The Gospel Economy
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Jesus said to the host who had invited him, “When you hold a lunch or dinner . . . invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; and blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.” —Luke 14:12-14
I’d like to begin this week’s meditations by contrasting two economies or worldviews. The first economy is capitalism, which is based on quid pro quo, reward and punishment thinking, and a retributive notion of justice. This much service or this much product requires this much payment or this much reward. It soon becomes the entire (and I do mean entire!) frame for all of life, our fundamental relationships (even marriage and children), basic self-image (“I deserve; you owe me; or I will be good and generous if it helps me, too”), and a faulty foundation for our relationship with God.
We’ve got to admit, this system of exchange seems reasonable to almost everybody today. And if we’re honest, it makes sense to us, too. It just seems fair. The only trouble is, Jesus doesn’t believe it at all, and he’s supposed to be our spiritual teacher. This might just be at the heart of what we mean by real conversion to the Gospel worldview, although few seem to have recognized this.
Let’s contrast this “meritocracy,” punishment/reward economy—basic capitalism which we in the United States all drink in with our mother’s milk—with what Jesus presents, which I’m going to call a gift economy. [1] In a gift economy, there is no equivalence between what we give and how much we get. Now I know we’re all squirming. We don’t like it, because we feel we’ve worked hard to get to our wonderful middle-class positions or wherever we are. We feel we have rights.
I admit that this position satisfies the logical mind. At the same time, if we call ourselves Christians, we have to deal with the actual Gospel. Now the only way we can do the great turnaround and understand this is if we’ve lived through at least one experience of being given to without earning. It’s called forgiveness, unconditional love, and mercy. If we’ve never experienced unearned, undeserved love, we will stay in the capitalist worldview where 2 + 2 = 4. I put in my 2, I get my 2 back. But we still remain very unsure, if not angry, about any free health care (physical, mental, or spiritual) or even free education, even though these benefits can be seen as natural human rights that support and sustain peoples’ humanity. All too often, we only want people like us to get free health care and education and bail outs.
Brothers and sisters, you and I don’t “deserve” anything, anything. It’s all a gift. But until we begin to live in the kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of this world, we think, as most Christians do, exactly like the world. We like the world of seemingly logical equations. Basically, to understand the Gospel in its purity and in its transformative power, we have to stop counting, measuring, and weighing. We have to stop saying “I deserve” and deciding who does not deserve. None of us “deserve”! Can we do that? It’s pretty hard . . . unless we’ve experienced infinite mercy and realize that it’s all a gift.
Making Do with More
Monday, November 25, 2019
Charles Eisenstein is a fascinating public speaker, author, and advocate for gift economies. At a rather young age, he walked away from a thriving business career, recognizing that our cultural models of success simply weren’t working for him. Drawing on his background in business, mathematics, philosophy, and spirituality, he turned his attention to the some of the largest problems facing the world today, including climate change. Here he writes of a future in which material limitation actually delivers a greater sense of wealth:
A world without weapons, without McMansions in sprawling suburbs, without mountains of unnecessary packaging, without giant mechanized monofarms, without energy-hogging big-box stores, without electronic billboards, without endless piles of throw-away junk, without the overconsumption of consumer goods no one really needs is not an impoverished world. I disagree with those environmentalists who say we are going to have to make do with less. In fact, we are going to make do with more: more beauty, more community, more fulfillment, more art, more music, and material objects that are fewer in number but superior in utility and aesthetics. . . .
Part of the healing that a sacred economy represents is the healing of the divide we have created between spirit and matter. In keeping with the sacredness of all things, I advocate an embrace, not an eschewing, of materialism. I think we will love our things more and not less. We will treasure our material possessions, honor where they came from and where they will go. . . . The cheapness of our things is part of their devaluation, casting us into a cheap world where everything is generic and expendable. . . .
Put succinctly, the essential need that goes unmet today, the fundamental need that takes a thousand forms, is the need for the sacred—the experience of uniqueness and connectedness. . . .
We are starving for spiritual nourishment. We are starving for a life that is personal, connected, and meaningful. By choice, that is where we will direct our energy. When we do so, community will arise anew because this spiritual nourishment can only come to us as a gift, as part of a web of gifts in which we participate as giver and receiver. . . .
When I use the word spiritual, I am not contradistinguishing it from the material. I have little patience with any philosophy or religion that seeks to transcend the material realm. Indeed, the separation of the spiritual from the material is instrumental in our heinous treatment of the material world. So when I speak of meeting our spiritual needs, it is not to keep cranking out the cheap, generic, planet-killing stuff while we meditate, pray, and prattle on about angels, spirit, and God. It is to treat relationship, circulation, and material life itself as sacred. Because they are.
As I often say, when it is true, it is true everywhere, even in economics. In my opinion, Eisenstein seems to be describing the reality of the Universal Christ, though I do not even know if he is a Christian. There are so many insights worth sharing when we recognize that we live in a Christ-soaked world.
Summary: Week Forty-seven
November 17 – November 22, 2019
There is no such thing as being non-political. (Sunday)
We are called to be “in Christ,” which means we share—always imperfectly, and always in community with others—the call to be the embodiment of God’s love in the world. —Wes Granberg-Michaelson (Monday)
Twice a year we pause the Daily Meditations to ask for your support to continue this work. If you’ve been impacted by the Daily Meditations, please consider donating. A contribution of any amount is appreciated, as we are committed to keeping these messages free and accessible to all. (Tuesday)
In the end, politics is nothing more than an instrument of social good and human development. It is meant to be the right arm of those whose souls have melted into God. —Joan Chittister (Wednesday)
My meditation practice has led me to see that God is alive in all. No one can be left out of my care. Therefore [our] political work is anchored in caring for those whom we lobby as well as those whose cause we champion. —Simone Campbell (Thursday)
The work of getting to know others different than ourselves, made so difficult by our society’s divisions, is nevertheless the work of following Jesus. —Peter Armstrong (Friday)
Practice: I Will Trust in the Lord
The form of Christianity that has grown in the United States and spread worldwide is what we have to fairly call “slaveholder Christianity.” It is far, far removed from the Gospel as it has failed to respect the divine image in all beings. This kind of Christianity is good news only for white slaveholders—the (primarily) white men with religious and political power and those who support systems of inequity through their participation and silence. That most white Christians in our country can’t see this shows how much we live in homogeneous communities, with folks who are like us. We must publicly acknowledge and repent the harm that Christianity in this country has caused. And we must take steps—both political and spiritual—to bring healing.
I borrow the term slaveholder Christianity from Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a Christian activist in North Carolina working with youth, prisoners, and The Poor People’s Campaign. He’s the author of Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion. Jonathan offers the following singing practice to help us move forward together. [1]
While sound teaching can enlighten the mind and powerful preaching can move the heart, song has a unique power to move our bodies, pulling us into the river that flowed before us and will continue long after we are gone. The gospel practices that free us from our racial habits are not a set of exercises that will transform in thirty minutes. They are, rather, a way of life wrapped up in song. The central creed of this tradition that keeps me singing as I go is called “I Will Trust in the Lord.”
I will trust in the Lord,
I will trust in the Lord,
I will trust in the Lord till I die.
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield,
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield,
I’m gonna stay on the battlefield till I die.
I’m gonna treat everybody right,
I’m gonna treat everybody right,
I’m gonna treat everybody right till I die. [2]
Passed down through an oral tradition [by people kept in slavery], it is easy to memorize. . . . Like all the spirituals, [it] is both a melody you can hum while you walk alone and a song that leads us to harmonize when we are together. . . . This is a song to guide people who want to walk by the power of the Spirit in an unpredictable world.
Every verse we sing ends with “till I die.” We trust in the Lord, stay on the battlefield, and treat everybody right until we die because, frankly, nonviolent love can get you killed. We know the stories of martyrs like Dr. King. God only knows the stories of the millions buried in the woods and at the bottom of the sea. This is not a song to make you famous, but a faith to sustain you when you go to jail, when the money runs out, when you are powerless and cold and alone. You sing this song, and you know you’re not alone. You’ve been invited into something big enough to hold all your sorrows. You’ve become a living member of the body of Christ. [3]
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