People understandably have misgivings when someone injects the Bible into a discussion of economic issues. The Bible certainly is not an economics text. Its treatment of economic themes is desultory and brief, lacking in detail and depth. Not surprisingly, then, the Bible’s economic implications are perceived in many different ways.
The Bible touches upon economic themes in ways that are sometimes descriptive (value-free) and sometimes prescriptive (value-laden, normative). These distinctions are crucial.
For example, the Bible is being purely descriptive in relating an episode that features the law of supply and demand in operation during the Syrian siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:24-7:18). When supply decreases, prices rise; when supply increases, prices fall. The Bible offers no value judgment about the operation of supply and demand. The economic law is neither right nor wrong; it is simply the way the world works, as value-free as to say that fire burns wood.
The Bible is also merely descriptive in its treatment of voluntary exchanges, treating transactions that buyers and sellers make at mutually acceptable prices as a commonplace feature of life on Earth – e.g., Abraham’s purchase of a tomb for Sarah (Gen. 23:15) and King David’s purchase of supplies for a burnt offering (1 Chron. 21:24-25). Even usury (the charging of interest) is treated in a nonjudgmental way when Jesus, in his parable of the talents, tells the unproductive servant that he should at least have used the money entrusted to him to earn interest (Matt. 25:27).
It is when we turn to the prescriptive (normative) aspects of economic phenomena in the Bible that controversies about how to interpret the Bible sometimes arise. Central to Bible teachings are what Jesus called the two great commandments (Matt. 22:36-40), telling how humans are to relate to the Deity and how they are to relate to each other. Indeed, those two commandments are a condensed version (early CliffsNotes?) summarizing the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:3-17), four of which tell us what we owe to God and six which provide rules for how humans are to treat each other.
Of particular relevance to economics are the Eighth and Tenth Commandments, “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet.” Those are unequivocal statements mandating adherence to the principle of private property. (Incidentally, you don’t have to believe in God or the Bible to endorse the principle of private property. Ludwig von Mises, for example, through his entirely value-free economic analysis, concluded that it was logically demonstrable that if people desired prosperity, then an economy based on private property was the most effective means of achieving that end. It is interesting, though, that Mises came to the same conclusion via analysis that Moses came to via revelation – namely, that human beings are better off by honoring private property.)
Some individuals have invented a concept called “Christian socialism” that is built on sophistries. They cite Bible verses such as Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount to give your cloak to the person who has stolen your coat, or the passage in Luke where the rich Lazarus suffered in the afterlife because he had not shared his earthly wealth with the poor. It is certainly true that Jesus repeatedly warned us about becoming too entangled in material comforts and that he urged us to be charitable toward others.
Note, though, that humans were to be subject to the dictates of their own conscience about how much wealth to accumulate and not subject to the dictates of other humans. For example, when a man asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus told him to give all his wealth to the poor. When the man declined to do so, Jesus let him depart in peace. Jesus had essentially offered him a voluntary contract, and he respected the man’s right not to accept that contract. (See Mark 10:17-23.)
Similarly, when another man pleaded with Jesus to tell his brother to share his inheritance with him, Jesus declined, saying, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” (Luke 12:14) If the Son of God (or the most loving, moral person who ever lived, if you are more comfortable with that characterization) wouldn’t deny a man his property rights, then who are we to deny anyone those rights?
Where many self-described Christians err is in regard to helping the poor. They assert that Christians should support government programs, whereby taxpaying citizens are compelled by law to support the less fortunate. Again, Jesus undoubtedly would endorse helping the poor, but the end does not justify the means. Try as you might, for all the exhortations in the Bible to be charitable, you will find no verse telling believers that the way to get into heaven is to make other people perform good works. Charitable deeds are to be done voluntarily, out of an inner impulsion of a loving spirit and heart, rather than in response to external compulsion, such as governments using the threat of fines or incarceration to raise taxes to fund welfare programs.
Jesus provided the model of Christian charity in the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). When he encountered a man who had been badly hurt by robbers, the Samaritan personally attended to his wounds and spent his own money to provide food and shelter to the victim. When he had to leave to attend to his own pre-existing commitments, he promised to pay the innkeeper to care for the man.
Thus, Jesus illustrated the two forms of Christian charity – first, giving aid personally and directly; second, rendering assistance indirectly by donating to those who have the time and skills to minister to those in need when we can’t do it ourselves.
Let’s try a thought experiment: Suppose that the Samaritan, after spotting the wounded man, raised the funds he subsequently spent caring for the victim by imposing a toll on passersby on the road – a toll that they had to pay if they didn’t want theSamaritan to bash them on the head with his staff. The man in need still would have received the help he desperately needed, but would we still regard the Samaritan as a paragon of Christian virtue and charity? Is it genuine charity to be generous with other people’s money? Is it charitable to help some by threatening to hurt others?
This is the murky moral territory into which many Christians stray in the name of “social justice” or the social gospel. The desire to help those in need is laudable, but the means employed by advocates of “social justice” are not. They vitiate a Biblical principle when they call for government to redistribute wealth to the poor, the sick, the widow. Government necessarily introduces the additional factor of compulsion into the equation, for government is organized force. While it is Christian to be charitable, Jesus never mixed charity with compulsion, nor did he teach his followers to resort to force.
For the Christian, private property is one of the central pillars of God-directed social morality. For the economist, private property offers maximum utility for promoting social prosperity. In that crucial sense, the Bible and economics do not conflict, but harmonize.