O.J. Simpson and Virtue in the Marketplace (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday I suggested that free market capitalism is very efficient at processing the information it receives. If we feed a value system like individualistic materialism into the system, then the results will reflect those values. If we feed virtuous values into the system, then the results will reflect those virtues. Most would agree that individualistic materialism is by far the dominant value system being fed into our economic system. That presents a problem for Christians because these values are contrary to the gospel of Jesus Christ. What are we to do?

The apostles faced a similar problem. The Greco-Roman empire was grounded in a hierarchal power system but Jesus turned the world upside down. Jesus said the way to become first is to become last; to become the servant of everyone else. All humanly constructed hierarchies based on social categories are rendered meaningless. Paul understood this when he wrote about Christ’s new creation in Galatians 3:28.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Some have tried to minimize the radical nature of this passage by saying it is limited to salvation (soteriology). That rationalization doesn’t work. The end of the verse makes clear that Paul is writing about ecclesiology: “…for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Jewish men in their morning prayers were known to give thanks to God for not having created them a woman, a gentile or a fool/slave. Women could only observe temple worship and gentiles were only allowed into the outer courts. But with the Church, the symbol of entrance into the community ceased to be circumcision; a rite that was only possible for men. With the Church, the symbol of baptism was open to everyone. All are made one in Christ and the social hierarchies are rendered irrelevant. All are welcomed “into the temple” as worshipers and ministers of God. To use Paul’s repeated metaphor, we are to function as one body with each part of the body contributing to the welfare of the other. Yes, there would be leaders but leaders would be selected through gifting of the Spirit, not human social categories. Jesus and Paul were calling on disciples to feed a different set of values in to the social order.

This created a huge problem. The Romans demanded social order and order was achieved through dominating power. People refusing to live by the hierarchies of the culture would be perceived as a direct threat to social stability. Greek and Roman philosophers used to write household codes exhorting the householders to rule over their wives, children and slaves for the sake of the social order. Any Christian householder not enforcing these standards would be viewed as a potential threat. So what did Paul do? Paul did something highly subversive.

Paul wrote his own household codes. You can find them in Ephesians 5-6 and Colossians 3-4. Peter wrote similar instructions in 1 Peter 2-3. Many people have errantly assumed these codes to be instructions to maintain traditional behavior that regrettably seeped their way into he Bible. They get lost in the instructions to wives to submit to husbands and slaves to masters. They miss two startling differences in these New Testament texts when compared with the culture’s household codes.

First, the household codes were not about three sets of relationships: husband/wife, father/child, master/slave. They were about the relationship of one person: the householder to his wife, children and slaves. The Greco-Roman codes were always addressed to the householder and the household members were expected to obey under the penalty of death. Paul and Peter address their codes to all the members of the household, giving justifications for their requested behavior that usually center on service to God and “for the sake of the gospel.” All the members of the household are now free agents choosing service for the sake of the Kingdom.

Second, nowhere does Paul or Peter tell husbands to rule over their wives. Even in the frequently misunderstood Ephesians 5 passage, Paul does not tell the husband to be the head of the wife. He merely observes that he is the head. His only instruction is to love his wife to the point of death. The husband it to lay down his power trip for love and she in turn submits to him. They submit to one another in Christ.

Paul is simultaneously preserving the social order and thoroughly undermining it. At the surface level it may appears to be little different from Roman life because the “subordinates” are not seeking power. But at the core it is rendering the hierarchies meaningless. As this other-centeredness would spread to other households they would eventually rot the hierarchies from the inside out. Indeed, Rodney Stark, in the Rise of Christianity, points to two plagues in the second and third centuries that killed at least a quarter of the Roman population. As Romans abandoned the cities and their closest family members stricken with the plague, Christians fearlessly and joyously stayed behind and cared for others, some dying of the plague themselves. The other-centered abandonment shook the empire to its core as the Romans weighed the inefficacy of their gods and values compared to that of the Christians. Christians did not withdraw from the empire in order to live their values. Nor did they take to the streets demanding social justice. The formed communities of other-centered love and fed those values into the decisions making structures of the day.

The central problem in our day is not an economic system. The problem is a Church that is not grounded in other-centered love. Should the Church ever return to the other-centered love of the gospel, economic values would change. And when those values are fed into a potent “operating system” like free market capitalism, watch out! The world will be transformed.

The American Church has two obstacles to overcome to reaching this reality. First, there are too many Christians who have been co-opted by the individualistic materialism of the culture. They appreciate and champion the efficacy of the markets but their values are shaped more by the ubiquitous values of the culture than the other-centered stewardship of scripture.

Second, there are those who rightly resist individualistic materialism but conflate it with the underlying economic system. Many pastors and leaders in traditionally mainline branches of Christianity and on the Evangelical left, talk about “profit” as though it were a dirty word and deride the market system for being based on greed. These critiques have more in common with collectivist materialism than the gospel of Christ. If individualistic materialists tend to idolize the free market system, then the collectivist materialists tend to destroy it. Both are rooted in the Enlightenment, not Scripture.

The consequence of collectivist materialism in the Church is that those who would enter the market place to exhibit the other-centered love of the gospel are not supported. They are guilty by association of individualistic materialism because individualist materialism and free market capitalism have been conflated into the same thing. Rather than supporting and equipping ministers for the market place the leadership views them as suspect and tainted; except, of course, when it comes to the annual Church stewardship campaign.

No, the problem is not free market capitalism. As Rodney Stark has so eloquently shown in his book Victory of Reason, the genealogy of the ideas that gave rise to free market capitalism can be traced all the way back to fall of Rome and they are born directly out of the Christian milieu. The Enlightenment’s effective hijacking of these ideas in the service of human autonomy has created an ongoing war between individualistic and collectivist materialism. It is time that the Church act prophetically in reversing this Enlightenment hijacking by infusing the most potent economic system ever devised with the other-centered stewardship values of the coming Kingdom.

Comments

[Dana Ames]

Michael, you have outdone yourself with this one. I'm printing it. This is the best idea for a "third way" for the church in the west that I have ever seen, a way to actually speak and live prophetically over against the dominant economic metanarratives, if you will :) I just finished listening to NTW here:
http://media.odeo.com/files/4/3/4/1036434.mp3. Do wish you would listen to the whole thing if you have a spare hour between football games :). It's from an informal evening in a pub in Toronto last May, with Brian Walsh ("Colossians Remixed" author). One of the things he talks about is what the most pressing "empire issues" are for Christians. Your post dovetails quite neatly with his assessment (which he comes at from the point of view of a socialized European- and remember they got that way because of 1) centralization of the State before WWII and 2) the Holocaust) and his overall theology. I wish he could read this post.

Keep on with the book!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to you & Melissa.

Dana

[will spotts]

Excellent post! Your analysis of the effects of New Testament teaching on the prevailing culture -- NOT BY CONFRONTING THAT CULTURE WITH FORCE, but by living out a different way that subverts the dominant (and false) values -- is right on target.

One question: do you have more info on what exactly you mean by individualistic materialism -- e.g. how you define this and what it entails.

[will spotts]

Also - forgot to mention -- the point about a free market system leveraging virtue (or vice) is brilliant.

[Cheryl at MM Outreach]

Great post Michael! Lots of food for thought.

[Michael Kruse]

Dana, I will certainly check out the Wright mp3. I am editing chapter 6 of 10 right now. My mens group will be discussing Chapter 5 on Friday and I have lined up another small group for January who is going to read the thing as a unit and tell me what they think. If I still like what I've got then I suspect I might be ready to circulate to a broader audience for feedback. (But not before some one edits for grammar and spelling. :) )

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks Will. We live in a very different society from Rome in that we can to some degree directly influence the structures but that alone is insufficient. To often the choices are quite co-option and angry protest. At some point we have to have a proactive theology of economic redemption and live that out.

By materialism I am loosely referring to mindsets that "keep score" by economic and temperal standards rather than by criteria that value according to eternal values. It is the substitute of the penultimate good of personal material status for the ulitimate good of hearing "well done good and faithful servant" from the true owner of material things.

By individualism I mean placing one's person at the center of ethical decisions rather than seeing oneself as an individual steward in a community of stewards under one master. It is the deisre to achieve personal utopia.

By collectivism I mean placing the society at the center of ethical decisions and seeing individuals as tools of the state rather than as individuals God has called to be stewards of God's resources. It is the desire to achieve societal utopia.

As to "leveraging virtue," I have essentially lifted that from Roman Catholic social teaching. But it is at the very core of my understanding of the need for both economic freedom AND virtue.

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks Cheryl.

[Virgil]

I am very impressed by this post! I believe one problem the Emergent Church is facing is this involuntary reflex of rejecting free-market capitalism as the solution to poverty, when in fact common sense and practice does show us that redistribution of income is not the answer and free-market can actually deliver most of humanity from poverty and "social injustice."

Now you've also suggested that the "economic system" is not the problem rather the Church's failure to be other-centered. To some extent I agree but unfortunately so far the Church has not been relevant enough economically speaking to drive a large-scale philantrophy. So to a large extent the economic system is important - under socialism a free-market is strangled, making it nearly impossibly for Christians to accumulate wealth and use that wealth to help others, thus there is a direct link between economics, the marketplace and the Church.

A similar conversation on the topic of the environment prompted me to write a column dealing with similar issues: Environmentalism and Neo-Communism: A Very Frustrating Dialogue

Thanks again for an excellent article!

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks for this comment Virgil. Your observation about the Emerging Church is the one thing that most influences me to keep this community at arms length.

"Now you've also suggested that the "economic system" is not the problem rather the Church's failure to be other-centered."

I may not have communicated well here because I agree with what you are saying. Not only is the "economic system" (i.e., free market capitalism ) not the problem it is part of the solution, as you say. My intent was to point away from trying to "fix" the economic system toward "fixing" the Church.

Thanks for the link. I will check it out. And thanks for stopping by.

[Virgil]

Michael, could I perhaps ask your permission to republish your article on our website? I believe a lot of people would greatly benefit from this article.

Also, in essence I agree with your "arms length" comments regarding Emergent, but the Emergent Conversation has so much more to offer, which is why I find the conversation exciting - and those of us who do stand on the Reagonomics/Libertarian side of things could have a lot to offer to the others sitting at the table.

[Dana Ames]

I think that many emergers sense the bankruptcy :) of individualistic materialism but are not offered any other alternative than a move toward a different economic system because of the conflation issue. Nobody else is proposing anything different. At least the collectivist materialists that are left (socialized Europe) have stated goals of providing at least the basics of life for their citizenry. There's a problem with how they go about doing that, sure, but again, no other alternative has been offered. It's been there in the church all along, but I think along with our blinding inward-turning consumerism (of which I am among the chiefest of sinners, I admit) a large part of our inability to see it is that Protestant America has been so afraid of Roman Catholicism that it a) ignores church history, i.e. Stark's points, and b) ignores Catholic social teachng, which has a lot to offer, as you know.

If you don't already have someone in mind for proofing your MS, I'm volunteering. Spelling and grammar are my strengths, and I'm not afraid to ask questions for clarification.

Dana

[Michael Kruse]

Sure Virgil. I just ask for a link back to the original. I am linking your site. I think we may be fellow travellers.

[Michael Kruse]

Yes, Dana, I know what you mean about an alternative. I try to be patient and have dialog on this issue but I find that even the hint of a favorable view toward free market economics gets a knee-jerk indication that I am a "modernist" and don't understand the postmodern world. The conversation ends. Finding ways to raise the issues without getting kicked from the jerking knees is the challenge.

"If you don't already have someone in mind for proofing your MS, I'm volunteering. Spelling and grammar are my strengths, ...."

I think we talked about this awhile back. I have you in mind and at least a couple of others but I expect it will be at least past the holidays.

"...and I'm not afraid to ask questions for clarification"

That part I already knew! :)

Thanks!

[Dana Ames]

Cool! Looking forward to it!
D.