Kruse Kronicle

Web icon set to be discontinued

BBC: Web icon set to be discontinued

The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users.

Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 February 2008, the company has said.

In the mid-1990s the browser was used by more than 90% of the web population, but numbers have slipped to just 0.6%.

In particular, the browser has faced competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which is now used by nearly 80% of all web users. ...

McDonald's in the Snack Wrap Era

Real Clear Politics: McDonald's in the Snack Wrap Era

OAK BROOK, Ill. -- To gauge this pell-mell nation's velocity, visit here with Jim Skinner, CEO of a company on pace to have a net income for 2007 of $3.46 billion, up 12.7 percent, on revenues of almost $23 billion. The evolution of McDonald's mirrors that of the nation in which it serves 27 million customers a day.

Americans commonly say this or that distinction is "as clear as night and day." Americans, ricocheting around the country around the clock, are erasing the distinction between night and day. Breakfast, the meal most apt to be eaten at home, now accounts for more than 25 percent of U.S. business for McDonald's. More than 90 percent of its restaurants have extended hours -- beyond the regular 6 a.m. through 10 p.m. -- and almost 35 percent are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, up from less than 10 percent just five years ago.

America is in the third era since its meals began to mirror its mobility. First came the Steak 'n Shake Era. That restaurant chain began downstate in 1934, in the perfectly named town of Normal, Ill., as Americans were getting used to eating out. They were leery of food that came from a kitchen they could not see, so Steak 'n Shake put its grills behind glass in full view of the dining area and adopted the slogan "In sight it must be right." ...

.......

McDonald's exemplifies the role of small businesses in Americans' upward mobility. The company is largely a confederation of small businesses: 85 percent of its U.S. restaurants -- average annual sales, $2.2 million -- are owned by franchisees. McDonald's has made more millionaires, and especially black and Hispanic millionaires, than any other economic entity ever, anywhere.

Freecycle turns trash to treasure

Yahoo! News: Freecycle turns trash to treasure

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - When Laura Gernell heard about a place where people gave away perfectly good things to strangers — no money changing hands, no questions asked — she figured it was too good to be true.

But husband Ronald had lost his job as a truck driver and she was temporarily unemployed, at home in a rented, unfurnished apartment with her infant son. With nothing to lose, she joined The Freecycle Network, a Web-based community swap program, and asked if anyone had a sofa to spare.

"I wasn't looking to furnish my whole apartment," says the 32-year-old mom from Marmet, just south of Charleston. "I was just looking for the basics, just something to sit on."

Three people e-mailed with offers, and Gernell used the sofa from that day in 2004 until last summer, when the springs broke. Today she runs West Virginia's largest Freecycle group, 2,100 members strong and part of a far-flung forum where people can find homes for things they no longer want. ...

Party Break

Too many holiday parties going on. I'll be back to the "Living Simply" posts later in the week..

Birth, death and shopping

The Economist: Birth, death and shopping

The rise and fall of the shopping mall

THE Southdale shopping centre in Minnesota has an atrium, a food court, fountains and acres of parking. Its shops include a Dairy Queen, a Victoria's Secret and a purveyor of comic T-shirts. It may not seem like a landmark, as important to architectural history as the Louvre or New York's Woolworth Building. But it is. “Ohmigod!” chimes a group of teenage girls, on learning that they are standing in the world's first true shopping mall. “That is the coolest thing anybody has said to us all day.”

In the past half century Southdale and its many imitators have transformed shopping habits, urban economies and teenage speech. America now has some 1,100 enclosed shopping malls, according to the International Council of Shopping Centres. Clones have appeared from Chennai to Martinique. Yet the mall's story is far from triumphal. Invented by a European socialist who hated cars and came to deride his own creation, it has a murky future. While malls continue to multiply outside America, they are gradually dying in the country that pioneered them. ...

The Truth about Tithing

Acton Commentary (Jordan Bailor): The Truth about Tithing

...You reap what you sow, they say, and when you sow the seed of the tithe with God, he’ll reward you handsomely. The focus on giving here is finally and fully on what the givers get back.

Often those who reason in this way will make an appeal to the prophet Malachi, who records this message from God: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it” (Mal. 3:10 NIV).

The teaching that we give in order to get even more is really a perversion of the biblical message. ....

The focus on the good brought to ourselves in the act of tithing is one that corrupts the purpose of the giving itself. C. S. Lewis provides an analogy to the proper view of marriage that fits here. Lewis said that you don’t get married to become happy, but rather to make the other person happy. Your own happiness is a by-product, a consequence, of maintaining the proper end. If, by contrast, you get married simply in order to make yourself happy, your true happiness is made that much more unlikely.

In the same way, whatever benefits we claim to receive from tithing, whether spiritual, emotional, or financial, these are not to be the reason that we give. We give out of obedience to God’s word.

.......

...This is not to say that there are not good reasons beyond simple obedience to give to the church and to other charitable organizations. Evangelical activist Ron Sider estimates that if all Christians gave a full ten percent of their income, “there would be enough private Christian dollars to provide basic health care and education to all the poor of the earth. And we would still have an extra $60-70 billion left over for evangelism around the world.”

While evangelism should never be an afterthought or relegated to “leftovers,” Sider’s point is true enough. If American Christians were to focus on the simple obedience of giving back to God what is really his in the first place, the church would have the resources to do great things. But we should give not primarily because of the good we expect it will do the church, or others, or ourselves (although these may be valid considerations for how we give). Ultimately we should give because, as the children’s song goes, the Bible tells us so.

Kitchens: Downstairs Upstairs

The Economist: Kitchens: Downstairs Upstairs

Women have not escaped the kitchen; it has come after them.

THESE days, nobody needs to cook. Families graze on cholesterol-sodden take-aways and microwaved ready-meals. Cooking is an occasional hobby and a vehicle for celebrity chefs. Which makes it odd that, at the same time, the kitchen has become the heart of the modern house: what the great hall was to the medieval castle and the parlour was to the Victorian terrace, the kitchen is to the 21st-century home.

The money spent on them has risen with their status. In America the kitchen market is now worth $170 billion, according to the National Kitchen and Bath Association—five times the country's film industry. In the year to August 2007, IKEA, a Swedish furniture chain, sold over 1m kitchens worldwide. The average budget for a “major” kitchen overhaul in 2006, calculates Remodeling magazine, was a staggering $54,000; even a “minor” makeover cost on average $18,000.

.........

The elevation of the room that once belonged only to the servants to that of design showcase for the modern family tells the story of a century of social change.

Living Simply in Abundance (11)

When it comes to explicit instruction about wealth the two major themes seem to dominate the non-gospel portion of the New Testament:

1. Losing focus on God and making wealth an idol.
2. Exhortations to share with poor and commendations for doing so.

In 1 Timothy 6:6-10 we read:

6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; 7 for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; 8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. (NRSV)

Also 1 Timothy 6:17-19:

17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

There are also warnings earlier in 1 Timothy that church leaders must not be “lovers of money” (3:3, 8). Love of money is listed among other sinful behaviors in 2 Timothy 3:2. The author of Hebrews warns:

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." (13:5)

James offers similar sentiments in 2:9-11. James also has condemnation for those who have amassed their wealth by depriving others of justice:

James 5:1-6

1 Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. 2 Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. 4 Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

Speaking to the church at Laodicea, Jesus says:

Revelation 3:17-18

17 For you say, 'I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.' You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18 Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Luke notes that Cornelius was singled out by God because of his generosity to the poor (Acts 10:4). 1 John 3:17 asks:

How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

James 1:27 makes service to the poor the test of “religion that is pure”:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Again, the themes seem to focus on avoiding the love of money and generosity to the poor. Yet there is little extended discourse on wealth and giving in most of the books of the New Testament. The one exception is 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 as the Corinthians are exhorted to give to another fellowship. We turn there next.

[Index]

The World's Top Microfinance Institutions

Forbes: The World's Top Microfinance Institutions

Microfinance has become a buzzword of the decade, raising the provocative notion that even philanthropy aimed at alleviating poverty can be profitable to institutional and individual investors. Instead of merely writing a check (then writing it off), why not make a tidy profit from a short-term, high-interest loan, most for under $200, so that a Mexican seamstress may buy a new sewing machine? Or so a Moroccan farmer can buy chickens so he may sell more eggs? Billionaires, global leaders and Nobel Prize recipients are hailing these direct loans to uncollateralized would-be entrepreneurs as a way to lift them out of poverty while creating self-sustaining businesses.

That promise has had a magnetic effect on private capital sources. Microfinance funding from private investors more than tripled to $2 billion in 2006. The field has attracted sterling banks and fund managers, including Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), blue-chip venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital, tycoons like eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ) founder Pierre Omidyar and Oscar-winning screen stars such as Robert Duvall--they've all joined the chase for returns in microfinance. Today, there are upward of 12,000 microfinance institutions issuing loans.

To help investors parse them, Forbes compiled its first-ever list of the Top Microfinance Institutions. ...

Here is the listing to the Top 50.

Hilton gives fortune to charity (not Paris)

Forbes: Hilton gives fortune to charity (not Paris)

The 80-year-old billionaire intends to leave his money to a charitable group founded by his father - sorry, Paris and Nicky.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The Hilton family patriarch, Barron Hilton, will pass on the $1.2 billion windfall from the sale of Hilton Hotels Corporation - not to his famous progeny, but to his family's philanthropic foundation, Fortune has learned.

Barron Hilton's donation will effectively double the size of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, named after Barron's father, the man who built Hilton Hotels from scratch and great-grandfather of celebutantes Paris and Nicky Hilton. In a statement e-mailed to Fortune, Barron Hilton wrote: "My personal net worth today, including created trusts, is approximately $2.3 billion, and what ever value it is upon my passing, it is my intent to contribute 97% of my estate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, following in my father's footsteps." ...

Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters

Forbes: Profit And Poverty: Why It Matters

Through the ages, we have come to associate profit with greed and serving the poor with self-sacrifice. Accordingly, now that the outstanding performance of leading microfinance banks has inserted banking at the base of the pyramid as an integral part of emerging-markets finance, socially conscious investors are starting to agonize over earning returns while serving the poor. By focusing on their motivations in helping the poor rather than on poverty itself, they have obscured the pragmatic realities of the problem they wish to address.

Any intervention that seeks to meaningfully roll back poverty--whether it is microfinance, education, primary health care, housing or access to basic services such as water and energy--must fulfill four basic conditions.

The first is scale. When there are three billion people surviving on $2 or less a day, reaching a few thousand is like aspirin in the face of a raging cancer. The second is permanence, an assurance that the intervention will be present not only for today's poor but for their children and their children's children. In turn, this requires that the intervention outlast the finite lives of its current champions. The third is continuous efficacy, the ability of the intervention to become better and better through time. The fourth is continuous efficiency, the capability of the intervention to become cheaper and cheaper with each passing day.

.......

In fact, humanity has found only one way to deliver consistently and simultaneously the four attributes of scale, permanence, efficacy and efficiency, and it is through private enterprise.

Living Simply in Abundance (10)

What does the non-gospel portion of the New Testament have to say about wealth and abundance? In most ways it is consistent with what we have seen in the rest of scripture. But we need go no further than the Chapter 2 in Acts before we come across one of the more controversial passages concerning wealth. Following Pentecost we read:

Acts 2:44-45

44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

Acts 4:34

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.

It simply isn’t clear what this entailed. Acts chapter 5 speaks of Ananias and Sapphira who apparently were a part of the community and still owned land. They appear to have sold a portion (not all?) of their land and brought the money for distribution to the needy. Their sin was apparently dishonesty about how much they were giving, not that they had retained a portion of the money. “Holding things in common” appears to have meant that each retained control of their own property but as needs arose folks made their property available to address the needs of others.

This appears to have been a response to the large numbers of conversions. No doubt many were ostracized from their families and lost their livelihoods. The early chapters of Acts give a descriptive, not a prescriptive, presentation of how these problems were handled. What is instructive is that an economic response was seen as a natural outflow of becoming a Christian and the needs of the poor were addressed.

We find no teaching in the New Testament that prescribes radical society-wide redistribution or communal ownership. In fact, we find explicit instruction like:

1 Corinthians 16:1-2

1 Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. 2 On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come.

Ephesians 4:28

Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.

2 Thessalonians  3:10-13

10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. 11 For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. 12 Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

Passages such as these presume private ownership of goods. Furthermore, passages such a 1 Corinthians 11:17-22 chastise the wealthy for eating the Lord’s Supper before the poor have a chance to arrive. This presumes, as happens in several other places, that there are wealth differences among the believers. Private ownership has not been eliminated and if we refer back to the jubilee code we see that communal ownership of all property would directly contradict God’s decree that each Israelite have a private ownership stake in the land.

So what of the New Testament passages that speak specifically to wealth, abundance, and giving?

[Index]

Forecasting the Election Based on the Economy

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: Bread and peace: forecasting the election from the economy, and a question about plotting by Andrew Gelman

Chinese goods transform life in Southeast Asia

International Herald Tribune: Chinese goods transform life in Southeast Asia

LONG LAO GAO, Laos: The pineapple that grows here on the steep hills above the Mekong River is especially sweet, the red and orange chilies unusually spicy, and the spring onions and watercress retain the freshness of the mountain dew.

For years, getting this prized produce to market meant carrying a giant basket on a back-breaking, daylong trek down narrow mountain trails that cut through the jungle.

That is now changing, thanks in large part to China.

Villagers ride their cheap Chinese motorcycles, which sell for as little as $440, down a badly rutted dirt road to the markets of Luang Prabang, the charming city of Buddhist temples along the Mekong that draws flocks of foreign tourists. The trip takes just one and half hours.

"No one had a motorcycle before," said Khamphao Janphasid, 43, a teacher in the local school whose extended family now has three of them. "The only motorcycles that used to be available were Japanese and poor people couldn't afford them."

Cheap Chinese products are flooding China's southern neighbors and consumers in Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia are laying out the welcome mat.

The products are transforming the lives of some of the poorest people in Asia, whose worldly possessions only a few years ago typically consisted of not much more than a set or two of clothes, cooking utensils and a thatch-roofed house built by hand.

The concerns in the West about the safety of Chinese toys and pet food are largely moot for the people living in the remote villages here, although some residents complain about quality. As the first introduction to global capitalism, Chinese products are met with deep appreciation.

"Life is better because prices are cheaper," Khamphao said. ...

Merry Christmas (from Isaac)

They're off partying and all I got was this stupid hat. Humbug!

May you have a merrier Christmas than I am.

The changing face of British Christianity

London Telegraph: The changing face of British Christianity

"Attendances are falling at traditional churches, but are booming in unlikely places. Jonathan Wynne-Jones and Olga Craig reveal the plans for a mainstream revival. ..."

No Room in the What?

Christianity Today: No Room in the What? by Ben Witherington

Mary and Joseph weren't trying to check into a hotel—they were staying with relatives.

I am here to tamper with a masterpiece, or better said, to share with you a rather different reading of Luke 2:1-7, one solidly grounded in the facts, but nowhere represented in Christmas carols and pageants. I must tell you that I have heard endless sermons on how there was "no room in the inn" and how it was typical of a cold, fallen world to cast the holy family and Jesus out into the cold, and so on, often preached with great fervor but producing no ferment at all.

We've heard it countless times before. We've all been inoculated with a slight case of Christmas, preventing us from getting the real thing, or in this case, from reading these texts in a more historical way. The problem with the Christmas-pageant version is, this is not at all likely to be what Luke intends to tell us in this much beloved and belabored Christmas tale. ...

Senior Qaeda Theologian Urges His Followers To End Their Jihad

New York Sun: Senior Qaeda Theologian Urges His Followers To End Their Jihad

WASHINGTON — One of Al Qaeda's senior theologians is calling on his followers to end their military jihad and saying the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a "catastrophe for all Muslims."

In a serialized manifesto written from prison in Egypt, Sayyed Imam al-Sharif is blasting Osama bin Laden for deceiving the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, and for insulting the Prophet Muhammad by comparing the September 11 attacks to the early raids of the Ansar warriors. The lapsed jihadist even calls for the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and his old comrade Ayman al-Zawahri. ...

The battle of the books

The Economist: The battle of the books

The business of marketing the Bible and the Koran says a lot about the state of modern Christianity and Islam.

CHRISTIANS and Muslims have one striking thing in common: they are both “people of the book”. And they both have an obligation to spread the Word—to get those Holy Books into the hands and hearts of as many people as they can. (The Jews, the third people of the book, do not feel quite the same obligation.)

Spreading the Word is hard. The Bible is almost 800,000 words long and littered with tedious passages about begetting. The Koran is a mere four-fifths of the length of the New Testament; but some Westerners find it an even more difficult read. Edward Gibbon complained about its “endless incoherent rhapsody of fable and precept”. Thomas Carlyle said that it was “as toilsome reading as I ever undertook; a wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite”.

Yet over 100m copies of the Bible are sold or given away every year. Annual Bible sales in America are worth between $425m and $650m; Gideon's International gives away a Bible every second. The Bible is available all or in part in 2,426 languages, covering 95% of the world's population. ...

Web sparks person-to-person lending around the world

Christian Science Monitor: Web sparks person-to-person lending around the world

Social-networking principles have spawned a lending marketplace that lets individuals make loans to almost anyone.

Every morning, as soon as Diane Reese wakes up in her Saratoga, Calif., home, her first steps lead to the family computer. She can't wait to find out whether her 782 debtors are making their payments on time.

For Ms. Reese, an IBM engineer, the revenue stream from loans she's made at 0 percent interest through www.kiva.org isn't as important as what the payments represent. They mean her hand-picked business partners – a barber in Uganda, a fish saleswoman in Vietnam, a school principal in Kenya – are lifting themselves out of poverty.

"We're peers now," Reese says. "I'm investing in their small enterprises.... I'm not being the beneficent Santa Claus or something. I'm a partner with people who are working to improve things. It's a very satisfying way to invest money."

As Christmas arrives with a seasonal reminder to look out for the less fortunate, investors are finding a growing range of options for helping without a handout. Thanks to creative intermediaries and new avenues on the Internet, they're lending to specific individuals or operations that tug at their heartstrings. And they're usually getting their money back, sometimes with a respectable interest rate.

For would-be lenders with a social agenda, options are proliferating at a rapid clip. In February, Prosper (www.prosper.com) debuted with a claim to be America's "first people-to-people lending marketplace." In May, LendingClub launched a direct lending site (www.lendingclub.com) that uses a social-networking database to link lenders with suitable borrowers on the basis of a lender's preferences and risk tolerance. Next year, Kiva plans to begin paying nominal interest to its lenders, who are often drawn to the nonprofit's borrower network of entrepreneurs in developing countries. ...

Writing Break

While I'll still be linking articles, I don't expect to do any original posts until Thursday this week. Have a merry Christmas!

Iowa Corn Flakes

Mrs. Kronicle's folks live in Iowa where they are experts on corn. Her mother recently sent me this picture of the latest innovation in Corn products.

(Update: I think the pic originated here.)

What's Wrong with Christmas Consumerism

Acton Powerblog (Jordan Ballor): What's Wrong with Christmas Consumerism

But I don’t think the problem is with the gifts per se. I think it’s with the “givers.”

Speaking of material goods, Augustine writes, “Sin gains entrance through these and similar good things when we turn to them with immoderate desire, since they are the lowest kind of goods and we thereby turn away from the better and higher: from you yourself, O Lord our God, and your truth and your law.” Material goods, just like any other created reality, can be an occasion for sin and idolatry.

So if that is the problem, with our immoderate desires, what is the solution? Reordered desires. Rightly valuing material goods and gifts as penultimate and limited created goods.

Friday Night at the Movies

This is where Mrs. Kronicle and I will be this evening. I loved the first one.

World's next outsourcing hub: Kenya?

Christian Science Monitor: World's next outsourcing hub: Kenya?

The government is pumping millions of dollars into improving the country's outdated telecom system in an effort to capitalize on Kenya's large pool of English-speaking graduates.

Eventually it wants Kenya to be as well-known for its call centers as its lions, tea, and coffee.

........

Last week, the Kenyan government signed an agreement with French-US telecom group Alcatel-Lucent for a fiber-optic cable linking the Kenyan port of Mombasa with the United Arab Emirates.

More important, it will connect East Africa to the rest of the world's Internet capacity and replace the slow and costly satellite links that act as a brake on the country's fast developing industry in business process outsourcing (BPO).

At the signing, Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communications, said the connection would allow more ordinary Kenyans to surf the Internet. But the real driving force behind the deal, he said, was the potential for creating jobs in call centers and the rest of the outsourcing industry.

........

The $82-million cable will run from Fujaira, in the UAE, along the seabed of the Gulf of Oman and down the African coastline to Mombasa. It is expected to bring the cost of connectivity down to about $500 per month [per megabyte]  immediately on completion in January 2009.

In the meantime, the government will use $9 million from a World Bank loan to subsidize connections and kickstart the industry in the new year.

Two other cables are also being planned.

.........

In a report published last year, the group forecast that Africa would see the fastest growth in the number of call centers for the rest of the decade, and singled out Egypt, Botswana, Ghana, and Kenya for particularly rapid expansion.

Egypt already has a booming outsourcing industry with many Western companies operating there.

Meanwhile, Botswana, Ghana, and Kenya – all former British colonies – have the sort of linguistic skills and education systems that make them well placed for call centers, according to the report.

And signs of a shift in the global pattern emerged earlier this year as several Indian companies began looking to outsource their own outsourcing operations, as rising wages and crumbling infrastructure took their toll.

Living Simply in Abundance (9)

What was Jesus view of wealth? I want begin in what may not seem to be the most obvious place for discussion: The discourse on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24-25), especially the stories of the talents and the story of the sheep and goats in chapter 25.

Matthew presents Mount of Olives discourse as Jesus final teaching before the Passion Week. Jesus talks about what the end of time will be like. In 24:36-44, Jesus calls for watchfulness where the evil ones will be “swept away” and the righteous “left behind” as in the day of Noah. He then turns to the story of the unfaithful steward in 45-51.

The story of the unfaithful steward draws on the image of the large landholder who would often leave for months at a time to deal with various matters. Households in the ancient world were businesses and in this case the image of large villa is in mind. He had a household manager (usually a free member of the household but sometimes a trusted slave) who was to run the household exactly as the owner would have run it had he been there. The manager was called the oikonomos in Greek and it is the word from which we get “economics.” This manager was responsible for running the business well but also for taking care of the needs of the household members. In this story Jesus has the master return only to discover that his oikonomos has not managed the estate according to the master’s heart and mind and he exercises judgment on the unfaithful steward.

After a story about ten bridesmaids and the need for watchfulness (25:1-23), Jesus gives another story set within the context of household management. Three servants are given talents by their master: Five to one servant, two to another, and one to yet another. He tells them to invest them in his absence. The master leaves for a long time and then returns to settle accounts. The first two servants doubled their holdings but the third hid his talent and presented it when the master returned. We are so familiar with this story that we fail to pay close attention to the dialog between the master and this last servant.

The servant clearly knows that he is in trouble. Why does he insult his master?:

Matthew  25:24-25

24 Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' (NRSV)

Kenneth Bailey points out that in Palestinian culture there were two types of men that become wealthy. One was the great nobleman of the plans. The other was the chieftain of the hill country marauders. These tribes prided themselves on their ruthless ability to live off the land; to steal grain and livestock from the people of the valley. The words of the servant in verse 24 would be high praise to one of these marauder chieftains. The problem is that the master in the story is clearly a nobleman of the plains. This servant has totally misjudged the character, heart, and mind of his master. This has led him to act contrary to his master’s wishes. He did not have the heart and mind of his master. Jesus warns us not to make the same mistake.

The final story is the separation of the sheep and the goats. The Son of Man commends the sheep:

Matthew 25:35-36

… 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.'

This list of works was used by the Jews to symbolize all good works. These were the things that the Son of Man wanted done. The sheep did them. They had the heart and mind of the Son of Man without even knowing who the Son of Man was. It was instinctive. When it comes to the goats, we get the distinct impression that had they known it was the Son of Man they were ignoring that they would have behaved differently. That is to say, had they known something was in it for them they would have behaved differently. But in either case, they did not have the heart and mind of the Son of Man. The key to Jesus final instruction appears to be simplicity: We are to have our minds singularly focused on his return and to have his very heart and mind in all we do.

As I look through the gospels and read where Jesus talks about the poor, I’m unaware of any where Jesus attributes the poverty of some to the wealth of others. Nor does Jesus advocate closing the gap between the rich and the poor. Jesus does draw on the imagery of the jubilee in Luke 4 when he announces his ministry at Nazareth, but as we have seen, the jubilee was primarily about insuring that everyone received and kept an ownership stake in God’s Israel project.

When it comes to wealth, Jesus usually expresses his concern in terms of the impact that wealth has on those who own it. In the parable of the Rich Young Man in Matthew 19, Jesus tells the Young Ruler he can inherit eternal life by doing the following:

You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (19:18-19)

These are the “horizontal” commands (human relationships) of the Ten Commandments and if you look closely you will find one is missing: You shall not covet. When the man says he has kept all of these, Jesus says all the man lacks is to sell all he has and give to the poor. The issue is not that the poor need his money so much as this man is trapped in covetousness.

Jesus tells the story of the man who tears down his barns to build bigger barns in Luke 12. Kenneth Bailey notes the man in deliberating to himself instead of with others. This man has cut himself off from others and has become obsessed with his wealth to the point of his own destruction.

Negatively, Jesus warns that we can’t serve both God and mammon and that it is difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Positively, he tells us not to worry for as God takes care of the flowers, so will he take care of us. There is the story about the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16, which many use as a condemnation of wealth. Yet the Rich Man calls out to Abraham in heaven to relieve him. Abraham had extravagant wealth in his lifetime. One rich man is calling out to another. Is this a condemnation of wealth or of the rich man’s devotion to his wealth apart from other priorities?

The common theme in so much of Jesus teaching is rectifying misaligned priorities. Simplicity (singleness of focus) has been lost. The call is to simply focus on God and seek his heart and mind. That will reshape every aspect of our lives including how we use our wealth. The poor have less problem keeping this focus because they have no other choice. It is the wealthy who are in peril.

Next we will take a quick look at what the rest of the New Testament has to say about wealth.

[Index]

James Dunn on the New Perspective

Michael Bird notes that, "James Dunn's 1983 essay "The New Perspective on Paul" originally published in BJRL, is now available on-line thanks to Mark Mattison of the Paul Page." Dunn also has new book to be released any day now called The New Perspective on Paul.

E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright are three theologians that have developed the NPP, although each with differences. Bird has recently published a book The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification and the New Perspective. I added it to my bookshelf a couple of weeks ago but haven't read it yet. I hope to get to it next month.

A landslide in South Korea

The Economist: A landslide in South Korea

Does a new era beckon?

AS VOTING ended in South Korea’s presidential election, exit polls indicated what most in the country had anyway expected: the opposition Grand National Party’s Lee Myung-bak was to be the country’s president. Mr Lee won a thumping endorsement, securing close to 50% of the vote in a 12-man presidential field. Mr Lee’s victory brightens the conservative GNP's prospects of also winning control of the legislature in elections next April.

So ends a decade of liberal rule by Kim Dae-jung and his successor Roh Moo-hyun. South Koreans are disillusioned with Mr Roh, who talked about improving their lot but failed to deliver robust economic growth. His divisive rhetoric angered many. “A president has to bring the country together,” Hyundai's chairman and a legislator, Chung Mong-joon, suggested. “Roh Moo-hyun divided the country.” ...

The Courage of the Ordinary

The Eagle and Child (Russell Smith): The Courage of the Ordinary

A few years ago, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences published a report on grade inflation in American Universities. One of the startling examples from that report: 80% of all Harvard students graduate with honors; nor was Harvard alone in grade inflation. When this is the case, “with honors” becomes meaningless. (Princeton has instituted policies to reverse the trend – and I commend them for their courage in their stand). ...

...Honoring excellence without honoring human dignity leads to tyranny; honoring human dignity without honoring excellence leads to decadence. Somehow, we need both.

For this reason, I believe in celebrating the courage of the ordinary....

Amen to this post!

Living Simply in Abundance (8)

What did the prophets have to say about wealth and justice? It is frequently preached today that the prophets condemned economic inequities and proclaimed God’s desire for an equalization of wealth. Is this true?

First, we need to recognize that there are there aspects to economic justice.Li

1. Distributive Justice – Addresses how capital and goods are distributed throughout the society.
2. Commutative Justice – Addresses the truthfulness of parties to an economic exchange.
3. Remedial Justice – Addresses just compensation and punitive action when there has been malicious or careless damage done to life, liberty or property.

If you go to the prophets and read what they are crying out against it is overwhelming commutative and remedial justice, combined with disregard for the poor. The poor are denied remedial justice in the appropriation of their land. There is callousness toward the plight of the poor. It is not addressing wealth distribution per se.

Look at the specific indictments that led up to Amos’ famous “let justice role down” prophecy in Amos 5:18-24.

Amos 5:10-12, 15

10 They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth. 11 Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. 12 For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins– you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate. …

15 Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; …

The “city gate” was the place where disputes where heard and settled. The poor were being denied remedial justice. In verse 12 we see bribes mentioned, which is commutative justice. In other passages we read about dishonest scales and measures (Micah 6:11) I’m not aware of any passages that call upon Israel to redistribute the wealth so all will be of approximately of the same economic status. The prophets are damning the callousness to the plight of the poor and the perversion of commutative and remedial justice.

There are condemnations like this one from Isaiah:

Isaiah 5:8

Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land!

Joining land to land contravenes the jubilee code. The poor have not received justice and the powerful have driven them off the land. There needs to be redistribution. But it is a redistribution of “stolen property” back to its rightful owner, not an attempt to create social equality in wealth distribution. The latter is an anachronistic reading of communitarian Modernist agendas back into the text. Remedial justice has been denied the powerless and needs to be restored.

Some theologians today, many using a Marxist and liberationist hermeneutics, use Old Testament prophecy to condemn the accumulation of wealth because it violates an equal distribution of property principle they project back into jubilee and into the message of the prophets. In fact, the prophets railed against the abrogation of property rights, unjust means of exchange, lack of remedial justice, and callousness toward the poor. In other words, precisely the conditions we find today in nearly every developing nation today! The presence of these realities prevented prosperity from emerging then every bit as much as it does now.

It is beyond the scope of this series to delve deeply into why this state of affairs exists in so many countries and to examine the complicity of the developed nations with these injustices. The larger point is that with justice in place, sufficient freedom is created for people to become productive and prosperous. They have the resources to extend mercy to those in need around them. Developed nations can extend relief but commutative justice and remedial justice are essential if aid is to have a lasting impact. Distributive justice can then emerge in each culture’s struggle to balance how they care for the indigent while respecting personal property and the fruits of employing that property productively.

In short, the prophets were crying out for justice against people who had turned their focus from God. The prophets’ endless refrain was a call to simplicity; it was a call to singleness of focus on God and living by his covenant. When that singleness of focus was realized, matters of economic justice and mercy fall into proper order.

We turn now to Jesus and the topic of wealth.

[Index]

Valentine on PCUSA "Mission Challenge 2007"

This is from an e-mail letter sent yesterday by Linda Valentine, GAC Executive Director, to General Assembly Council members about Mission Challenge 2007.

As we reflect on this year, I want to share with you highlights of what was certainly one of the main events – Mission Challenge ’07.

Ever surprised by God’s amazing grace, I have been equally surprised and delighted of late by the new hunger across the PC(USA) to reclaim and to reconnect with our rich missional history. 

A poignant story shared by Mary Ferris, who has served since 2001 as a mission co-worker in Tulcea, Romania, illustrates this well. Mary, like the other mission workers shared the Mission Challenge ’07 videos as she shared her own story.

One of Mary’s audiences was the commissioners at Palo Duro Presbytery in West Texas during Mission Challenge ‘07.  She wrote, “The last video pulled the plug on emotions I was not prepared for. There were many pastors crying. One pastor said they had seen the video three times and cried every time. The tears were not for the children in the video. They are tears of pride for being Presbyterian and an emotional relief that we are reclaiming our mission roots. "

My colleague, Hunter Farrell, director of World Mission, says that Presbyterians are experiencing a "movement of God's Spirit that is drawing us together around a common commitment to sharing Christ's love around the world."

Mission Challenge ’07 not only responded to the hunger that is out there among Presbyterians, but set the stage for increased activity and relationships in the future.

The primary purpose of Mission Challenge ’07 was to offer Presbyterians a face-to-face encounter with our missionaries across the globe, which became a reality for over 56,000 Presbyterians from Alaska to Puerto Rico, and a thousand points in between.  48 PC(USA) missionaries crisscrossed the country during October to share the good news of how God is working though the PC(USA) and our international partner churches.

While not all of our statistical reports have been received, below are some highlights of what we do know at this point.  Both the statistics and the stories from the month-long event are impressive indicators of the Presbyterian commitment to mission.

• Missionaries spoke in about 900 congregations and 100 other venues such as presbytery and synod meetings and luncheon gatherings.
• Mission workers gave approximately 1,400 presentations. The number of presentation exceeds the number of venues because sometimes a mission worker spoke to two different groups in a single congregation.
• The combined attendance for Mission Challenge '07 presentations was estimated to be 56,000.
• The largest crowd was 600 and the smallest was one. The median attendance was 25.
• A total of 144 presbyteries received a visit from one of the 48 mission speakers. The original goal was to send 30 speakers to 120 presbyteries.

The written evaluations from hosts and speakers were overwhelmingly positive. Here is a sampling of representative comments we have received:

• “This was a way to encourage the small churches to continue to look for ways they can work missions into their budgets and into their corporate lives.  No one knew that the Presbyterian Church has been in missions for 170 years—what a wonderful heritage!”
• “We have not, as yet, set our 2008 budget but our contact was so positive that we, perhaps even this year, will begin to regularly commit to sending financial support.  I think the denomination-wide response will be a surge of mission support for the folk we've had the opportunity to meet face-to-face during Mission Challenge '07.”
• “Thank you for the vision and work to put together Mission Challenge '07.  In my 31 years of parish ministry I have never seen this much excitement and engagement with our PC(USA) missionaries.  I would strongly recommend a Mission Challenge '08, '09, etc.  October is an excellent month as most churches are beginning to plan their budgets for the following year.  I know it takes time, money and effort but the end result is that folk in the parish have opportunity to interact with various PC(USA) missionaries and as a result of the contact have a face and personal story for their ministry.  The engagement produces a compelling case to support in dollars and other ways the missionaries.”
• “Keep working at this!  I am new in this church and see the fragmentation of churches, each wanting to do their thing.  Next year, two of us on Global Mission will see that more goes to PC(USA) World Mission Program!”

Mission Challenge 2007 is just the part of an emerging strategy of the GAC to help connect the various elements of the PCUSA together and become focused on mission at personal, local, national, and international levels.

An environmental Eden is planned near Shanghai

Kansas City Star: An environmental Eden is planned near Shanghai

The world’s first major eco-city designed from the ground up to minimize environmental impact may soon take shape on this island near Shanghai.

That is, if developers don’t hijack the plan.

As word spreads of the Dongtan Eco-City and its whisper-quiet canals and streets, where battery-powered buses will transport residents, the whiff of money is in the air, and developers already talk of building a Disney theme park to raise property values.

Dongtan is still just a vision. Groundbreaking won’t occur until next year.

On the drawing boards, however, it is a showcase of low-impact living. Each resident will live within a seven-minute walk of the buses and solar-powered water taxis that will pulse silently through the city. ...

Living Simply in Abundance (7)

I wrote earlier in this series that wealth and prosperity was one of the promised outcomes for faithfulness to the Mosaic covenant. But within that covenant we find this warning:

Deuteronomy 8:17-20

17 Do not say to yourself, "My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. 19 If you do forget the LORD your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the LORD is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God. (NRSV)

The covenant promised material abundance. Material asceticism is foreign to the biblical image of shalom. But the Old Testament also makes starkly clear that the pursuit of wealth apart from the covenant and acknowledgement of God will bring about terrible consequences. That covenant included private property laws but it also included provisions for the poor like gleaning and regular collections for the poor. Private property was integrated into the larger covenantal relationship.

At the center of acknowledging God were the sabbath-jubilee provisions within the Mosaic code. The jubilee code is widely misperceived as a process for wealth redistribution. Closer inspection reveals something different.

The Israelites were instructed to take a sabbath year every seven years. The land would lie fallow and labor would cease. Every fifty years there would be a jubilee. (Depending on how you read the text it may actually have been every forty-nine years.) Each family returned to their ancestral land, bonded labor come to an end, debts expired, and the people celebrated and worshiped God.

Historically, there is no evidence that the jubilee was ever observed. However, we need to see how the jubilee would have worked had it been observed. Here are the provisions of the jubilee for land transactions:

Leviticus 25:13-17

13 In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. 14 When you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not cheat one another. 15 When you buy from your neighbor, you shall pay only for the number of years since the jubilee; the seller shall charge you only for the remaining crop years. 16 If the years are more, you shall increase the price, and if the years are fewer, you shall diminish the price; for it is a certain number of harvests that are being sold to you. 17 You shall not cheat one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.

The one who holds title to the land holds it permanently. If jubilee is followed, then what we have is a lease agreement based on “a certain number of harvests that are being sold to you” between the time of the transaction and the jubilee. Come jubilee, the lease expires. Keep in mind that this was only agricultural land. The jubilee did not apply to property in the cities. There is no redistribution. There is prevention of exploitation.

Leviticus 25:39-40

39 If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. 40 They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.

If jubilee is followed there are no slaves to set free because “you shall not make them serve as slaves.”

Leviticus 25:47-52

47 If resident aliens among you prosper, and if any of your kin fall into difficulty with one of them and sell themselves to an alien, or to a branch of the alien’s family, 48 after they have sold themselves they shall have the right of redemption; one of their brothers may redeem them, 49 or their uncle or their uncle’s son may redeem them, or anyone of their family who is of their own flesh may redeem them; or if they prosper they may redeem themselves. 50 They shall compute with the purchaser the total from the year when they sold themselves to the alien until the jubilee year; the price of the sale shall be applied to the number of years: the time they were with the owner shall be rated as the time of a hired laborer. 51 If many years remain, they shall pay for their redemption in proportion to the purchase price; 52 and if few years remain until the jubilee year, they shall compute thus: according to the years involved they shall make payment for their redemption.

Again, there is no slavery and people are bound until redeemed or based on the number of harvests between their sale and the next jubilee. It is leased labor.

The jubilee prevented people from being permanently alienated from their land or labor, (the means of economic production in ancient societies). It did not curtail or redistribute the amassed herds, urban real estate, gold, or other measures of wealth. It ensured that everyone had an ownership-stewardship stake in God’s unfolding plans. The sabbath and jubilee observances also demonstrated acknowledgement of God as the source of their wealth by trusting in him for the years that land lie fallow.

In short, we see people living in a covenantal relationship, where abundance is shared with the poor, where each family has an ownership stake in God’s unfolding plan through private ownership of property, and God as the ultimate provider of all their wealth is acknowledged. There is simplicity. There is singleness of focus upon God and what he has provided.

But what about the prophets? Did they not regularly call for redistribution and condemn wealth?

[Index]

On Rio's mean streets, a rare credibility

Christian Science Monitor: On Rio's mean streets, a rare credibility

Pentecostals' message of transformation is helping Brazil's drug dealers give up their guns for Jesus.

Rio de Janeiro - He felt weak physically. But spiritually, he had never felt stronger.

Alexandre dos Santos, a converted Pentecostal, fasted for two days in the favela, or slum, where he grew up, before getting on his knees to lead 18 others in prayer.

"God protect us," they chanted, before going to persuade a gang of drug traffickers in a violent struggle with the police to put down their arms and accept Jesus.

The group, named "Fishermen of the Night," had no idea what to expect that evening two years ago, Mr. dos Santos recalls. Since then, they have seen men killed. They have been threatened with death. But God has sent them as emissaries, they say, to stop the violence that is suffocating many of Brazil's poor communities.

"You cannot shake. You must demonstrate courage," says dos Santos.

"You cannot stutter," adds his wife Christiane in their modest home in Mangueira, a favela that winds up the side of a hill, where homes seem like blocks stacked upon one another. "You say, 'I am from Jesus.' There is no room for doubt."

The group's core purpose is not to fight crime, but to convert as many as possible. More law and order is often a byproduct.  ...

Now, world buoys U.S. economy

Christian Science Monitor: Now, world buoys U.S. economy

Rising demand for US exports has offset the domestic downturn in home-building.

With concern growing about a possible recession, the United States is leaning increasingly on other nations as a source of economic growth.

It's not that the export of American-made goods can single-handedly prevent a slump if US consumers start spending less.

But after years when American consumers have pulled the global economy forward, today the roles are largely reversed. A growing global economy is providing the best source of momentum America has right now, as the nation's consumers struggle to cope with high oil prices and a downturn in the housing market.

How big is the momentum? Enough to offset much of housing's negative impact. Over the year that ended on Sept. 30, a rise in US exports has equaled the decline in residential construction that represents the biggest portion of housing's current drag on growth. ...

..........

Still, there are more than a few grains of truth to the story about solid global growth – and the lift that gives to America. Perhaps the most significant factor is that developing nations are growing robustly – with fortunes tied to more than just exports to US consumers. These nations are selling to one another, and to their own domestic consumers, more than ever before. And they have more cash on hand for emergencies.

Living Simply in Abundance (6)

We have seen in previous posts that communal abundance is a characteristic of the larger vision of shalom presented in the Bible. It is part of what a redeemed society looks like. We’ve also reviewed the extraordinary changes that have led to astronomical increases in economic abundance over the last three hundred years, presenting us for the first time with the possibility of material abundance shared on a worldwide basis. What does all this mean for our Christian discipleship? What response does this call forth from us? I suggest it calls forth from us the same response God has always called forth from us: Simplicity.

Unfortunately, simplicity has become synonymous with living a scaled down material lifestyle. It is seen as a response to the idolatry of materialism, the effort to find meaning and happiness through our relationship to our possessions. But simplicity, as understood here, can become every bit as idolatrous. Inordinate focus (and often pride) is placed on ascetic standards of living. Recently this idea of simplicity has become wedded to a populist worldview that foresees an imminent apocalypse from pollution and exhaustion of natural resources. Material restraint is an exercise of personal piety in an effort to save the world from the Beast of material abundance that is ushering in the apocalypse. Conspicuous consumption is traded for conspicuous non-consumption. Both are actually expressions of materialism.

Several years ago Richard Foster wrote a book called Freedom of Simplicity. Contrary to the ascetic approach to simplicity, Foster shows that simplicity is best understood as singleness of focus. When our focus is singularly upon God, other priorities in our lives fall into their proper order. Simplicity requires us to enter into the spiritual disciplines, liturgies, and daily practices that keep our singleness of focus on God as he deepens our relationship with him. Undo focus on either the acquisition or the denial of material goods takes us away from God. I believe this singularity of focus on God is at the core of the gospel, not a “health and wealth” prosperity gospel, nor a material minimalism.

What does the Bible, and in particular Jesus, have to say?

[Index]

What Christmas Tree Am I?

You Are a Minimal Christmas Tree

You're not a total Scrooge, but you feel no need to go overboard at Christmas. Less is more, and your Christmas reflects refined quality.

What Christmas Tree Are You?

(HT: Barbara)

Jesus' Kyoto Accords Parable

And Jesus said,

"What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and sign the Kyoto Accords to reduce CO2 Emissions.'  He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and between 1997-2004 he kept his emission growth to 6.6%. The father went to the second son and said the same; and he answered, 'I will sign the Kyoto Accords, sir'; but he let his emissions grow 21.1%. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." (Matthew 21:28-31, loosely translated)

(Emission increases 1997-2004: Worldwide = 18%; Kyoto Signers = 21.1%; Kyoto non-Signers = 10%; U.S. = 6.6%)

Wealth gospel propels poor Guatemalans (Part 1)

Christian Science Monitor: Wealth gospel propels poor Guatemalans (Part 1)

As church lights dim across the US and Europe, Christian houses of worship are opening every day in Latin America. The majority of the new churches are Pentecostal, an expressive evangelical creed that emphasizes individual “gifts of the Holy Spirit.” In a three-part series from Guatemala, Brazil, and Colombia, the Monitor shows how Pentecostals – who now make up nearly 15 percent of Latin America's population – are bringing a fresh, can-do approach to some of the once staunchly Catholic region's most stubborn social ills: poverty, violence, and gender inequality.

Guatemala City - Doris Cuxun will never forget the words that shook her out of a daze one Sunday morning during a service at Showers of Grace, a Neo-Pentecostal megachurch here. "Who here wants to own your own business? Lift your hand!" the pastor hollered.

"I want to, I want to," she whispered amid the dancing and chanting.

"Me? My own beauty parlor?" she thought to herself giddily, incredulously. Could a woman who had grown up in a house made of wood and tin sheeting somehow build a successful business?

A year later, her answer is clear. "God opened the door for me," she says unequivocally while rolling pastel pink paint on the walls of her new salon located next to one of the most upscale malls in Guatemala City.

Like so many here, Ms. Cuxun was born Roman Catholic. Like so many today, she converted to Pentecostalism, a Protestant Christ-ian faith that is sweeping the religious landscape worldwide. ...

Christian Century did some articles back in July about the prosperity gospel in Africa. Richard Mouw wrote an excellent blog post inspired by these articles. In it wrote about the "exlcuded middle" when it comes to practical theology:

What I would add to this wise counsel is that we need to do the theological homework that will address these concerns more effectively. For me, the case was put in a challenging manner by my former colleague, the late Paul Hiebert, who published an important essay, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” in the early 1980s in the journal Missiology. Hiebert recounted his experience as a missionary anthropologist with recent converts to Christianity in a village culture in India. When these folks would face difficult challenges relating to fertility, family crises, or economic threats, they would often turn to the shaman for help. Hiebert realized that he did not have the theological resources to address their practical concerns. He had a “high” theology of God, salvation, and human destiny. He also had a scientific grasp of empirical reality. But he was lost when dealing with a middle range of issues: How can I avoid accidents? How can I win my husband back? Who can help me deal with my child’s illness? How can I find enough food for our next meal?

This is the theological “excluded middle” that my own theology does not know how to address. Yet for many people in the world, those are the most important issues in their lives. Much of what goes into “prosperity preaching” makes me nervous theologically. But until the rest of us learn how better to address “the middle range,” I for one will refrain from attacking.

Amen!

Living Simply in Abundance (5)

The biblical narrative was revealed into specific historical-cultural contexts. If we go back into the world of the Old Testament we find a distinctly agricultural society. Unlike our Enlightenment/Modernist influenced culture, “rights” did not begin with the individual or with the state. The emphasis was on relatedness. God owned all that is and humanity was made stewards of his world. God was responsible for the people’s prosperity. (Deut. 8:17-18)

Land was divided among all the people and via the provisions of the Jubilee Code, no one was to be permanently alienated from there land. There as no strong central governmental arrangement but neither were individuals viewed as free agents unencumbered by obligations and responsibilities to others. The family and the clan were the primary loci for addressing economic issues and resolving disputes. Family members were responsible for each other. The larger community’s involvement in the lives of families and individuals was circumscribed. Private property is assumed in the Old Testament law but community provision for the poor (ex. not harvesting to the edges of the field or regular offerings) were also woven into the fabric of life.

Economic abundance in this context was usually in terms of agricultural excess. While there were certainly differences in wealth status, most folks would have lived fairly similar lives by our standards, assuming the Jubilee laws about not permanently alienating people from their land had been followed (which we have no evidence they ever were.) The Jubilee was not wealth redistribution but rather a lease agreement where an owner could lease out his land for a price equal to the amount of crops between the date of an agreement and the next Jubilee. The lease expired at the Jubilee and land reverted back to the owner. This seems to indicate, among other things, that God values each of us serving him in a stewardship capacity.

Jesus was also speaking into a context very different from our own. The Mosaic law concerning economic issues had to contend with the cultural realities of the Greco-Roman world. The following held true in Jesus day concerning economic matters:

• Wealth consisted primarily of land, a very fixed quantity.
• Status mobility between social stratum in society was extremely limited.
• Households were businesses producing most of what they consumed.
• The only sources of significant power were human beings aided by animals.

Instead of agricultural land being widely distributed throughout society, by Jesus day large land holders tended to dominate. Society was vertically (hierarchically) oriented with intricate delineations in status. The patronage system dominated. Patrons had responsibility to provide for clients (some of whom were lesser patrons with their own clients) and clients were beholden to patrons (and the patron’s patron.)

This pattern of relationships tended to prevail in the West up until about the seventeenth century. The aristocracy, clergy, military men, guilds, and serfs were highly stratified within in a tight web of relationships that allowed for little change in status but also legitimized the existence of each status, according certain rights and obligations to each group (not the least of which was the right to food and shelter.)

By contrast, what we have seen in the West is a flattening of the status structure. We are inclined to view each other as equals who differ only according to merit, not ascribed status. Economic interaction has been removed from a rigid covenant between an elaborate array of life stations and has become a contractual arrangement between free agents. This has left individuals without the security of a patron who watches over their lives but it has also given people freedom to move up (or down) in status based on the consequences of their own choices.

But possibly even more profound is the idea of economic growth. It is hard for twenty-first century westerners to appreciate just how utterly our foreign our idea of saving and investing according to weighed risks is to the ancient mind. Sociologist Anthony Giddens points out that until about the early Middle Ages, the very idea of risk, as we know it, did not exist. If I set out on a journey and trouble befalls me, then that is just the way the fates or the gods ordained it. Or maybe some evil sorcerer intervened. In any case, the future can not be anticipated or controlled.

However, with the rise of reason in Europe during the Middle Ages came the idea that certain actions lead to certain consequences which can be assigned probabilities. God is in control, not the fates, the gods, or sorcerers. God has organized the world in an orderly and predictable fashion and because of that we can evaluate the risk of one alternative versus another. This way of thinking emerged as Europe began to undertake ever more complex and dangerous ocean exploration that required large amounts of funds to be invested. In the process, the very concept of risk was discovered.

This calculation of risk, combined with emerging awareness of the benefits of specialized of labor and the importance of trade set the stage for a total reorientation in thinking about our material existence. The advent of steam and combustion power in the late eighteenth century initiated a revolution, the Industrial Revolution to be precise.

This raises a host of difficult issues for Christians, most of which go beyond the scope of this short series. Few would question that lifting of material living standards to levels beyond mere subsistence for entire populations is a good thing, yet Western society has often erred in making improvement of material living standards the measure of all things. Christian ethics and economics have to wrestle with this idolatry.

For our purposes, I merely wish to point out what an alien world we live in compared to the ancient world of the Bible. Land ownership and agriculture is no longer the central factor in wealth. Capital and prudent of investment of capital is now at the heart of wealth. The zero-sum game perception is now one of an expanding pie created through specializing labor, trade, and technological applications. Covenants based on patronage or feudalism no longer apply. While we have strata there is unimaginable fluidity of movement up and down, even with the very highest and lowest strata. That means individuals and families are more vulnerable but with unimaginable opportunities compared to ancient society.

The most egalitarian of ancient societies were limited to thinking only in terms of making sure everyone had a subsistence level existence plus a little beyond. The developments of the last three centuries suggest it is possible to create a widespread abundance beyond the wildest dreams of the ancients but it is accomplished by economic arrangements that are foreign to the biblical contexts. It is important to acknowledge this challenge and not overlook the contextual divergence as wrestle with biblical teaching.

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English Lessons

Wall Street Journal: English Lessons

A surge of new wealth in Britain is changing the face of charitable giving.

Traditionally, charitable giving in the U.K. has often followed the "spray and pray" principle: Write checks to a clutch of the best-known charities and hope for the best.

But a new generation of self-made millionaires is changing all that -- and breaking from the clubby world of British philanthropy.

These donors are importing U.S.-style tactics to giving money and applying businesslike methods to ensure their money is well spent. Many are demanding detailed business plans from charities, are tying future donations to reaching specific targets and are offering their own professional skills to help charities grow. Some are even hiring companies to help them decide how to best give away that money. ...

This is an interesting article about giving in the U.K. but I particularly wanted highlight the chart the article included about charitable giving as a percent of GDP by nation. Americans give more than twice as much as the U.K., the next closest nation. In July, I reviewed Arthur Brooks' Who Really Cares?, about charitable giving. I wrote then:

Brooks also compares the United States to other nations. He notes the frequent criticisms from Europe and elsewhere about American stinginess, giving only .1% of GDP to foreign aid (about $10 bil.). Most nations give between .1-.2%. The United Nations set a goal in 1992 that Western nations should give .7% of GDP for aid. However, when you add up aid in other types of government assistance ($13 bil.) and contributions from foundations, religious congregations, voluntary organizations, universities, corporations, individuals and other private sources ($50 bil) you get about .5%. (119) European giving of this kind is negligible by comparison. Brooks points to the fact that Europe is decidedly more secularized than America. When he examines stats in Europe he finds that regular church attendees are more charitable than non-attendees, just as in the United States. There are just relatively fewer of them. Survey’s also consistently show that higher percentages of Americans report they are happy with life than do most people in European nations.

Tax rates: Current vs Historical averages

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Tax rates: Current vs Historical averages

Do you think the wealthy should assume more of the tax burden for the US? Here is part of a post from Greg Mankiw:

A new CBO report gives the effective federal tax rate by income group. These numbers include all federal taxes, not just income taxes, and are expressed as a percentage of household income. ...

The first number below is for 2005, the most recent year available. For comparison, I computed, and present in parentheses below, the average effective tax rate from 1979 to 2005, the time span covered in the report.

All households: 20.5 (21.6)

Lowest quintile: 4.3 (7.2)
Second quintile: 9.9 (13.2)
Middle quintile: 14.2 (17.1)
Fourth quintile: 17.4 (20.1)
Highest quintile: 25.5 (26.1)

Top 10 percent: 27.4 (27.6)
Top 5 percent: 28.9 (29.0)
Top 1 percent: 31.2 (31.7)

As Mankiw notes, the rate dropped for all brackets yet you can see that the drop is more significant for the lower brackets than for the higher. That means that while the weatlhy are paying less as a percent of household income they are paying a greater portion of the overall tax burden. Bush tax cuts have shifted a greater portion of the tax burden to the wealthy. I can't put fingers on it right now but as I recall about 85% of federal taxes are paid by the top 50% earners.

Thoughts about Rudolph and Company

Mouw's Musings: Thoughts about Rudolph and Company

Rudolph “came unto his own and his own received him not.” He was “despised and rejected” by his peers. In a dramatic turnaround, however, he came to be seen by those who had mocked him as the only one who could provide the light that would guide them on their journey.

Stretching it a bit theologically? Of course. But we would do well to think about the ways in which the narratives of the non-Christian icons of our major Holy Days do in some sense mirror elements of the Gospel story. ... Instead of simply condemning Santa and the Bunny, we might see them as symbols of deep human yearnings that find their only genuine fulfillment in the real events that we celebrate on Christmas and Easter.

Mobile phones on planes

The Economist: Mobile phones on planes

Passengers are being asked for their views on the in-flight use of phones

LIKE many flights, the use of mobile phones on aircraft has been subject to unexpected delays. But some passengers, at least, are now sending text messages and e-mails, and soon an Air France plane will go further. Once it has reached its cruising altitude, its “fasten seatbelt” sign will be switched off—and so will a new “no phones” light alongside it. Passengers will then be able to switch on their handsets and make and receive calls.

Airlines are unsure what passengers will make of this. Surveys have found that many people are vehemently against the idea, but others say they would welcome the opportunity to text, access the internet or make calls. So airlines plan to test the market before deciding how and when to allow phones to be used in the air. ...

Living Simply in Abundance (4)

How do we use wealth? There are three ways we use our wealth:

1. Consume to satisfy personal needs, wants, and desires. Reasonable personal consumption is not limited to basic subsistence living. God did not create us as cattle needing only food, water, and shelter. We are creative image-bearers of God. We were meant for stewardship of resources. As we have discussed already, human flourishing is about more than subsistence.
2. Invest in productive enterprises (which might include placing funds on deposit at a lending institution, purchasing debt instruments, purchasing equity shares in businesses, starting your own business, or by owning appreciating assets.) Investment is critical for at least two major reasons. First, at a personal level, it helps to provide for us in our economic down times and limits the chances that we will need to draw from other’s resources to support us. Second, at a societal level, it builds the amount of societal wealth for investment in business enterprises, fueling the creation of jobs and economic growth.
3. Distribute resources to others. We need to distribute a portion of our resources, if for no other reason than to act as a restraint on our own covetousness and delusions of self-reliance. I don’t think that tithing is taught in the New Testament but I do think that a tithe (as a minimum) is one contemporary way to live out Sabbath in our lives. It frees us from relying on our toil to trust God. Giving is a way we celebrate and remember God’s provision for us.

Our challenge is to find the balance between these three uses of wealth. To think about this let’s imagine a woman named Sally Worker at age 22. We have foreknowledge that Sally can be earning $200,000 a year by age 42 if she works to her maximum economic potential. We fast forward twenty years. Here are three possible scenarios (among countless possibilities) of how Sally’s life unfolds.

1) Sally lives well beyond her means. She is making $200,000 but her debts are greater than her assets. She has saved nothing and given nothing over her lifetime. She has no wealth.

2) Sally is making $200,000 and living within her means. Through saving 10% of what she earns and investing it, she has amassed a portfolio of $1,500,000. She has given nothing away.

3) Sally opts to live a relatively simple sustainable lifestyle. Because of this, she has made career decisions that have resulted in her making $25,000 a year. She has lived at just above the poverty level, saving 10% and giving all she can afford to help the poor. She has an investment portfolio of $75,000.

Now extrapolate each of these out as the average behavior for society (for ease I’ll ignore the tax implications.)

First scenario - While there would be plenty of consumption going on, production would collapse. With no one saving or investing there would be no capital for businesses to draw on for production. The poor would receive nothing. Actually, the economy would have collapsed long before Sally’s 42nd birthday.

Second scenario - There would be significant consumption stimulating economic demand and substantial capital would be created through saving and investment. But anyone who falls into hard times is out of luck. There would be few, if any, civic and volunteer organizations. It would be a cold heartless “survival of the fittest” world. It would be a dark place in which to live.

Third scenario - There would be much less business demand because of earning only 1/8 of what could have been otherwise earned. Capital to operate businesses would be magnitudes less ($75,000 versus $1.5 million) but, of course, so would demand. The poor would end up with a little more resources to consume but overall consumption (which means revenue for business) would be magnitudes lower. Job creation and earnings would be far less.

How about a fourth scenario?:

4) Sally chooses not to orient her life to get her maximum earning potential. Other values affect her decisions. She is now making $150,000 a year. She is saving 15% and now has a portfolio worth $1,500,000. She has given away 15% of what she makes, helping out others in need and creating opportunities for those who have not yet made it into the abundance she now lives. She is living on $105,000 a year (remember, no taxes) net her savings and distributions. (Imagine if she invested or gave more.)

What is the impact of the fourth scenario relative to the other three?

• Consumption in #4 will create a more robust demand for goods and services than #3 through Sally’s consumption, but less so than with #1 or #2.
• Sally’s savings in #4 far exceed #3 and #1, and she invests $2,250 more annually than in #2.
• Meanwhile, scenario #4 generates more than any of the other three to be given to the poor, even though possibly a higher percentage of income is distributed in scenario #3.

Choosing to make far less than one’s potential earnings (like #3) can come from any of a number of valid reasons. Whether someone chooses to make a modest income, or a modest income is the best one can earn, does not make them a lesser contributor to society (there are other contributions to society besides economic ones.) My point is that from a purely economic perspective it is not true that earning and consuming less necessarily creates greater economic benefit for the poor.

The problem is that we too often look at the problem only through the lens of consumption and distribution. We make up for someone’s need over there by doing with less over here. My abundance is reciprocal to someone else’s need. Production and capital (our investments) are missing from the equation, yet that is the key ingredient to growing a prosperous economic eco-system. Destroying capital through massive redistribution schemes and failing to aid in capital formation for recipients is a disaster for everyone. We need:

1. An appropriate level of consumption that creates human flourishing.
2. An appropriate level of investment that creates and preserves capital for economic enterprise.
3. An appropriate level of willful distribution that frees from covetousness and brings others into abundance.

The understanding of where wealth comes from (previous post) and how the uses of wealth interrelate (this post) is something that we have learned in just the last few centuries. What does this mean as we look back to the ancient biblical context?

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Kyoto Schmyoto

American Thinker: Kyoto Schmyoto (HT: Scott Gilbreath)

The Kyoto treaty was agreed upon in late 1997 and countries started signing and ratifying it in 1998.  A list of countries and their carbon dioxide emissions due to consumption of fossil fuels is available from the U.S. government.  If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following.

• Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
• Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
• Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
• Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

In fact, emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.  Below are the growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, from 1997 to 2004, for a few selected countries, all Kyoto signers.  (Remember, the comparative number for the U.S. is 6.6%.)

• Maldives, 252%.
• Sudan, 142%.
• China, 55%.
• Luxembourg, 43%
• Iran, 39%.
• Iceland, 29%.
• Norway, 24%.
• Russia, 16%.
• Italy, 16%.
• Finland, 15%.
• Mexico, 11%.
• Japan, 11%.
• Canada, 8.8%

"As a Republican, I'm on the Fringe" Robert Maranto

Washington Post: As a Republican, I'm on the Fringe (HT: Presbyweb)

Are university faculties biased toward the left? And is this diminishing universities' role in American public life? Conservatives have been saying so since William F. Buckley Jr. wrote "God and Man at Yale" -- in 1951. But lately criticism is coming from others -- making universities face some hard questions.

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are "the third group," far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was "the right half of the left," while at Harvard he found himself "on the right half of the right."

..........

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused "a sensation" at his university. "It was as if I had become a child molester," he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because "you don't want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts."

..........

Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University looked at all the reliable published studies of professors' political and ideological attachments. They found that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and Marxists by roughly two to one in economics, more than five to one in political science, and by 20 to one or more in anthropology and sociology.

..........

Despite that bad job-hunting experience I had, I doubt that legions of leftist professors have set out to purge academia of Republican dissenters. I believe that for the most part the biases conservative academics face are subtle, even unintentional. When making hiring decisions and confronted with several good candidates, we college professors, like anyone else, tend to select people like ourselves.

Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach.

..........

All this is bad for society because academics' ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

I entered graduate school (Kansas State University) in 1981 to study sociology and demography. The program was oriented toward issues confronting developing nations and had many international students. The philosophical orientation was overwhelmingly Marxist. I showed up straight out of an Evangelical college (Nazarene). My advisor just peered at me over my student folder he was reading at our first meeting. Until we got into the second semester, I was not included in any of the informal department events. I was at official dept. functions and classes only. And I wasn't even Republican. By the time I left I made some good friends but you would have thought it was the 1950s and I was a Black man integrating the University.

Doesn't sound like things have improved much in 25 years.

Economists Left and Right

Greg Mankiw: How do the right and left differ?

In today's lecture, I have discussed a number of reasons that right-leaning and left-leaning economists differ in their policy views, even though they share an intellectual framework for analysis. Here is a summary.

• The right sees large deadweight losses associated with taxation and, therefore, is worried about the growth of government as a share in the economy. The left sees smaller elasticities of supply and demand and, therefore, is less worried about the distortionary effect of taxes.
• The right sees externalities as an occasional market failure that calls for government intervention, but sees this as relatively rare exception to the general rule that markets lead to efficient allocations. The left sees externalities as more pervasive.
• The right sees competition as a pervasive feature of the economy and market power as typically limited both in magnitude and duration. The left sees large corporations with substantial degrees of monopoly power that need to be checked by active antitrust policy.
• The right sees people as largely rational, doing the best the can given the constraints they face. The left sees people making systematic errors and believe that it is the government role’s to protect people from their own mistakes.
• The right sees government as a terribly inefficient mechanism for allocating resources, subject to special-interest politics at best and rampant corruption at worst. The left sees government as the main institution that can counterbalance the effects of the all-too-powerful marketplace.
• There is one last issue that divides the right and the left—perhaps the most important one. That concerns the issue of income distribution. Is the market-based distribution of income fair or unfair, and if unfair, what should the government do about it? That is such a big topic that I will devote the entire next lecture to it.

That is just about the best succinct differentiation I've ever seen.

Living Simply in Abundance (3)

Where does economic wealth and abundance come from? I think there are two primary sources: Production and trade.

Production is quite obvious to most folks. The earth furnishes us with an abundance of raw materials but through human labor, the resources are transformed into something useful. The most ancient form of wealth creation goes back to cultivating and herding. Learning how to cultivate crops and breed animals led to greater quantities of food. Eventually there was an excess over the population’s needs. This freed some of the population to pursue cultic religious rituals, organize armies, create art and music, to become artisans, and to build cities. Even so, agriculture was the foundation of societal wealth and agriculture requires land. Therefore, throughout most of recorded history, land has been the primary measure of wealth.

In the ancient world, if you wanted more wealth, then you had to annex more land. That generally meant taking it from someone else. Land is a fixed quantity. It is a zero-sum game. If we are unequal in our distribution of wealth, then my surplus matches your deficit. Certainly the Greeks, the Romans, and other ancient empires engaged in trade but that trade was limited to a slim minority at the top of the social pyramid. Wealth was considered illegitimate in the Greco-Roman world unless it was amassed through agriculture.

About 300 years age humanity stumbled upon the idea of labor specialization combined with trade; a tipping point if you will. This idea was not invented by Adam Smith. He just observed what was already happening and described it well.

Awhile back I heard Dr. Jay Richards use his example of “The Trading Game.” Richards describes his experience playing the game in the sixth grade. Each student was randomly distributed an item of approximately the same economic value (About $1). Each student was instructed to rate how much they valued what they had received from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest value. Richards received Barbie trading cards, which he ranked as a 1. Then the students were placed in groups of five and allowed to trade with each other. Richards found a girl with a paddle-ball and they traded to each other’s satisfaction. The students recorded their values again. Finally, they were allowed to trade with anyone else in the room. When the trading was finished, the students wrote down the value of the item now in their possession.

If you added up the students’ ratings at the start of the game and compared them to the sum of the students’ ratings at the end of the first trade, you would find that the sum for the class was higher than it was at the beginning. The sum would be higher still after the second round of trade. Furthermore, no one would have an item of lesser value at the end of the game than the one they started with. There were rules to these exchanges. There was no theft or intimidation allowed so there was no way to go lower than the value of the starting item. Often in these games, everyone’s value goes at least a little higher. “Societal wealth” is expanded purely through trade.

Specialization of labor accelerated the importance of wealth generated through in trade in a couple ways. First, specialization led to improved product quality. Second, it led to much higher productivity by any given worker, lowering the price of goods. High quality and low price in one area fueled a cycle of others specializing labor in their industries, thus driving productivity higher and prices lower. Trade became evermore profitable because it became so much cheaper to exchange with others than to produce everything yourself. Of course, what sent this process into the stratosphere of productivity was the advent of combustion powered machines. They expanded per capita productivity exponentially. The infrastructure and transportation innovations this made possible (and later information technologies) expanded the importance of trade by even greater magnitudes.

To give some sense of the magnitude of change, economist Brad DeLong estimates that the average worldwide per capita income in real dollars rose from $90 in 12,000 BCE to $180 in 1750 CE. Between 1750 and 2000, per capita income rose from $180 to $6,600. This was during a time when the world population grew from less than one billion to more than six billion. The percentage of the world population estimated to be living on less than $1 per day was 84% in 1820, but it is now between 15-20% and falling.

Economics is no longer a zero-sum game. Land in fixed quantities is no longer the driving issue. Worldwide abundance beyond the wildest dreams of the ancients’ is now possible. Many fret over global economic growth, worrying that we will exhaust global resources. However, commodity prices have been declining steadily from 1862 (when reliable records were first kept) to the present and economists see no end to the decline in sight. Declining prices means the supply is sufficient for the foreseeable future. Recycling and renewable resources should eventually make global abundance permanently sustainable.

We need to think of economics more in the sense that we think of relationships. I see someone who is alone and overlooked. I have an abundance of friendships and social networks. What is my response? Feel guilty about my abundance and then try to distribute my friends to the lonely so that I live only a bare level of relational subsistence? No. I extend hospitality. I invite the lonely person into my network of relational exchange where he comes into abundance. My wealth of relationships increases as well. Yet when it comes to economic wealth we often default to zero-sum thinking, believing that if we live on just enough to survive and give away the rest we are doing God’s will. We end up viewing the poor purely as units of consumption rather than seeing them as people called into abundance and relationship who can increase the abundance of others through production and exchange.

Next we will look at the three primary ways we use wealth and how they interrelate.

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The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom

Daily Mail: The Pope condemns the climate change prophets of doom (HT: Scott Gilbreath)

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.

The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

The German-born Pontiff said that while some concerns may be valid it was vital that the international community based its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmentalist movement. ...