the blurb:

This comes amidst the claim that global prosperity as a whole has risen significantly over the past eight years.

After a lacklustre performance during the 2008 and 2009 global financial crisis, global prosperity has risen to unprecedented levels.   Whether we look at the global average or weight countries' scores by their populations, the picture remains the same: global prosperity is now three percent higher than it was in 2007.

Driving this trend towards higher global prosperity are improvements in Personal Freedom, particularly in Western Europe and Central and Latin America; improvements in Health and Education in Asia; and a better Business Environment in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe.

Doubtless this will drive the pessimists and the global warmists spare.  Global prosperity needs to decline substantially in order to reduce carbon emissions.  Not everything is rosy, though:

Prosperity

What Is It, and Where Can It Be Found?

In his book The Character of Nations, Angelo Codevilla asks an interesting question: exactly what is "prosperity"?  And, once it is defined properly, how can nations achieve and maintain prosperity?

Macro-economists and some politicians favour quantitative answers to the question.  Prosperity is a matter of Gross Domestic Product or some other quantitative measure of production.  Other politicians favour answers related to the quality of life and (these days) an egalitarian twist: wealth--and the quality of life which it enables--cannot be disparate.  There must be little or no gap between the wealthy and the poor.  To such folk, prosperity exists when everyone's socio-economic circumstances are pretty much the same.

Prosperity, then, largely is a matter of what lies between our two ears.  That is, prosperity is a matter of what people consider valuable, or of value.  John Kenneth Galbraith--the famous Harvard economist--considered the Soviet Union a truly prosperous society.  With his elitist set of values, Galbraith had walked the streets of Soviet cities and found there a vibrant, prosperous society.  Why?  Soviet towns were festooned with images, sculptures, and grand buildings--you know, the kind of things which impress those who think such things are of great value.

Catching Australia, Part I

New Zealand's Slope is Steep and Slippery

Catching up with Australia (in terms of relative GDP and overall material prosperity) has long been a dream of successive governments in New Zealand.  It has come up again in the current election.  The field of debate roughly falls out into four camps.

The first camp's (centre right) dream has to do with out competing Australia and producing our way to relative prosperity.  The second camp (centre left) views it as a matter of legislating parity in things like wages, income levels, and living standards.  The view is that if you first create by fiat legislation, economic reality will kick in to match it.  Put wages up by law and suddenly everyone becomes more productive.  (Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds, but there you go).

The Myth of the Dark Ages, Part II

Rational Exuberance

OK, so the Dark Ages in Medieval Europe did not actually exist. It was a mythical concoction to further a broader ideological cause--to wit, that the Christian faith represents superstitious ignorance. It was a myth to promulgate the religious cause of Unbelief.

But the question is begged--was there any causal connection between the Christianising of Europe from the fourth century AD onwards and the economic and technological progress of Europe at the same time? Rodney Stark argues that there is a causal connection. The Christian faith provided the cultural, intellectual, and social climate that indirectly produced the economic advancement of Europe.

There were, he argues, a number of Christian doctrines which indirectly resulted in technological, scientific, and economic advances. The first turns upon the doctrine of man. Christian doctrine professes the fundamental equality of all men (males, females, and children). All are equally created in God's image. But equally, and more immediately relevant, the Kingdom of Christ--the realm established by the Saviour of the world--equally redeems male and female, slave and free, rich and poor, "our people" and barbarians, adult and child. All are saved by Christ and made part of His body, the Church. This indirectly meant the death blow to slavery and the oppression of others.

We say indirectly. This is important. The Kingdom of God reconstructs society from the inside out; it does not first tear it down to begin all over again. In fact, our Lord explicitly forbids any revolutionary attempt to "make things right" by force, or instantaneous actions. This is the point of the Parable of the Tares. The uprooting of the tares--getting things cleaned up by apocalyptic action--will damage the wheat. (Matthew 13: 24-30) Rather the Kingdom of God acts like leaven. The truth of the Gospel insinuates itself gradually into human life and society, transforming it from the inside out.

The Christian faith, then, established the fundamental equality of all human beings before God. What God has created and accepted, let not man despise is the upshot. It also established the concept of the "self". We say, "established" since, of course this was profoundly revealed in the the Word's Older Testament--witnessed so powerfully in the Psalms, for example--but in Christ these things were unequivocally established for the entire world.

In political theory this meant that Christianity led theorists to focus upon individuals as much as they focused upon the state or the corporation. Stark writes:

Even the Greek philosophers had no concept quite equivalent to our notion of the "person". Thus, when Plato was writing the Republic, his focus was on the polis, on the city, not on its citizens--indeed, he even denounced private property. In contrast, it is the individual citizen who was the focus of Christian political thought, and this, in turn, explicitly shaped the views of later European political philosophers such as Hobbes and Locke. This was, quite literally, revolutionary stuff, for the Christian stress on individualism is "an eccentricity among cultures." Freedom is another concept that simply doesn't exist in many, perhaps most, human cultures--thee isn't even a word fro freedom in most non-European languages." Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, p.23f

One of the upshots was a growing cultural conviction that to be and do what he ought before both God and man. This establishes a vital pre-condition for economic, intellectual, and technological advances.

A second major leavening influence was the Christian idea of progress. Human civilisation was moving toward a glorious end, when not only would all nations become Christian, but the entire creation itself would be freed from groaning under the consequences of Adam's sin. Augustine, for example, joyfully and exuberantly celebrated the glories of the creation which God had appointed man to discover, exploit, enhance, and enjoy.

Augustine celebrated not only theological progress, but earthly, material progress as well. Writing early in the fifth century, he exclaimed: "has not the genius of man invented and applied countless astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of exuberant invention, so that this vigour of mind . . . betokens an inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such arts.

What wonderful--one might say stupefying--advances has human industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and navigation!" He went on to admire the "skill [that] has been attained in measures and numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and connections of the stars been discovered!" And all of this was due to the "unspeakable boon" that God conferred upon his creation--a "rational nature." Ibid, p.9f

This world was a wonderful garden in which man could romp around, enjoy, and think God's thoughts after Him. And every time he did, he enjoyed greater blessings and felicity. The boon was palpable and tangible.

Lastly, but certainly not least, the Christian faith brought the law of God to Europe.  This law established the importance of family, of familial relations, so that the individual self was always integrated into familial structures.  It also established the importance of church and public worship.  Society, therefore, had orders and structures for the blessing of man, the individual.  It also established the state--and the functions and limits of the state.  Absolutist doctrines, such as the Divine Right of Kings were heretical aberrations and could never survive in a Christian culture.  And it established the rights and protections of property.  Finally, it established the fundamental importance of truth telling in all of life.

The Law of God provided the necessary conditions for intellectual progress and economic and technological advance. 

Europe would not have been without its Christian foundations and infrastructure. 

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

You Can Look Them Up On Your Phone

Money, Love, Desire - The Good of Affluence
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, March 29, 2011

When it comes to modern conveniences, many Christians are confused about the relationship of their hot and cold running water, say, to the worldview that we inherited from the Enlightenment, the outlook of modernity. If we reject the Enlightenment (and who shouldn't?), does that mean we must be relegated to the grass huts?
Put another way, is it possible to be modern without being a modernist? Sure, sez I, and let me 'splain. Wealth is a gift from God, and pride is bequeathed to us from the devil. Is it clearer now?

The birth of the modern age, measured in terms of conveniences, technology, wealth, medical advances, and so on was largely a legacy of the Reformation. But the Bible teaches that whenever a gift is given, there will immediately be a temptation arising in our hearts to steal the glory and gratitude that should go to God alone. That temptation will say, fundamentally, that we owe none of this to God, and that we did it all ourselves. That attitude is what we call the Enlightenment. That is modernist hubris, technocratic arrogance, and purblind puffery.

"When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest . . . thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:10-18).

This is the sinful pattern. God gives wealth, man takes credit for himself. If someone else later on comes along and blames man for creating all this wealth, and demands that we have ourselves a little "social justice" around here -- and what a wretched little phrase social justice is -- he is just creating an extra layer of sedimentary silliness. And by this point, we don't need any extra layers.

The Enlightenment is not to be credited with Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, Smith's discovery that no one man is capable of manufacturing a pin, Newton's discovery of what objects in motion tend to do, or Watts' admirable divvying up of energy into units of horsepower. God gave us all those things. We must thank God for them.

Seeing the inevitable abuses of wealth that follow after a humanistic grabbing of credit for it, and reacting away from the whole thing entirely, is simply foolish. If it is a good thing, as my smart phone is a good thing, then God is to be thanked. If it is a sinful thing, like thinking that man does things he can't do, then we should abandon our folly, repent of our sins, and return to the gospel of grace that undergirds all God's statutes and laws. And if you don't know where those passages are, you can look them up on your phone.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

The Good of Affluence

Written by Douglas Wilson

Calvinism, Eschatology, and the New Media

Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Jesus is the Lord of history, and this is why we don't need to be afraid of Twitter. Or Facebook. Or teenagers typing with their thumbs. Jesus is the Lord of history, which is why we don't need to worry about Google making us stupid. Don't mistake me. Google does make many of us stupid, but only in the same way that libraries have made us stupid for many centuries. Libraries make a handful of people really wise, and provide many others with artificial props for their footnotes. Everywhere the human race goes, it drags a bell curve around with it. We put on airs because of where we are on the existing curve (or we feel bad because of where we are on it), but we fail to recognize that a blue collar auto mechanic today is working with sophisticated electronics that would have completely stumped Aristotle on one of his good days. One half of all medical doctors graduated in the lower half of their class, right? We live in a time of tremendous innovation, development, and apparent chaos. There are many opportunities to worry about it all, and so I want to lay my cards on the table, and talk about why I am excited about the future. This is going to sound funny, but I am excited about the future because I am a postmillennialist. And I am a postmillennialist because I am a Calvinist who believes that the sovereign God over all things is truly, inexhaustibly, and fiercely good. He keeps His promises. We also need to remember that the eschatological future promised by the prophet Isaiah, and the future that was shaped by industrial revolution, and will continue to be shaped by the digital revolution, are the same future. I don't believe in an invisible spiritual future, shaped by the Holy Spirit, full of sweetness and light, and an actual historical future shaped by the Devil, Halliburton, the Illuminati, and Murphy's law. The world, this world, is presently going where Jesus is taking it. Be wise, but stop worrying. Part of being wise is that we do not forget the doctrine of sin. Sin is radical and deep, and capable of many cultural grotesqueries. We see them all the time, and we read about them all the time. Welcome to the spiritual war. Belief that we will win the war is not a denial of the reality of that war. My optimism is not of the kind that denies the existence of the battle. My optimism is of the kind that maintains that we are winning the battle. To change the metaphor, to believe that the car is gassed up, running fine, and on the right road, does not keep the kids from squabbling sinfully in the back seat.  This means that every new development presents us with opportunities to sin, and, in a sinful world, the initial impulse is to sin. Wealth gotten by old-fashioned labor is sustained. Wealth gotten the frothy way, dissipates quickly (Prov. 13:11) And so here is my central thesis: technology in all its forms is a type of wealth. The Bible contains no warnings about technology as such, but is crammed with warnings about the bias of wealth. Which way does wealth set us up? The Bible says that the wealthy are tempted to hubris, self-sufficiency, lack of concern for the poor, oppression, and the rest of that sorry lot. Wealth is a good thing, but it brings temptations. A lot of wealth is a lot of a good thing, but it brings with it a lot of temptations. Say a man comes into wealth, and the first thing he does is join three of the swankiest country clubs. Not a good harbinger. The same thing is true of the guy who gains his wealth, and who runs off to the inner city to join a new monastic community. That's a bad sign too. It does not profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul in the process (Matt. 16:26). This remains true even if the world is in the process of gaining the world, but loses its soul on the way. Wealth is not a substitute savior. It is a good thing, a creational good, and it is one which we are tempted to set up as an idol (Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). Until the resurrection, wealth is a good thing which always tends to distract us from our love for Christ, and the task at hand. Now, what we are seeing with the multitude of silly applications of Facebook, and Twitter, and music downloads, and research with Google books, and every new app you can think of, is the response of the noveau riche to windfall wealth -- a response that is as old as dirt. There is nothing whatever that is new about this. There is nothing new under the sun. We have always had worriers. Plato worried about the written word. At the birth of the modern era, others worried about the typeset word. Now we worry about the digitized word. And, let it be said, the worriers always have a point. There are always examples of folly that they can point to, and they are not making it up. But the fact that you are not making up the bad examples does not mean that you are fitting those bad examples into the right paradigm of interpretation. A good example of an erudite worrier would be Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. But for every book like that, given the propensity of Calvinists to worry needlessly, I would recommend that you read three like Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You, Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies, and Ridley's The Rational Optimist. Why should Calvinists worry? In the collision between the sovereignty of Jesus in history, and the influence of sin in history, sin is the certain loser. Now some will object that the books I have cited are not by believers. And I will point out in reply that things have gotten really bad when unbelievers can see what Jesus is doing more accurately than believers can. When unbelievers by common grace are reading history right side up, why should we reject that in favor of believers who are reading their Bible upside down? We worry about the course of history because we are not in control of it, and we like to pretend that this means no one is in control of it. But this follows not. Jesus is the Lord of history. He is the Lord of this. This will end well. It does not mean that everything ends well for everybody, but simply means that folly become apparent over time. In the long run, stupidity never works. You complain that some stupid teenager is exilarated because he has 28 superficial "friends" on Facebook. Okay, that's dumb, but how is it different from our practice of writing old-fashioned letters to a mortal enemy, making sure the letter begins with a term of endearment, "Dear . . ." Dear? Keeping moving, people. Nothing to see here. Nothing new here. Nothing new under the sun. Some are wise, and many are (comparatively) foolish. The only question before us now is whether or not we will be among the wise or the foolish. Carping criticism from outside, from the Unabomber cabin, is not an effective response. It is not wise -- even if you are gracious enough for it to be a Wendell Berry cabin instead. Jesus is the Word, and by His Incarnation He has sanctified the right use of words for all time. The Internet has given us a torrent of words -- what else is new? And the fact that the torrent has increased so much should fill us with a sense of exhilaration. Our responsibility as people of the Word is to give ourselves to the study and practice of how all this can be used wisely. If your use of Twitter is limited to informing all your followers that you are rummaging in the fridge for some Dr. Pepper at two a.m., then sure, quit that. But suppose you tell your followers that poverty and shame come to the one who refuses instruction, what now? How is that an abuse? It is a godly word. The constant and ever present temptation in the Church is the gnostic temptation of locating sin in the stuff, sin in the matter, sin in the wealth, sin in the technology . . . instead of locating it where it belongs, in the heart of man.

Facing Geo-Economic Reality

An Axis of Foolishness

New Zealand cannot afford the luxury of its economic pretensions. It is dominated and controlled by an axis of two political forces. The first is an ideological coalition of eco-greens, whose influence is far wider than the Green political party. This ideological consensus also dominates the Labour and Maori parties, and leads the ideology of the National party as well.

The ideology rests in the pretension that there is such a thing as a green economy--a paradigm of economic development which is "eco-friendly": that is, a path to productive prosperity which does not require despoiling the landscape or using up natural resources. This brave-new-world economy would use predominantly, if not exclusively, natural renewable resources (for example, wind, solar, hydro power). This "eco-friendly" economy would require minimal intrusion into the natural ecological order. In the ideological parlance it would have a minimal "footprint".

The prophets of this brave new world assert as a matter of religious certainty that this new "eco-friendly, zero footprint" economy will be enormously productive: they promise a Klondike-like path to wealth. The zealots of the coalition even have pretensions of leading the world into the global new-world-economic order. This utopian vision is now the de-facto economic policy of the country and it spreads right across the political party spectrum.

One result of this economic ideology is an agreed focus and emphasis upon "eco-winner" industries. Tourism is a prime example. It is no mistake that current Prime Minister, John Key has opted to run the Tourism portfolio because he thinks the economic potential is huge. But note carefully: the tourism industry in New Zealand is a particular kind if tourism. For example, it is not the same tourist industry as exists in Las Vegas (visits to the Grand Canyon notwithstanding). Ours is an oxymoronic industry which focuses upon offering international visitors an experience of un-human-touched landscape (whether mountains, rivers, plains or whatever). Undeveloped, untouched natural resources is a key to economic prosperity we are constantly told.

A second "winner" industry because it is seen as "clean", with close to zero footprint benefits, is intellectual property, and in particular the IT sector. Even the greens love this industry.

The second front of the axis which controls virtually all political discourse is economic entitlement "rights." This is the modern ideological manifestation of non-revolutionary, gradualist socialism. Its hold over the minds and hearts of the populace and the ruling class is vice-like. It is the modern paradigm of social and political discourse. We fear its death grip hold over hearts and minds will not ease until the majority are converted to, and discipled by, the Lord Jesus Christ (which will indeed happen at some time, but at His pleasure).

These two ideologies--economic entitlement rights and the new world eco-friendly, zero footprint economic model--have formed an axis which holds the entire country in its thrall. Entitlement rights require a large and intrusive government apparatus, endless regulations and petty micro-government rules, high debt, and high oppressive taxation and which produces a large dependant welfare class. The prevailing political consensus is not just to maintain, but over time increase, entitlements. Political discourse between left and right is largely a debate over how much and how quickly.  Buttressing this objective is the utopian dream of a highly efficient, zero-footprint economy which will deliver "big bucks" and economic prosperity so entitlements can be afforded and more "wealth" can be shared.

Both ideologies are humanist utopian dreams and will eventually fail, dismally. Just across the Tasman sea is Australia. Its economy is currently growing at between six and seven percent. Ours is hardly registering any growth at all. Migration to Australia out of New Zealand--where people are in search of higher paying, lower taxed jobs--has recommenced. Bleeding to death by a thousand cuts. Welcome to our brave new world. 

New Zealand remains firmly on track to becoming the Niue of the OECD. This will remain the case at least until the naive utopian pretensions of the eco-friendly, zero footprint economy are exposed and shattered.