Biblical Finance

All the news that is fit to print these days seems to revolve around our hobbled economy. The constant drumbeat of bad financial news is so heavy and insistent that it has become oppressive and, frankly, excessive. Once again, the media are taking every opportunity to scream at us that the sky is falling—or perhaps more descriptively, that our civilization is plunging into a bottomless pit of debt—and the government has responded by going into full crisis-mode. Wall Street investors are behaving like lemmings, running en masse over the nearest cliff every time another bad report comes out. So much for the buy-and-hold strategy.

A few economists and pundits are not as gloomy as the media, the government, and Wall Street. For the most part, these more optimistic observers are of a conservative stripe, faithful to the tendency of markets to correct themselves over time. They believe that the government should keep its nose, fingers, hands, and arms out of the private sector, and stick to its Constitutional role to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." As for promoting the general welfare, the Founders would vehemently deny that they meant bailing out the banks and auto industry.

Obviously, Americans are caught between two rival and irreconcilable schools of economic thought. One side believes in increased governmental regulation, massive infusions of public monies, increased taxation, and a command-and-control economy commanded and controlled by Washington politicians and bureaucrats. The other side counters with decreased regulation, incentives for markets and businesses, decreased taxation, and allowing millions of consumers to choose how they will spend (or save) their hard-earned money. The former is essentially a European-style socialism, while the latter is trickle-down capitalism.

Neither approach is God-ordained, by any means. Both are human-devised systems of economic thought, but they begin with different premises. Socialism starts with the assumption that wealth should be divided equally among all but that the means of production and distribution of that wealth should be a function of the state. Capitalism, on the other hand, is founded on the principles of a person reaping—and keeping—what he has sown and of individual liberty. In the real world, socialism—especially its extreme form, communism—has failed every time it has been tried, while capitalism is responsible in part for the burgeoning economies of the British Empire, America in its heyday, the Asian Tigers, etc.

To repeat, neither of these systems has God's stamp of approval. What capitalism has going for it is that it incorporates several biblical principles into its basic structure, and further, it makes the most of certain elements of human nature. For instance, people like to win, to be "King of the Mountain." Capitalism unleashes the human competitive spirit, making the pursuit of wealth into something like a game—and may the best man or woman win.

However, it has downsides too. For example, perhaps its most egregious failing is that it inspires greed. Many supporters of capitalism fall for the well-known Gordon Gecko line, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good," and they pursue the accumulation of wealth at all costs, leading to all sorts of grievous crimes in the name of profits.

This sin is certainly a factor in the present financial mess we are living through right now. Green-eyed investors gambled on bad home loans leveraged at 30 to 1. Corporations continued to expand beyond their means, even buying out struggling companies to pad their bottom lines. Thinking that the good times would never end, consumers continued to purchase whatever their hearts desired, maxing out their credit cards, signing on to new consumer loans, and taking out second mortgages. Now the piper must be paid, and the money is just not there.

What is God's take on all of this? Obviously, because of the sins involved—greed, dishonesty, theft, oppression, to name a few—He is not pleased, and in fact, we could say that the crisis itself is a predictable, inevitable judgment on the nation for breaking God's law in these areas. When men contravene a law of God, a penalty automatically goes into effect, and the only unknown factors are when and how hard it will fall. America's economic situation—not to mention what the rest of the world is experiencing too—is eliciting comparisons with at least the crisis in the early 1980s, and for some it resembles the Great Depression of the 1930s. Time will tell how severe it will be.

What does the Bible instruct us in these matters? Of course, the Bible is not an economic text, but it does include financial principles that all Christians should know and follow as well as they are able. Here are a few of them:

• God commands that we tithe (Leviticus 27:30; Deuteronomy 14:22). Contrary to the worst aspects of capitalism, God's system is based on giving, not getting. Learning this principle, a part of God's very character, begins with giving Him one-tenth of our income to fund the work of His church. Doing this also helps us to realize what is most important.
• In addition, God commands that we support the needy (Acts 20:35), particularly the widows and orphans, the disabled, the unemployed, and those who, due to circumstances out of their control, need a temporary hand up. This starts with our families, fellow members of the church, and as we are able, others in the world around us.
• God instructs us to avoid debt. "The borrower is servant to the lender," counsels wise King Solomon (Proverbs 22:7). Debt makes us subject, not just to the lender, but also to misfortune and to the unscrupulous. If we have debts, we should have a plan to pay them down as soon as possible and resolve not to incur any new ones.
• The Bible tells us to save so we can pass our wealth to our heirs. Solomon advises, "A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children," (Proverbs 13:22). While this is not always feasible, it should be a goal nevertheless, inspiring us—contrary to our fellow American's spendthrift ways—to put a little money aside as often as we can.

The Bible contains other principles, but these are all that space allows. In times like the present, it would make a good Bible study to search the Scripture for them and meditate on their applications to our lives. Perhaps then, we can avoid the worst of the ongoing financial crisis.

Coming Home to Roost

How should one describe the news that the world’s largest automaker and the United States’ biggest corporation, General Motors (GM), will cut 30,000 jobs (17% of its 173,000-employee North American workforce) and close a dozen facilities by 2008? By all rights, Americans should consider it to be huge news. Yet, the announcement on Monday has already begun to fade as the news cycle picks up and runs with more interesting stories like the return to Crawford, Texas, of Iraq War protester Cindy Sheehan and the pandemonium of Black Friday.

Financial analysts have seen this coming. GM stock has fallen to as low as $20.60 per share in the past year, an 18-year low, while its credit rating has plummeted to junk status. The company’s market share has fallen seven percentage points over the last decade (to 26.2%), as it has struggled to sell cars in competition with, frankly, better designed, better priced, and higher quality foreign models. The automaker lost nearly $4 billion in the first nine months of 2005, and $1 billion in the last quarter alone—and this during its massive employee-pricing sales drive and continued offering of low-interest loans through GMAC, its in-house finance unit.

Beyond this, GM has massive wage and benefits problems. Its unionized employees have perhaps the most generous labor contracts in the industry, and the unions are so far unwilling to make significant concessions, blaming management for the firm’s poor performance. However, its biggest burdens are healthcare and pension costs. Each GM vehicle includes $1,500 in healthcare premiums in its price tag, and unlike most U.S. workers, GM employees do not pay any deductibles on their coverage and only 7% of the premium (compared to about 30% in other industries).

In addition, the company’s pension system is being strained to its limits. Each active worker is contributing to the pension coffers for 2.5 retirees, an increasingly untenable situation, threatening them with the specter of GM eventually walking away from its pension obligations just as Delta Airlines recently did through bankruptcy. Rival Ford has similar problems looming.

Such monumental problems do not just happen—they are caused. GM’s woes appear to be the consequences of sins coming home to roost. Both the Old and New Testaments contain similar principles: Numbers 32:23 says, “. . . be sure your sin will find you out,” and Galatians 6:7 reads, “. . . whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (see also Luke 12:2-3). At the root of American industry’s troubles are policies and practices that are bound to result in conflict, injustice, and perhaps the demise of many once-indomitable companies.

Some might argue that these companies are just poorly managed, and there is some justification for such a conclusion. But why are they badly run? Behind the lack of financial and business acumen is a fundamental spiritual problem, which usually can be summarized in one word: selfishness. Other spiritual failings that may be included under this catchall are pride, greed, hatred, envy, corruption, deception, and a host of others that often come to the fore under intense competition. When careers and big money are on the line, all the stops come out.

The best we can do these days, it seems, is to lament that, for the most part, gone are the days of business providing a quality good or service at a fair price. Perhaps small businesses can still work from this model, but big business is too ruthless to operate on such a “naïve” principle. Good guys do not last long among the wolves of the business world because, by refusing to join the pack in its sordid activities, they find themselves weak, isolated, and marked for attack. Today, if one is not a predator, he is prey.

God prophesied of this condition by the prophets. In Hosea 12:7-8, God speaks directly to businessmen: “A cunning Canaanite [or merchant]! Deceitful scales are in his hand; he loves to oppress. And Ephraim said, ‘Surely I have become rich, I have found wealth for myself; in all my labors they shall find in me no iniquity that is sin.’” Here, the Israelite merchant brushes away his sin by saying that his wealth proves he is blameless, yet God shows him for what he is: a boastful, deceitful, and oppressing sinner.

Amos 2:6-7 expands on some of his deeds:

Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals. They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor, and pervert the way of the humble.”

From His vantage point in heaven, He sees businessmen selling out their employees for a little extra profit. He watches them greedily taking advantage of every opportunity to squeeze every last bit of wealth out of customers, especially the poor and the weak. He takes note of every time they corrupt someone to fatten their bottom line. He later mentions their trampling of the poor, harsh terms, and profligate lifestyles (Amos 5:11); their taking of bribes and interfering in the judicial system (verse 12); and their undermining of religious practices, cheating, and selling inferior products (Amos 8:5-6).

Isaiah adds that this condition runs rampant through the entire nation, not just the mighty businessmen (see Isaiah 1:4-6). He suggests that, if the common man were in the high-and-mightys’ shoes, he would do the exact same, sinful things! He mentions them in verses 21-23:

How the faithful city has become a harlot! It was full of justice; righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers. Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water. Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves; everyone loves bribes, and follows after rewards. They do not defend the fatherless, nor does the cause of the widow come before them.

What we are observing in American business was inevitable. The anything-for-increased-profits model of business can only produce inequities, mediocre products and services, and strife, and these, along with the workings of a relentless market economy that punishes inefficiency, will destroy even the mightiest of corporations. And who usually ends up suffering? The little guy, the poor, the weak. We need to watch for these business breakdowns, as they are signs that a crisis looms.

Apologizing for the Dead

On a regular basis, the church receives a question from a subscriber or a visitor to one of its websites about the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead. The Latter-Day Saints base their doctrine on I Corinthians 15:29, in which the apostle Paul seems to mention that it was being practiced in his day: "Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead?" The Mormons interpret these two questions to mean that Paul approved of the practice, using the fact of the resurrection from the dead to reason, "What good is baptizing for the dead if there is no such thing as a resurrection?"

The Bible, however, asserts in many passages that, before a person can be baptized, he must first repent (Acts 2:38) and believe (Mark 16:16; Acts 16:31, 33), but the dead, of course, cannot repent or believe because "the dead know nothing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5). Baptism is for the living; it is a ritual by which a living person acknowledge his sins, figuratively dies with Christ in a watery grave, and rises out of it to live a new, righteous life through Jesus Christ and the indwelling of God's Holy Spirit (Romans 6:4; 8:9; Galatians 2:20). Besides, there is no scriptural support for reconciling with God by proxy!

There is also a translation problem with I Corinthians 15:29. Paul is not talking about being baptized "on behalf of" or "for" the dead. The Greek word translated "for" is huper (often transliterated hyper), and it has several meanings: "above," "over," "instead of," "for the realization of," or "for the hope of," depending upon the context. Here, it is best translated as "for the hope of": "Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the hope of the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they then baptized for the hope of the dead?"

What is the hope of the dead? The resurrection, and baptism illustrates this when a person rises out of the water, just as the saints will rise from the grave in the resurrection. Paul is thus saying, "What good is it to be baptized if we do not rise in a resurrection from the dead? Why then should one be baptized for a hope that would never be realized?" The apostle affirms in verses 17-22 that, because Christ died and rose again, we indeed have this hope to look forward to.

Now, however, the modern culture of victimization has put its own twist on this false doctrine. Today, minority groups are demanding apologies for historical wrongs perpetrated on their ancestors. For instance, a small but vocal segment of the American black population is demanding not only that an apology be given for their forebears' bondage, but also that reparations be paid to them for their ancestors' work, pain, and suffering. Sons and daughters of Americans of Japanese descent have asked for—and received—similar words and payments for their parents' internment during WWII. Not to be left out, descendants of American Indians desire an admission of national guilt and restitution as well.

This concept has reached out to embroil industry as well:

A Chicago ordinance required Wachovia [a North Carolina-based financial holding company] to look through its history for any relationship to slavery. Because the bank was established in 1781, an investigation showed that it had connections to hundreds of now defunct banks, including two that were involved with the slave trade before the Civil War.

Ken Thompson, Wachovia chairman and chief executive officer, expressed his regret in a press release, stating that he was "deeply saddened" by the discovery and apologized "especially to African-Americans and people of African descent." . . .

Wachovia is not the first bank to apologize for connections to slavery. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. admitted to past slavery connections earlier this year. The bank offered to create a $5 million scholarship program for African-American youth, but reparation activists dismissed the offer as insignificant.

WCNC.com, the website of a Charlotte, N.C., television station, has reported that black leaders in that region plan to take steps toward seeking financial damages for the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. (Alexa Moutevelis, "Wachovia Apology Renews Reparations Debate," CNSNews.com, June 03, 2005)

Most people realize that the reparations movement is nothing more than an organized shakedown of the government and wealthy corporations. Cherchez l'argent, as the French say: "Follow the money." If the movement were really about principle, a statement of regret would be enough.

Is this any different in principle from baptism for the dead? America is 140 years removed from slavery, and obviously, none of the original players in that drama is still alive. Not one slave owner can apologize for his slaving ways, and not one former slave is still living to receive it. While the dim repercussions of slavery are still felt—predominantly in the form of racism, a different subject altogether—slavery itself and any apologies or reparations are literally a dead issue! As God puts it, "The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself" (Ezekiel 18:20). Guilt and recompense are not legally transferable to subsequent generations.

Besides, America paid the price of slavery. Over half a million men gave their lives in a war that settled the question of involuntary servitude in the United States, not to mention the destruction to America's economy and infrastructure due to that war, especially in the South, where the institution of slavery flourished for centuries. In the meantime, the descendants of slaves have won legal equality with whites and the same access to the American dream as any other citizen.

Perhaps the saddest part of this fiasco is realizing how many people are wasting their time, resources, and energy on fighting the squabbles of the past, when they could be working to make their and their children's futures brighter.