Razing Hell is Heavenly

Sharon Baker, who is a professor of theology at Messiah College, just published a new book, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught About God’s Wrath and Judgment. I bought it due to Brian McLaren‘s endorsement, thinking it would be a good follow-up to his book, The Last Word and the Word after That, and because I’ve always been interested in the subject of the afterlife and how it integrates into the thinking and evangelistic style of Christians. Even Christians who believe in a literal hell (a.k.a. “eternal conscious torment” for the unbeliever), hell is a confounding and frustrating doctrine. As Baker’s friend writes to her, “We don’t seem to think about how horrible it makes God look.” So it is certainly no easy task for Baker to address the issues.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part reviewing the landscape of the traditional view of hell, God’s wrath, and judgment (and believe me, she makes it known that there is way more to this doctrine than who goes where when they die!). The second part offers an alternative viewpoint of hell, God’s wrath, and judgment, while the third part offers what she titles a “New View of Hell.” While I’m only finished with the first part, what strikes me about her writing is the way she weaves personal conversations with her students and her friends. It’s a casual-yet-serious discussion about the nature of God and the problems that the eternal conscious torment theology bring to the table. Not one to get off on tangents to every possible objection raised early in the book, she cleverly “teases” the reader with brief answers while promising a fuller explanation to come. While it might sound like an odd description for a non-fiction book, in a weird way I feel like I’m reading a Daniel Silva spy novel, on the edge of my seat, not wanting to put it down (except to write this blog post)!

What I enjoy most about Razing Hell is the honest and oftentimes frustrating questions about God, justice, love, and forgiveness. She isn’t so much declaring “here’s what the Bible says” (though she certainly has opinions about what the Bible says) as she is openly questioning and critically wrestling with the traditional view. She even assures us (though she keeps teasing us by leaving the details for a future chapter) that she is not trying to “take hell away from us.” Whether I agree with her conclusions or not, I can’t wait to see how this plays out!

I wrote my Master’s Thesis paper on the afterlife, and having read dozens of articles and books on the topic, I can already say that Baker’s contribution to this heated topic will remain a major player for honest inquisitors. Even those who would not agree with her conclusions have some wrestling to do.

Review: “Lies the Government Told You”

I’ve listened to Freedom Watch for about a year, and I’ve skimmed through several books written by Judge Andrew Napolitano (no relationship to Big Sister), and after reading Lies the Government Told You I think many of Napolitano’s books are very alike: story after story of how the United States Government has gone awry, and how natural rights and liberty are necessary for a peaceful society.

Starting with topics such as voting, the value of black persons, and the right to bear arms, Napolitano recounts story after story about how the federal government lied, mislead, or otherwise provided a mythical zeitgeist regarding how life works in the United States. Both conservatives and progressives alike have lessons to learn in this book, if indeed they are awake and willing to learn and repent. Napolitano shows us how American history, as we have been taught it, has been recounted by the mainstream in such a way that these stories do not fit within. For example, when they say “every vote counts,” Napolitano shows how special interest politicians (pretty much all of them) rig the system so well that we would never really know if our votes count anyway. Further, the so-called “two party system” (which Napolitano sees as a single party—the Big Government Party) is constructed to prevent the emergence of a third party into the system.

Overall, I think the book is worth reading due to the storytelling nature of the book, with some attention given to basic philosophy and principles of liberty. Since the chapters don’t flow like a novel, it’s easy to jump around from chapter to chapter, reading whatever suits one’s fancy. The title is a bit misleading, because it isn’t about “lies,” but more about the mythology throughout American history. But if Napolitano’s goal was to raise cognizance among readers about the truth about American history, he’s given us a great taste of how the truth has been suppressed or ignored.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

The Rest of the Book: Final Thoughts

Since committed to write a response to every chapter in Jim Wallis’s book, Rediscovering Values, I’ve become very busy and need to devote more attention to those things in my life. But I wanted to finish the book and share my thoughts on the rest of it. I skimmed through some major sections of the book, and while I wish I could get into more detail on each one, let me comment a few times on some disagreements Jim Wallis and I have:

Clean Energy Economies

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with “green energy” per se. While it is important to steward the environment properly, Wallis comes at it from a collectivist standpoint, explains “green jobs” in a way that sounds wonderful an appealing, but doesn’t deal with all of the unseen consequences. He praises President Obama for increasing the standards of fuel economy, clear evidence that he doesn’t understand that unforeseen and unseen consequences occur when you arbitrarily enforce regulations such as fuel standards.

Free Market Canards and Straw Men

Canards, for those of you like me who recently discovered the word, are unfounded rumors or stories. Straw men are artificially-erected arguments made in order to easily tear them down. Wallis has perpetuated many economic fallacies in this book, but the following is most disconcerting:

To hear some zealots of the free market talk, you would think they believe in a sinless market, where no regulations are allowed, no limitations accepted, no restraints needed, and no accountability required. In other words, the market is beyond sin and shortcomings. The logic goes that, left to its own devices, the market will behave in a perfect or sinless fashion and, in fact, only it can provide the moral framework in which everything else should operate. (pg 190)

I’ve read hundreds of articles online, and thousands of pages of books by those who would be self-avowed “zealots” of the free market. Let me make this clear: NOT ONE OF THEM HAS CLAIMED ANY SUCH THINGS! Wallis is simply not listening, or refuses to comprehend, that free market advocates do not believe in a “sinless” market, because the market is simply a metaphor for free persons exchanging and interacting with one another. So when Wallis follows up the above paragraph with, “In light of the Great Recession, can we still hold on to that bad theology?” I want to scream. Literally! Wallis is apparently blind to the obvious non-free market nature of our economy, which caused this crisis on the first place.

Twenty Moral Exercises

Wallis ends the book with 20 moral exercises for the reader to implement in his life. To be honest, if you want to read this book, go to the book store, read this chapter, and you’ll benefit greatly. It will save you twenty bucks and give you twenty life practices to work on personally.

Final Thoughts

Wallis and I disagree on a lot, but we also agree on a lot. While on the one hand I think Wallis goes too far by presenting straw men and false dichotomies, on the other hand many of his solutions do not go far enough. Wallis is a big believer in the inherent goodness of government, and believes that it must be there to thwart evil and keep markets in check. At the very most, I’m a believer that government is a necessary evil, and must be utilized in a minimalist role, but in a very specific one. My biggest complaint with Jim Wallis is that his vision for social justice cannot work without lots of guns: the only mechanism for enforcing the laws and regulations setup by the state is weapons.

While this book is fraught with economic half-truths, misleading explanations, and sometimes an incoherent ignorance with regards to some basic economic principles, if you ask me if you should read this book, I’d say yes, because Wallis is insightful, even prophetic at times, when it comes to admonishing personal responsibility and Christian social awareness for those who have long since forgotten the values upon which we ought to stand.

The Way Out: An Analysis

In his book, Rediscovering Values, Jim Wallis’s blames what he calls the Great Recession on three philosophies that we as a society have bought into: “Greed is Good,” “It’s All About Me,” and “I Want It Now.” While ignoring a great opportunity to discuss what about the institutional structures of our society promote such excessive greediness (the Federal Reserve System), and what facilitates such artificial booms that create the illusion that “I want it now” can be facilitated (again, the Fed), Wallis ignores all this and places the blame on greedy people making decisions on Wall Street. While I believe that Wallis is hitting the target on most fronts, it would be better if he could take better aim and hit the bulls eye. The target is good, and needs to be shot at, but the bulls eye is still seemingly out of focus for Wallis.

So when he gets to Part 4, “The Way Out,” he spends three chapters (which will be condensed for review here instead of each chapter as a post) countering the above three philosophies with the following three:

• Enough is Enough
• We’re In It Together
• The Seventh-Generation Mindset

Enough is Enough

When somebody tells me they believe individuals ought to live economically with a philosophy that “enough is enough,” and not be driven by consuming more and more in order to find happiness, I would gladly be behind them shouting the same message. It is indeed the case that we often live with more than we need, whether we do so to fill a void or just out of a habit. It’s a damaging to live by the “I need more to make me happy” mentality, and so trading it for being satisfied with whatever it is that we have (especially those of us with much) is a good thing.

As far as this goes, Wallis is fine. But Wallis often speaks from the perspective of a collectivist, and so uses some quotes from many centuries ago to get the reader into believing the myth that when some people have more, other people have less because of it. While this may have been true in mercantilist and pre-mercantilist societies, in a market economy this isn’t the case. Unfortunately our country has shifted back toward some getting rich at the expense of others, but Wallis misses yet again the opportunity to explain to us what institution makes this possible.

We’re In It Together

Generosity goes a long way, especially when it is shared generosity. This is essentially Wallis’s point in this chapter, where we shed ourselves of an “It’s All About Me” attitude. Using examples of local and community banks that did not make unethical loans, and are doing well during this recession, Wallis comes very close to what I’ve been looking for in this entire book:

Markets will always have ups and downs, bubbles will build and burst, business cycles will swing up and back down.

What? Markets will always have ups and downs? Bubbles will burst? Excellent admission. But here’s my question: isn’t this a great opportunity to go (even briefly) into explaining that it doesn’t have to be this way, that economic growth can be steady and stable on a gold standard without a central bank? You’d think, since Wallis is very much against “societal evils” (which he decries in Part 1). Unfortunately, here’s all we’ll hear from Wallis about business cycles:

It is beyond the scope of this book to delve into the difficult issues of who gets bailed out and who doesn’t or the nature of business cycles, but it is clear that we must continue to ask questions about the [I'll Be Gone] “business as usual” mentality.

So if “business as usual” must be questioned (and I wholeheartedly agree), and “business as usual” is what got us into this mess, THEN WHY ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH DOES YOU BOOK NOT HAVE ENOUGH SPACE TO TALK ABOUT BUSINESS CYCLES AND THE CENTRAL BANKING SYSTEM!?!?

The Seventh-Generation Mindset

Long-term thinking has always been a wise choice for businesses, and it is generally a wise choice for individuals and other organizations and groups. Long-term thinking and planning often plays an important part in economic growth, personal growth, and spiritual growth. And while short-term thinking, with CEOs and their golden parachutes “winning” and most of us on Main Street “losing” (by way of reduced investment fund values) has caused a tremendous problem for our economy, Wallis returns to one of the fundamentals of the Christian faith: ethical stewardship of resources. Reminding us of the Genesis 2:15 “tend and keep” command, Wallis implores us to think about stewardship as not only about the environment, but as an initiative to ensure that poor people have enough, and that future generations have enough.

Not to beat a dead horse, but maybe it would be helpful to ask the question, “What makes such short-term thinking profitable for businesses? What could eliminate such unsustainable decision making?” And while we’re asking the question, “How will this affect us seven generations from now?” how about we question the warfare/welfare state’s massive debt accumulation that will not be repayable for at least that number of generations at the current rate.

Redistribution

Jim Wallis gets much of his social justice theory and policies from the prophets in the Old Testament. He considers himself a modern-day prophet, and is oftentimes criticizing political antics for their missing moral component. In the spirit and fervor of the OT prophets, Wallis often brings up biblical concepts such as redistribution of wealth when it is an opportune time (in his opinion).

Chapter 7 in his book, Rediscovering Values, Wallis takes the opportunity to point out that if we did to the Bible with verses on social justice what Jefferson did to the Bible on supernatural occurrences, we would find ourselves with a very tattered and skimpy Scriptures. In other words, the entire Bible is chock full of social justice theology.

That is all well and good, Jim, but what about the people who don’t share the values of the New Testament, let alone the Old Testament? What about the moral and ethical atheists out there who despise the Scriptures and do not wish to be held accountable to your interpretation of the Scriptures? How do we respect individuals and their freedom of religion or freedom from religion if they so choose? It’s one thing to advocate social justice in the manner of the Scriptures. It’s quite another to advocate national policy implementing one’s concept of social justice. The context of the Old Testament prophets was a calling to repentance those who were called the people of God. While YHWH may have chastised the other nations, the people of Israel were in covenant with the Lord, and had violated that covenant. America today is not in covenant with God. To imply that “we” ought to return to those principles on a national political level is to confuse categories of ego-boundaries and geographical boundaries.

To be honest, I don’t really care if some poor people get some of my income to help them. I don’t really care if some of my wealth is given to those who have very little or nothing in order to help them “catch up,” so to speak. It is one thing to advocate that the rich and the poor ought not to have too much disparity in material wealth. It’s quite another to insist that your subjective values and preferences are superior to that of others.

Where’s Wallis?

For those (probably only one of you) who are wondering where I’ve been on my Jim Wallis posts lately, just a quick reminder that I’m still reading the book, and have finished the next chapter but am delayed in responding intelligently because I’m tied up in some other books, namely Brian McLaren‘s A New Kind of Christianity, which is simply blowing my mind right now, and John and Stasi Eldredge’s Love and War: Finding the Marriage You’ve Dreamed Of (which I’ve only barely started). I’ve also come up on some serious deadlines for a church campaign project that take a lot of my time. And I’ve got two kids and a wife who is writing her dissertation.

So I hope to be back to Wallis, since I’m thoroughly enjoying what he has to say. The chapter I just finished has lots of stuff in it worthy of responding to, so I want to give it a proper treatment.

The Voice of Psalms: Ancient but Fresh

Bible translations are a dime a dozen, especially when one is familiar with many of the Scriptures early in life. While I’m often skeptical of new translations delivering on their promises, I had some previous exposure to The Voice project’s New Testament “translation,” so I was very interested in reading a poetic and artistic rendition of the The Voice of Psalms. After all, what more appropriate book to be rendered by artists and poets than a book originally written by them?

Instantly upon receiving the book, it was apparent that the entire project—from type to touch—was crafted by artists. The beautiful full-color background and typeface invites the reader into the world of the ancient authors. Unlike other translations promising freshness, to my surprise and delight this one truly delivers. Psalms are by-and-large emotional poems, and this translation captures the depth and accuracy of the emotional fervor of the Hebrew text while maintaining a contemporary voice. The words don’t feel ancient, yet the writing was transcendent, as if I were reading a contemporary-yet-ancient expression of passionate and heart-felt musings. It also contains reflective “devotional” annotations on just about every page.

While I am not a scholar who can comment on the translation accuracy of The Voice of Psalms, I wholeheartedly recommend this artistic rendition of the psalms for its refined, poignant, and expressive value to any reader. It is certainly well worth the investment.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Is There an Equality Gap?

(This is the seventh in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

Every time I began a chapter of Wallis’s book, Rediscovering Values, I expected to find quite a bit that I disagreed with. Perhaps it was my general experience of being at odds with Wallis’s politics, but so far I’ve been rather impressed with the points he’s been making. While I’ve been rather critical of certain missed opportunities and failed explanations, in general Wallis is preaching a great message of a return to what he calls “the new old values.”

Then I read the chapter about income gaps. Citing the prophets and biblical archeological finds that report that when wealth equality in ancient Israel existed, prophets did not, and when inequality existed, the prophets were calling Israel back to equality. Wallis is unclear about what kind of inequality he’s talking about, but it is clear that he doesn’t like the “gap” between the rich and the poor. When the gap becomes greater (again, we must ask, by what measure?), economic turmoil is on the horizon.

The rest of the chapter is a diatribe about how back in the “good ole’ days” when Wallis grew up, the income gap between CEOs and the average worker was much less than it is today, and how today the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Citing various statistics that supposedly prove his point, he uses large numbers like the billion dollar salaries of employees to arouse our emotional anger. And if that were not enough to arouse our anger, he cites Reagan tax cut revolution, as if they were the source of the income inequality that has occurred over the past 30 years! (He ignores the fact that the government taxing wealth actually squelches productivity, wages, and social progress, not to mention its ethical considerations.)

I’m not economist, but I have learned a few things that Wallis would be better off knowing:

• In a market economy free from coercion (and when people are protected from it), wealth is not “distributed,” but is created
• The categories of “rich” and “poor” are not only relative categories, they are fluid; in other words, the same people who qualify as “poor” are by and large not poor given a certain amount of time, nor are the rich
• Anybody can cite a statistic and say, “Aha!” to prove their point
• A free market does not create “winners” and “losers” in the same way the government does

William Anderson, a Christian economist who has written about economic inequality, points out that inequality can be and is often created by the government more often than from a free market.

If there are dark economic clouds on the horizon, they have been placed there by the state. Violent government intervention into peaceful exchange and production can never result in production of more wealth. Instead, government creates winners and losers and changes the system of incentives. Where once people had to be inventive and creative in order to create products that others wished to purchase, now they must pay off their respective politician who will then attempt to change the structure of property rights in order to transfer wealth from productive to non-productive people….

Then there is the Federal Reserve System, which inflates the currency and creates its own set of winners and losers. Of course, as the Austrian Economists have demonstrated, an economic boom fed by currency expansion cannot sustain itself for long, and when the inevitable bust occurs, many economic opportunities are lost.

Art Carden, another Christian economist, deals with the question of how to measure inequality, and that many measurements are misleading and used only to supposedly “prove” a particular political side of the argument. He says that “[o]ur measurements of income and income inequality don’t account for the true differences, or lack thereof, between the sets of goods that the rich and the poor are able to consume. While income figures suggest that the gap between the rich and the poor is expanding, these figures may be misleading.” He argues that it may be better “to think of ‘inequality’ in terms of our ability to substitute the goods available to the poor for the goods available to the rich.”

There are many articles that deal with the eagerness by many political pundits to use the arguments about inequality to support agendas of wealth redistribution (though distribution may be the more accurate term). Walter Williams ponders the question, “Are the poor getting poorer?” here.  Thomas Sowell deals with inequality here and here.

Do I fault Wallis for railing against inequality? Not really. He’s merely pointing out something that may be harmful. And while he does write that “the gap was the deliberate result of public policy and political decisions made to benefit one group over another” (pg. 87), he is content to blame the Reagan revolution for such deliberateness, rather than explain the economics of central banking and its very own creation of winners and losers through its wealth distribution program for the politically well-connected.

The “I want it now!” society

(This is the sixth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

According to Jim Wallis, the three symptoms that drove our society to the Great Recession are greed is good, it’s all about me, and I want it now. That was the thrust of this section of his book, Rediscovering Values. In a biting critique of our instant gratification society, Wallis points out how cheap credit and easy money drive us all to believe that we can have what we want at any time with no thought for whether or not we actually have the money to buy what it is that we want. What used to be unthinkable—buying things on credit that were not investments into our future—is now the norm.

It makes sense, really, when you think about it. After high school, not only are many banks willing to loan for education, the government is willing to back those loans. No need to “earn” money for college tuition: the job at the end of the education will pay it back… eventually. Buying a car is easy… just put no money down, and get the car you want. If it’s a new one, it’ll last longer, even though you’re paying more. Need to buy a house? No need to save and put a nice down payment; just go into a bank and they’ll figure out a way to lend the money. Need an iPhone? Put it on the credit card and pay it off in installments. It’s become so crazy that the Garfield cartoon short where heating something for a single second in the microwave is becoming incredibly too lengthy a process for us.

Any reader of this chapter can “feel the heat” when reading about such instant gratification. Most of us have iPhones or some piece of technology that gives us instant gratification, and when we don’t have access to it our lives quickly turn to shambles (or we’re scrambling to ensure that it won’t).

Decrying unnecessary debt and easy money, Wallis nevertheless misses a perfect opportunity to point out that easy money and cheap credit are merely symptoms of an institutional problem. Nobody can drink too much alcohol if the alcohol was being served freely and without much discretion. Money doesn’t grow on trees in the natural world, yet printing money as if it did is exactly the reason cheap credit and instant gratification are obliged and rewarded in the I-want-it-now society. Wallis could have taken this opportunity to explain how the virtue of savings provides the proper basis for ethical and productive borrowing by businesses at the higher order ends of production. He could have pointed out that price-setting the interest rate distorts the business cycle, producing errors in judgment. Coupled with an endless supply of money from a central bank willing to insure the vast majority of the loans through federal lending programs, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

But blaming such personal and societal vices such as greed and selfishness are easy targets. They are easy explanations that nobody could retort aren’t actually issues, because they obviously are. Yet blaming excessive greed and selfishness is like blaming gravity on a plane crash. In the absence of gravity, of course a plane wouldn’t crash. But why wasn’t the gravity of greed kept in check by other dynamic forces that keep the aircraft stable? The fact of the matter is, no matter how much we decry personal and societal vices, the source (or sources) of the problem is left unchecked. Ignoring them won’t make them go away.

I’m sure I sound like a broken record, yet it seems as if there are numerous opportunities for Wallis to point out a major societal enabler is the source of the problem. Yes, it is true that greed, selfishness, and impatience are societal problems that we must repent of. Yes, we need to return to values that are not harmful to ourselves and to society. There is no argument with those things. The issue is, how exactly do we promote common good and virtuous behavior when the foundation of our entire economy is in stark contrast to those principles?

Wallis concludes the chapter with remarks about efficiency and social costs, blaming deregulation (which was pursued for the sake of “efficiency”) for harmful results such as deaths from peanut butter and lead paint in children’s toys. What’s amazing is not that Wallis wants safer foods at the expense of efficiency, but that he believes that a single institution ought to have a monopoly over the safety of our food and drug distribution, let alone is capable of of protecting us. Instead of promoting responsibility and social cooperation to achieve a better way to keep us safe, he instead advocates that we trust a single agency to keep us safe. But unlike other firms which fail to provide what they promise (and what we pay them to deliver), when the FDA fails to keep us safe, the “solution” to the problem is that it needs more funding! Further, he praises the efforts of state legislatures to outlaw texting-while-driving, a law that is inconsistent at best and unsuccessful at worst. He also explains the environmental damages done by the activities of those who wish to have what they want, when they want it, with no regard for the environment. But these are minor quibbles, so I needn’t go into defending the abolition of the FDA or our right to texting-while-driving, but should point Wallis to Butler Shaffer’s book, Boundaries of Order.

The bulk of this chapter provides an appropriate admonishment that new values ought to be embraced in place of the socially dangerous “values” of greed, narcissism, and impatience.

“It’s All About Me”

(This is the fifth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

As I’ve said before in other places, Jim Wallis has a prophetic ability to point out what adjustments ought to be made by those who are otherwise behaving in ways that are dangerous and self-defeating. This chapter, titled, “It’s All About Me,” named after one of the three things that “got us here” [into the Great Recession], is an insightful yet critical assessment of the attitudes that pervaded the American people, from the Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, to Wall Street, and to Main Street.

Jim Wallis doesn’t like the idea of a free market self-regulating because it doesn’t result in the kind of things he wishes for society. He never uses the term “free market” because he cannot get away with calling it “free” (though why he is prevented from doing so begs the question, “What is keeping it from being free?”). While acknowledging that self-interest “often does do its job” (pg. 54), he warns that basic self-interst can turn into self-obsession, narcissism, and dangerous pride.

The rest of the chapter is essentially examples of how our society has become narcissistic and now leans toward extreme individualism, and providing the antidotes of humility and community. Wallis calls Greenspan the “high priest” of the economy in recent years, who said that the principles of self-interest would govern the economy and keep it from faltering. Wallis would do well in his prophetic and critical role to point out in more depth than merely calling Greenspan the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. It is a perfect opportunity to explain the fatal conceit of believing that a central banking institution whose sole purpose is to cushion the blow of excessive self-interest and greed could actually purport to keep the economy in check.

If you are looking for a great examination of the attitudes that caused our recession, Wallis provides great insight into the dangerous and deceptive path of excessive greed and self-interest. But Wallis does not go far enough in his criticism of the Fed. It appears as though if he were to advocate anything (though this section of the book is about the causes and not the cures), he would explain how it is important that in a free market, self-interest is inherently limited by a natural standard of wealth that cannot be artificially manipulated by a central banking cartel approved by the federal government.

Free Book

I recently became part of the BookSneeze site, and chose “Free Book” as my first book to review. It’s worth the time reading, especially if you or somebody you know struggles with the idea of freedom in Christ. Some reviewers on Amazon.com were put off by Tome’s free spiritedness, but I found it not only refreshing but provocative (which I’m always a fan of).

Here’s my official review:

Brian Tome delivers a deliberately provocative and hard-hitting book about the importance of freedom to be who we are in God’s eyes without fear. Those who live by fear are not free, says Tome, and he provides the reader not only with glimpses of his own journey, but also shares the journeyings and exodus of others’ spiritual and emotional slavery. From explaining the value and importance of freedom to suggesting and provoking ways to be released from bondage, Tome leads the reader on an inner journey of self-reflection and deliverance.

At first, this book seemed to be the same-old, same-old stuff I’ve heard as I began to develop in my faith: God wants us to live in relationship with him, in freedom, and love him. Not only have I heard that before, I’ve been through that “stage” in the journey. Yet I kept reading, and discovered a deliberate and digestible path to receiving this freedom as a gift. What started out as a potential cliché and trite diatribe about a fundamental of the faith became an active journey toward that which the book was about: freedom.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com <http://BookSneeze.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Is Greed Good?

(This is the fourth in a series of posts analyzing each chapter in Jim Wallis’s new book, Rediscovering Values.)

Greediness is a social sin that is likely akin to smoking—everyone knows it’s bad. We avoid people who are greedy. We stop patronizing a business that feels as though greed is what drives it. And we more often than not do not praise greedy ambitions. Yet as Tim Keller points out (in a sermon I don’t have the link to), greed is a sin that nobody realizes they have, and easily explain it away. Unlike adultery, where you don’t just find yourself naked in the arms of your non-spouse, and think, “How did I get here!?” greediness sneaks up on us from within. We don’t wake up and decide to be greedy. Somewhere in our minds, we justify greedy behavior by calling it by another name—ambition, passion, self-interest. Yet somehow it is something we all tend to battle. It’s all about us, we want things our way, and we want it now.

Critics of a free market often chastise the concept of markets as “based on greed,” claiming that since its foundations are immoral and suspect, the progress delivered by the results of a free market are also dubious. Yet this criticism is unfounded and unfair, in part because no serious free marketeer believes that “greed is good,” and even the oft-quoted “greed is good” from the film Wall Street, in context, leads us to admit that greed isn’t exactly the best word to describe how markets work. Whatever the definitions we choose for the words “greed” and “self-interest” (which is often equated with the greed), its connotations lead us to the understanding that greediness is an attitude by which somebody seeks self-gain at the expense of somebody else, and doesn’t concern themselves with the ramifications of the nature of such exchanges.

To be sure, everyone becomes greedy at some point and in some fashion. As human beings, we are selfish creatures, looking for pleasures wherever they are to be found. It is natural (and not inherently immoral) that we seek our own interest. Indeed, it is the only way which we are able to act, for the very definition of “acting” means we are consciously acting in ways that benefit us in either an intrinsic or extrinsic way.

If we act out of our self-interest, and if this is not an inherently immoral notion, what is it about greed that makes it immoral? It is the “at others’ expense” part of the definition of greed that sets it apart from the notion of self-interest. The person acting out of self-interest is doing that which is natural (even a “selfless act” is done at the intrinsic gain by the one acting for somebody else’s gain). The greedy person is doing it with no regard for what it may cost others. Note that this doesn’t necessarily have to cost somebody something at the greedy man’s expense, it’s his attitude toward whether or not it could.

So what does this have to do with Jim Wallis’s chapter, “Greed is Good”? Jim blames greediness, but he doesn’t just blame Wall Street, though there is plenty of blame to place there.  He tells stories of the uber-wealthy and their 100-foot yachts that feel like dinghies to the owners to point out that there is always something more to covet, something greater to buy. And he even blames “normal people”  who were willing to finance a “second mortgage” to get things they don’t need. Society has devolved into a “you are what you own” sort of culture, and we all tend to buy into it as “normal.” But as Dave Ramsey says just about every day, “normal is broke. We want to be oddballs.”

Wallis writes, “Without a clear sense of self, a strong identity, and a community of purpose, it seems our default mode is to identify ourselves by the things we own” (pg. 50). In a society where affluence is the norm (compared to most of the rest of the world), we tend to take for granted that we work less than our ancestors did and can afford leisure because we are more productive! We are so far removed from what “basic needs” are that we easily fall into the trap of identifying ourselves by what we own. We find identity in brand names, our cars, our homes, our kids, our electronics, our clothes, and our music. When asked “who are you?” we typically identify with various aspects of our favorite forms of consumption, rather than with something that reflects our self-understanding and inner awareness.

So when it comes to greediness, it is an important sin to purge, especially when such “social sins” can be so systemic they disrupt the economy as a whole. But blaming greed itself is like blaming alcohol for drunkenness. Not only must there be a provider of the alcohol, there has to be incentive to consume the alcohol in excess. So it merely begs the question: how did we become so greedy? What in our society permitted greed to run rampant? If the rule of law was meant to restrain people from doing things at the expense of others, what happened?

This is where Jim Wallis fails to go. I’d like to believe that he simply doesn’t know about this, but it is more than likely that he doesn’t want to admit the source of the greed-enabling because it would undermine his belief in a “good government” with power to manipulate the economy for “social justice.” So far in this book (and I’ve skimmed the rest of it) there has been no mention of the Federal Reserve, no mention of government intervening in the marketplace, and no mention of legislation that encourages excessively risky lending. As Thomas E. Woods points out in his book Meltdown, “the Federal Reserve System is for all intents and purposes an arm of the federal government” (pg. 8). Critics will point out that the Fed is independent, and though they are technically right, it is an institution with federally-granted powers, and is entrenched so deeply with the federal government it appears as if there is not much “independence” in reality.

One of the most discredited ideas of the 20th century is central planning, the notion that the best and brightest minds in society, if in power, can direct resources throughout an economy in order to best appropriate them and put them to effective use. F.A. Hayek called this the “fatal conceit,” an arrogance that in hindsight is actually quite laughable. But instead of controlling the production of manufacturing of steel, or the extraction of oil, like the Soviet Union did, the Federal Reserve manipulates and controls the supply of money, making high-level decisions that ought to be left up to the market. Instead of letting the market set the price of borrowing and lending (i.e. the “interest rate”), the Fed controls that rate. When rates are lower than what the market would set, the result is an artificial boom. Stated another way, it is the appearance of wealth without the creation of wealth. Imagine attempting to build a home, and calculating you had 10 million bricks with which to build it, and so you plan a big house. But then you realize after using about 3 million bricks that you really only have another million left. You’ve got the same result as an artificial interest rate: less wealth (which can only be produced, not printed) than truly exists.

For a sermon, Jim Wallis’s chapter on greed works fairly well. But as a response to what he calls the “Great Recession,” it fails miserably by either refusing to ignoring the importance of putting his finger on a major source of the pain: the Federal Reserve.