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 PrintableVersion Letter from AmericaIt’s not (just) the economy, stupid!Everyone is talking about it. Endless chat shows. NPR (National Public Radio), CNN, NBC, Fox Š you name it, they’re talking about it. The economy is having a little teeny-weeny problem right now. Same in the UK, I hear. Same just about everywhere. People are comparing it to the Great Depression (thankfully no one’s claiming it’s going to be as bad yet). People are coming up with plans and building projects. Newsweek is saying it’s worse than we think,1 The Washington Post reviews books that point the blame at the Government,2 CNN discusses our emotions and how they affect the economy.3 OpportunityBut, to put it strangely, if you’ll forgive me for a moment, is the economy really about the economy? Certainly at one level it must be. Witness, well, the economy. It’s in a bad way. Hence we talk about it. But, as Christians, we need to ask, what’s really going on? What’s the opportunity here? What’s the message here? What do we need to learn? What do we need to say? That is, we need to get beyond the headlines and ask how this new set of circumstances needs to be addressed from an evangelical and biblical point of view. Easier said than done. Perhaps James 1 can help. James advises the poor to take pride in their high position, and the rich to take pride in their low position (James 1.9). He means that Christ is a leveller. He then goes on to say, ‘For the sun rises with a scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business’ (v.11). So not only is Christ a leveller in the Christian community, because we are all one in Christ, the circumstances of the natural order of events teaches us this important lesson too. As plants grow and then wither and die, so material possessions are not reliable. We may have been taught this lesson in a rather shocking way recently due to the various controversies that surround some of the practices that people view as having contributed to the situation. But whether in extremis, or in a less dramatic way, this pattern of birth, growth, decline is inescapable when it comes to monetary possessions (not to say anything about the people who try to hold on to them). It’s been yet another myth buster. The current economic situation is not just about economics. It’s about the human tendency to place trust in economic prosperity. That’s as old as the hills and, as ever, as seductive as the snake. Sifting processSo the opportunity for Christians at this time is to learn (again) what it means to live with open hands. To practise generosity. Even in the midst of some of the trials and stresses. It’s an opportunity to find what really matters. Like when you have to go to hospital you get to find out who actually comes to visit you. So this economic situation is a sifting process in our hearts and in our communities. Do we stand upon the bank or upon the rock? Or, to refer to another biblical passage that is relevant these days, it lets us have a little window into our souls in terms of where our treasure is. ‘For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Matthew 6.21). If our heart is broken by the decline of our stocks, is that where our heart is? If our heart is broken by a Christian brother in need, or the church that requires shepherding, or the people who have not heard the gospel, then that is where our heart is instead. And, I suppose, it does also all come back to Jesus’s well-known but more honoured in-the-breach teaching: ‘But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven’. Why, Jesus? For heaven is ‘where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal’ (Matthew 6.20). The bottom line is that the best pension scheme in the world is not as secure as the least prize in heaven. Josh Moody,
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