Bible

What is envy?

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At City of God, Dan repsonded to my comment on his post on Olympic Oppression at City of God.  Here is correspondence between us:

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You really didn’t bother to read my post. First of all, I don’t know what would make me a “new Pharisee” and therefore I very much doubt I can speak intelligibly about one. What I said I found troubling about the Olympics is how we are all expected to derive some noble sentiment from them how Canada as a nation was supposed to “come together” and support the games. Being critical about something like that may hardly have anything to do with envy. Accusing the poor of envy does not provide the rich with anything more than an ad hominem attack. Calling someone envious is almost as sneaky an attack as calling your opponent “defensive.”

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Dan,

I did read your post several times. Originally, after hurriedly writing my comment, I wondered whether I’d unfairly lumped you with the new Pharisees. But I see from your comment that it was probably fair, at least to certain degree. For you accept uncritically the argument that the Vancouver Olympics were a just a big party for the rich. You add in fact to that argument by mentioning the price of hockey tickets. Of course, Maple Leaf tickets and Raptor tickets are also very expensive. Does that make the NHL or the NBA a party for the rich? Should the funding that goes into these sports be spent on the poor instead? Let’s be consistent. Certainly the sins of professional sports are greater than that of the Olympics, because they do their gig every year, week after week, and not just every two years. Maple Leaf gardens, the SkyDome, and Air Canada Centre take up an inordinate amount of space in downtown Toronto that the Federal government and evil Stephen Harper should use to build low-cost housing for the poor and homeless which number nearly 10 times the homeless of Vancouver!

The first definition of envy according Webster’s is (11th ed.): “painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.” This perfectly sums up the protesters’ complaint: they resent the Olympics; it is being done to their detriment and to the advantage of the rich; the money should have been spent on them instead so that they can have housing and adequate support. This is an unadulterated case of class envy. The community organizers like Diewert and Oudshoorn contribute by stirring up and adding legitimacy to the envy of the poor; it doesn’t usually take much to get that emotion stirred up after all. And once stirred up, it doesn’t take much more before it leads to vandalism, theft, and eventually in certain cases, to murder, which too often happens when the masses rise up and murder those that those that they believe to have wronged them. The most recent example that I can come up with off the top of my head is the Rwandan genocide, where the Hutus were stirred up to murder as many as a million Tutsis (a less dramatic example would be the recent anti-Kikuyu riots in Kenya)–if the mass murder doesn’t happen here in Canada, it’s because the envious poor and their organizers are still a relatively insignificant proportion of the population. But it seems that the number of sympathizers is growing.

So you start with the premise that is based upon envy. It is this notion that the Olympics are done for the sole benefit of the rich for their own selfish pleasure all others be damned; it is an unfair assessment of the Olympics which is full of envy. Many people benefit from the Olympics, not simply the rich, but every poor schlub who got a job providing security or hammering a nail (who managed to show up for work not wasted), First-Nation owned businesses, vendors selling hot dogs, my chiropractor, my sister who rented out her condo at Whistler, the athletes (they’re not rich are they?), and many others.

And nobody, not even one person, ever told me that if I wanted to be a good Canadian, I had to somehow cheer for the Olympics. I didn’t follow the events on TV but only heard about the news through newspaper reports or third hand. So I am a neutral and indifferent observer with regard to the Olympics.

Dave Diewert on Olympic Tent Village: Encouraging squatters on private property

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I knew Dr Dave Diewert as the mild-mannered language professor who joined the Regent College faculty as I was finishing my studies there.  Now look what he has to say in the Tent Village Voice [emphasis mine]:

The political aspect of the Tent Village, in a climate that is very concerned about image and making things look like everything is under control, is to have this eruption. An eruption that crosses lines of legality and illegality of who owns this space and who occupies this space, these kind of eruptions of those structures become opportunities to say something strong. The point is for this action to bring into light in a powerful way, or in as powerful as we can together, the realities of homelessness, gentrification and criminalization of poverty.

So you’ve decided to encourage your followers to violate private property rights. It appears that they neither own the land nor have permission to use it.  But you want to use the government to force taxpayers to support the poor:

Our goal is to fight and push government to build more social housing, give better incomes, and to stop the gentrification of our neighborhood, the Downtown Eastside. [Wendy Pederson]

You want to push the government to provide housing and give better incomes with whose money?  The tooth fairy?  As a taxpayer maybe I don’t want to pay my taxes, especially if it would benefit the lawbreakers at Tent Village.  I have a question–would you support my violation of the tax law just as you have supported the violation of the laws protecting the owners of the property that tent village is squatting upon?  Or would you insist that the CRA use the full force of the law to make me, a rich person in Canada, ante up or else?

This is not the criminalization of the poor, but poor people acting like criminals.  And you my dear brother are encouraging them to do it.

I guess these words of Paul don’t apply to poor (Romans 13.1-4; RSV):

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,  for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.

You are lucky to have friends that want to defend you, but the more they defend you the more people will learn how fringe you’ve become.

Is investing a sin?

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I am a DIY investor.  My inspiration was my grandfather, a man whose wealth paid for most of my studies including Northwest College, Regent College and the University of Cambridge–through loans to me, through an inheritance, and through my father paying the rest after inheriting the bulk of my grandfather’s estate.  So I owe my studies to an investor.

Though I am what I am through investing, I feel attacked lately by the writings of Christian protesters at the Olympics (here, here). So I’ve been writing to explain my point of view; but others have not liked it.  One commenter critiqued the Righteous Investor thus:

I get to the end of a post like yours and feel saddened by a kind of void without content, the sort of thing that passes for serious thought in our moment. From reading a few of your posts I see that your concern is to ask, “how can people call for the redistribution of wealth if they are against wealth.” But alas there is no inconsistency, paradox or contradiction: to be in favor of the redistribution of wealth is to be against all personal riches of financial sorts, or as Dave [Diewert] says, to ‘reject the invitation to use power and privilege to secure the personal comforts of political and economic domination.’

This Nathan also was evidently upset with me for my position about Dave Diewert.  I explained that his exposition of Diewert’s thought is a direct attack on what I do.  I am in the process of accumulating wealth in order to make wealth.  That is what an investor does.  That is what Warren Buffet does.  To be against “all personal riches of financial sorts” is a condemnation of all investors.  Are you investing for your retirement?  Sorry.  Are you investing in house? Well that’s personally comfortable isn’t it? Jesus rejected turning bread into stones, so you must also reject the fruit of your own labor and divest yourself immediately of all you own and become a ward of the state, just like what Diewert wants to make of Vancouver’s street people .  I’ve noticed that Diewert’s solution for homelessness in Vancouver is that all the people of Canada must pay higher taxes (excerpts from interview with Dave Diewert):

The political elite are driven by an ideology that eases the tax burden on the wealthy members of our society and cuts the support systems for those in need. We are seeing played out before us a political agenda that views certain members of our society as disposable, useless, expendable entities. …

We need to insert our vision of the embrace of God for his whole world into the political arena, and challenge the leaders to take up this vision of care for all. The churches cannot be silent on the structural and political fronts if they are to really care for the outcasts of our society. Love of my neighbor who is homeless also involves speaking truth to power on issues of structural injustice and ideological blindness. Following the ‘Truly Human One’ (Son of Man) means working at all levels toward a truly human society, in which shared resources and mutual dignity and care are extended to all — especially the least.

And this from the Streams of Justice website:

We are finished with homelessness, tired of knowing that thousands of people across Canada are forced to sleep on the streets. Solving homelessness is not rocket science – it means providing houses and supports for people who need them, through a funded National Housing Strategy.

We call on the organizing community in Vancouver to join us in sending a message to the Harper Government that cannot be ignored!

Because it is hard to fault Diewert’s work among the poor, I think that many Christians might be unwilling to criticize his political activism.  His solution however is the same tired liberal idea of high taxes and a nanny state that takes care of us when we fall; this is replacing the vision of the Kingdom of God with statism.  But I contend that when you pay for poverty you will only get more of it. Get off the backs of the wealthy and they will invest their money, and those investments will create jobs and the whole society will begin to improve as more wealth is generated. I don’t know what the solution to homelessness is, but it certainly isn’t government.  Government is a large part of the problem.  Government takes away our money in the form of taxes, while itself verging always upon bankruptcy with its unfunded liabilities.  To reduce this burden,  the Canadian government allows individuals to have too seldom used RRSP’s and TFSAs so that we as working Canadians can have some of our own money to save and invest; but when taxes are so high, how many Canadians actually have any money to put into such investments?  Dr. Diewert, Candians already pay enough in tax.  The solution is not more government funding, but government getting off the backs of individual taxpayers so that they can fend for themselves.  Consider the following story of resident of Diewert’s Tent City in an article that mentions him (nationalpost.com):

His name is John, and he has what he calls an “addictions problem.” It cost him his carpet-laying job at a swank new hotel and condominium development downtown. “I showed up wasted,” he says. “I didn’t get paid and I lost my apartment, and now I’m here.”

Here being the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s slum. Where, on Monday night, John wound up. He spent what little cash he had and got wasted again. He’s not feeling sorry for himself or making excuses. “I wrote my own story,” he says. “It’s my fault.”

So Diewert’s solution is to force responsible hardworking Canadians to pay more taxes to help irresponsible people like John. The end effect of this would be to force all of us onto the streets, because Diewert’s vision, as Nathan suggests, is the renunciation of all wealth of a financial sort.  The Globe and Mail recently had a series on the failing pensions of hundreds of thousands of retired Canadians–if they had been allowed to keep more of their money when they were working, they would be less likely to fall into poverty now that they are retired.  If governments exercised sound fiscal policy and didn’t run continual deficits to pay for all the excessive social programs, wanting to be our nanny, then there could be a stable currency and people wouldn’t have to put their savings into risky assets and end up being poor because the stock and the real estate markets crash.  Government is already causing too much instability by extending itself too far and trying to do too much; through excessive taxes, the government has also greatly weakened and undermined all other institutions that might help the poor, including the church and the family.

Let’s get back to the question:  Is investing a sin?  It requires the accumulation of wealth that is then invested to acquire more wealth.  If you accept Dr. Diewert’s view, I guess I am a “bourgeois Christian” (in the words of another of Diewert’s friend), and my investments are sinful.  That is why they favor high taxes on the wealthy, so that nobody will have the personal capital left to become an investor.

Eventually a vision like that leads to poverty like what we see in Cuba or East Germany before it was reunited with West Germany.

Paul’s approach was different.  After warning against the love of money, he urges Timothy with these words (1 Tim 6.17-19):

As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.

Paul urges generosity and good deeds.  By this standard, it is hard to fault even Warren Buffet who gave away billions to charity.  But Paul does not demonize wealth itself but rather the love of wealth.  The wealthy then demonstrate their detachment from wealth through their generous support of charitable work.

My answer simply is that investing is not a sin, provided that the one who invests is a righteous investor, as suggested by 1 Tim 6.17-19.  Off the top of my head, here is a list of righteous investors who are considered men and women of God in the Bible:  Abraham, Job, Barnabas, Erastus (?), and Priscilla and Aquila.

The political elite are driven by an ideology that eases the tax burden on the wealthy members of our society and cuts the support systems for those in need. We are seeing played out before us a political agenda that views certain members of our society as disposable, useless, expendable entities.

Oil is a righteous investment

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A lot of religious people, especially environmentalists (but even some Christians), consider petroleum a sin.  By contrast, here are some reasons that oil is a righteous investment:

(1) Oil is a plentiful energy source which was created by a good God who made all things for our benefit (Genesis 1-2).

(2) Oil is the energy of choice which fuels production in world’s strongest economies and helps to provide for the general well-being of billions of people.

(3) Oil is was provided by our Creator as an extremely efficient fuel source, unlike ethanol and other biofuels which derive from grains and other foods, which God provides to us for food because he loves us.  The use of biofuels has led to an increase in global food prices which have greatly hurt the poor.  The consumption of oil and other petroleum products such as natural gas and coal have no such negative consequences for the world food market.

(4) Oil is proving to be a renewable resource and not a fossil fuel.  Therefore, it is not something that we will run out of; we will not see Armeggedon because we run out of oil, but perhaps if we are not allowed to exploit sources of oil that we know exist.

(5) Anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.  Therefore, there is no substance to the main argument against oil–the fear that the planet will turn into a ball of fire.

Is debt sin?

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I stumbled upon an interesting article today called, “Debt is Sin“.  The author, Bob Mallory writes:

The fact is, everyone knows that debt is wrong, and no one refers to it as if it’s a good thing. Yet the further we seem to wade into financial bondage in America, the more our Christian financial counselors and pastors falter when it comes to the Word of God.

Let’s cut to the chase: Debt is a sin. It’s a sign of a covetous heart, and not trusting that our Heavenly Father will provide us with everything we need. Since American Christians worship an insufficient savior, they turn to credit to purchase the things they want. The Scriptures are consistently negative when discussing financial debt for believers. It’s never neutral or positive, as many financial counselors will tell you.

He lists a set of scripture verses as proof texts:

Exodus 22:25-27; Deuteronomy 15:6; Deuteronomy 28:12; Deuteronomy 28:43-45; Leviticus 25:35-38; Nehemiah 5:1-5; Psalm 15:5; Psalm 37:21; Proverbs 6:1-5; Proverbs 11:5; Proverbs 12:9; Proverbs 22:7/1 Corinthians 7:23; Ezekiel 22:12; Matthew 5:42; Matthew 6:24; Luke 6:34-36; Luke 16:13; Romans 13:8; 1 Timothy 6:6-10; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

Now first of all, many of these texts warn against covetousness and the love of money (e.g., 1 Tim 6.6-10; 2 Tim 3.1-5; Matt 5:42; Matt 6:24), but not against debt.  Others, to be sure, counsel the Christian to avoid debt (Rom 13.8), explaining that debt puts the person into virtual slavery to the creditor (Proverbs 22), and naturally, it was a blessing that Israel was to be a creditor nation, not a debtor nation, unless it sinned against the Lord, in which case they would become a debtor nation (cf. Deuteronomy).  Proverbs 6.1-5 actually counsels against providing security for someone else’s debt.  Finally, in Israel, it was against the Torah to charge another Israelite at interest.  But do these passage all say that debt is sin, no matter what kind of debt it is?

First, I would suggest that this way of thinking is basically a “fundamentalist” approach to the Scripture (see this post) in that it attempts to create a new law for Christians; that if the Christian followed that law, he would be on the path of blessedness.  It may be true that this path of avoiding every form of debt could be blessed.  Certainly in our current recession, had you avoided debt, you could be far ahead of those who were leveraged to the hilt, such as stock holders who received margin calls in 2008 and 2009; or Lehmans and Bear Sterns, which were highly leveraged investment firms.  Such advice might have seemed prescient for such people.  However, I approach the Bible differently.  The Bible contains wisdom and advice, which is bound to a particular context.  The crucial task of hermeneutics is to determine the principles taught by the Scriptures and to attempt to apply them in new cultural contexts today (see Klein, Bloomberg and Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, chapt. 11) through the help of the Holy Spirit and the accumulated wisdom of the church through the ages.  Thus, the categorical use of biblical advice as the new Torah is not a good way to apply the Bible today.

Contemporary financial advisers correctly distinguish between good debt (cf. this post) and bad debt. The effect of bad debt is that the debtor becomes a slave to debt payments.  The effect of good debt is the opposite.  It leads to profit and wealth.  I would agree that wisdom teaches us that bad debt should be avoided, and it is a sin if it is accompanied by greed and a lack of self-control.  A poor person who borrows in order to survive is probably to be pitied rather than called a sinner; the Bible often defends such people and condemns those creditors who exploit the poor.  However, people who accumulate credit card debt to buy consumer goods because they can’t defer gratification have a problem, not too dissimilar from alcoholism.  It is a spiritual problem related to a religion of consumerism.

But there is also good debt.  Good debt is money borrowed to make a gain or profit.  An example would be the borrowing of money to purchase a high yield stock.  As long as the interest rate is lower than the yield and the stock maintains its value or experiences a capital gain, the debt creates a profit for the debtor.  Another example would be the purchase of a house to live in or to rent out;  as long as the mortgage holder saves on rent, builds up equity through the repayment of the principle and capital gains, this is good debt.  Another example would be the line of credit that a business has in order to fill orders.  Without the line, they would not be able to make sales without first taking a large percentage of the cost from the buyer, which is actually a form of borrowing from the buyer instead of the bank.  This is not always convenient. So businesses will often borrow money from the bank in order that they do not have to charge their customer in advance.  Businesses also have what is called “net-30” or “net-90” etc.  This means that they extend credit to their customers of 30-90 days; the customer in turn has borrowed because they don’t have to pay for it up front–they can then in turn sell the item to their clients and pay their supplier only after they themselves receive payment.  Without these different kinds of debt, businesses today would come to a virtual standstill.  Our current economic system puts creditors with capital together with businesses and people who need it–banks serve as the go-between between these two parties, and everyone is supposed to make a profit from such transactions.  The question then is:  Would the Bible forbid categorically such transactions?  Is it so clear that good debt is sin?  I don’t think so.  My wife’s company which was started by my father-in-law about 45 years ago has debts;  it provides jobs to 25+ employees.  Now if we decided that it was sin to take on debt, undoubtedly we would have to close the business, and all those employees would lose their jobs.  I think it is better to use debt wisely and to continue to provide good jobs with benefits to these hard working men and women.  [Note it would be eventually possible to use retained earnings instead of bank credit to make these transactions–but Canadian tax law makes it very expensive to retain earnings in a company of this size].

But is there biblical support for my position?  Let’s consider the parable of the talents in Matt 25.14-30, which is the “canon within the canon” of this blog.  Jesus teaches that a man going away on a journey lends his capital to three of his servants, with the ostensible purpose that upon his return, he will receive a rate of return on his deposit.  These three servants receive 5, 2 and 1 talent respectively.  This is an  enormous amount of capital:  a talent is 6000 denarii, and a denarius is probably about 2-4 days wages at minimum wage in ancient Palestine.  So the man who received 5 talents had enough capital to pay 60,000-120,000 people minimum wage for one day; this would certainly be enough to start a business of some kind.  The servant with five talents received the equivalent of well over half a million US dollars.  The first two servants were entrepreneurs who were able to double their master’s money during that period. They would receive their reward for their diligence and their willingness to risk.  The one who received one talent was afraid of his master and of risking the capital, and so he buried the talent which equals about US $87,000-174,000 (considering $7.25 per hour as minimum wage). Imagine the master’s wrath!  He lent the wicked servant an incredible sum and the man buried it.  So the master says that he should at very least have given it to money lenders so that if he himself wasn’t going to risk it, they would at least find a suitable placement for the funds, and pay him interest on the money.  Jesus called this man wicked, and he received his reward (to be cast in outer darkness).  So Jesus teaches us that the wise risk of capital is not a sin; the sin here is the failure to put at risk the capital that has been lent.

This parable is amazing on so many levels.  But at very least we must acknowledge that Jesus commends those who are not afraid to take risks.  But he does not even tacitly condemn creditor/debtor relations in this parable.  He acknowledges them as facts of life and uses them to illustrate our relationship to the Kingdom of God.  We are debtors before God, because it is He who has made us his regents and lent to us his capital to see what we will make of it, and we need to use what we have from Him profitably so that on the day of reckoning our master will commend us as good and righteous investors.

I would like to conclude by making the following points:

(1) The New Testament is not the new Torah.  Its principles need to be applied to new contexts with judicious wisdom and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

(2) We need to distinguish between good debt and bad debt.

(3) Jesus does not condemn the wise use of good debt, but rather, told a parable in which standard business practices illustrate our indebtedness to God.

(4) In our culture, not all debt that leads to profit making is a sign of greed, for it can be vehicle for creating wealth (which is a blessing) and providing jobs.

(5) The wise servant is the one who can thrive in the circumstances in which he finds himself.  Thus, we must ask, given the current economic environment, culture,  and tax structures, how can we Christians learn to thrive and create wealth?