Martin Luther King, Jr., so succinctly said: Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried. It is well said, “A religion that ends with the individual, ends.”13
Can the church stand calmly by while economic insecurity strangles the physical, cultural, and spiritual growth of its members? Emphatically, no! The church is God’s appointed agency for the promulgation of the gospel, and the gospel is the good news that Jesus came to free man from spiritual and economic bondage. Did not Jesus say, “I am come that they might have life more abundantly” (John 10:10)?
…Churches most representative of Christian faith and witness are those that recognize that religion deals with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. They recognize that the Christian’s gospel is a two-way road. On the other hand, it seeks to change the souls of men and unite them with God; on the other hand, it seeks to change the conditions in which men live so that the soul will have a chance after it is changed.14
The church must be concerned about the economic life of its members, because economic activity and discourse lie at the very heart of human experience.
There are several things that the church can do to assist in this crisis. First, it can reaffirm its responsibility for instruction in the social aspects of the gospel. This can be done by encouraging its clergy to assert their prophetic role in the community. Walter Rauschenbusch affirms that, If a minister uses the great teaching powers of the pulpit sanely and wisely to open the minds of the people to the moral importance of the social, he can be of utmost usefulness in ameliorating the social order.15
Martin Luther King, Jr., noting the importance of the clergy in attitudinal changes, writes, “Every minister of the gospel has a mandate to proclaim the eternal verities of the gospel, and to lead men from the darkness of falsehood and fear to the light of truth and love.”16
Attitudinal changes must begin in the church, where they come from. For centuries ministers have preached a foggy gospel, resulting in ambiguities among Christians. Now the church must reeducate and reindoctrinate the laity through correct Scriptural truth about money and the material world. The minister who has been historically given high credibility in the community will have an enormous impact in arresting this measure of ambiguity. Karlan states, “There will be more opinion change in the desired direction if the communicator has high credibility than if he has low credibility.”17
Secondly, the church must get to the ideological roots of economic ambiguity. All ambiguities come out of a struggle between conflicting ideologies. The church can be of immeasurable help in giving the confused Christian the needed right direction. Through the channel of religious education, the church can point out the myths and false philosophies – and show the correct view.
Thirdly, and finally, the church can end its dichotomous lifestyle. The church has talked out of both sides of its mouth. While it has condemned the material world, it has bathed in luxury. While its coffers have grown fat, the church has encouraged Christians to shun the world. Not only must the church teach a correct view toward the material world, it also must live it. Paul says, “Be ye followers of me as I follow Christ” (I Cor. 4:16). The church must offer not only an audio presentation, but also a video presentation of God’s expectations for us in the material world.
The church has a grave responsibility as it relates to the economic well-being of Christians. Many influences seek to shape the thinking of Christians, which we will discuss in the next chapter, but the church has the upper hand. It should use its great influence to put Christians on the road to financial freedom.
CHAPTER 4
WHO LEAVES THE BIBLE OUT?
Learning to think biblically should be one of the Christian’s major ambitions. This objective is not easy to attain, since we are almost constantly influenced by nonbiblical philosophies and standards. Because it is not natural for us to think biblically, we need not be alarmed if much of our thinking is molded by the non-Christian world around us. This is not to say that non-Christian influences have been all good or all bad, but only to recognize that our thinking has been affected by them. When we grasp this fact, then our eyes are opened to the task of reeducating ourselves to break away from the non-Christian philosophies that conflict with Bible truth.
Christian thought, to a great extent, has been shaped by Greek thought and philosophies. Freeman Butts, in his book Cultural History of Western Education, says, “We think the way we do in large part because the Greeks thought the way they did.”18
It is important for Christian educators to face this issue squarely for a number of reasons. First, Greek intellectualism with its consequent scientific naturalism is definitely the intellectual context within which many in Christian education work. Second, this subject is relevant because Christian education has had the tendency to compromise with the context. Third, many of our Christian teachers, while subscribing clearly to orthodox theological positions and enjoying genuine Christian experience, have been so steeped in this context that it is hard for them to break away from its premises in the classroom.19
What is true for the Christian classroom holds true also for Christian economic thinking. Christian economic thought has been so shaped by Greek thought that it is difficult at times to differentiate between the two.
Other systems of thought have had an effect on Christian thought, but none has had as much impact as Greek thought. So, for our purposes here, we shall examine Greek thought.
The Greeks are purported to have been the first people to ask, “What is life’s true reality?” To Plato, life’s true reality centered only on the Perfect One – God.20 Plato, because of constant striving for moral and social perfection and because of his other-worldly views, is sometimes called a Christian before Christ, but we shall examine in the next chapter how his other-worldly thinking has wrought havoc in Christian economic thinking.
Another philosophical view that has left scars on Christian thinking is the “this-worldliness” of the Sophist. This is the polar opposite of Plato’s other-worldliness. Again following in the true spirit of the ancient Greeks, the Sophist advocated a form of thinking called reasoning: They maintained that metaphysical issues were beyond solution; therefore, scholars should concentrate on human nature and human relations. They became famous for their statement, “Man is the measure of all things.” They were concerned with the sense world and used reason as a tool to achieve success in that world.21
So, in Greek thought, Plato forms the thesis and the Sophist the antithesis. It would seem natural that someone would come along to bring a compromise between the two. Aristotle provided what he felt was a synthesis between the two divergent views. His metaphysic is summed up in his views on form and matter: Matter is by nature purposeless. Form is mind or spirit at work transforming matter into something that has life and purpose, it is creative, active and purposive. His form is close to Plato’s “ideas,” but not quite the same. In fact, he arrives through the famous doctrine of theorice, the undisturbed meditation on God, at God who is the unmoved mover, the Final Cause.22
Aristotle’s synthesis has been attractive to Christian thought, because life for him was not a dead end but rather a striving toward a better end. Taking in the whole giant of Greek thought, Crane Brinton, in his book Ideas and Man reveals the Greek influence on Christian thinking:
1.This life and this world, not the world beyond death, is prominent.
2.The satisfaction of natural human desires and needs is the primary motivation for living.
3.“Nothing