by Dan Gouge

Karl Marx was, among other things, often a perceptive observer of capitalism. He once admiringly referred to it as "a machine for destroying limits." By this he meant that our economic system had ways of innovating around what were thought to be barriers to increased trade or production or even longevity or better health. What I want to suggest is that our economic system is also a machine for destroying our moral limits. We read about the abuses of the environment or of workers from the left or the glorification of a nihilistic culture from the right. Are these aberrations or part of the systemic nature of 21st Century capitalism?

Consider that the archetypal business form of our time is the corporation: a legal "person" created for the purpose of doing business. As Joel Bakan points out in The Corporation, this "person" is created for the sole purpose of enriching its shareholders. Now, for those of us with pension plans invested in these "persons" this is actually quite a nice thing. Here's an entity with ample legal protection whose only task is to make more money for your retirement and mine. Of course the inverse of this is that the corporation does not have the other concerns that you or I or other actual persons might have - again it's sole concern is to make money. What would you or I call a person who was pathologically consumed with kind of drive? Bakan goes with the clinical definition, "psychopath." I'll refer you to Bakan if you want to quibble with that definition, but even if you aren't prepared to throw DSM-IV at the corporation, I think we could agree on something like "jerk".  Now this particular jerk's motto is not so much "if it feels good, do it," but rather, "if it makes money, do it.

As Christians we seem fairly comfortable with a system that pools our impulse to greed and uses it to exploit others (and often ourselves). It becomes disconnected from us, we do not think of wealth accumulation as "greed" but as "sound financial planning" or "just business." Here's a thought experiment: what jobs would your pastor ask you to resign from because they are considered immoral? (Or, if you are a pastor reading this, what jobs would you challenge your congregants to resign from?) I can picture only an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions or a sex-trade worker being challenged about their career choices. What we do at work otherwise seems to be a zone around which the church tends not to penetrate too deeply.

Now before you start raising the objection that calling our economic model psychopathic is some kind of leftist commie socialist critique, let me point out that the other side agrees. I'll refer you to no less than Milton Friedman who wrote thatthe only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. It is not enough, in Friedman's argument that corporations are singleminded about profits, it is rather that they ought to be singleminded about profits. In other words a corporation shouldbe a psychopath. While Marxism is explicit in its materialist atheism, the implicit message of capitalism - that increasing profits is the highest good - may well be implicitly atheist. Certainly notable atheist pro-capitalist Ayn Rand saw capitalism as more compatible with enlightenment rationalism than with religion or "mysticism" as she called it.

This existing order has, in our society, generally invoked two sets of intellectual responses - a left-wing one and a right-wing one - that Slavoj Žižek characterizes thusly:

“In short, the right-wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who refers to the mere existence of the given order as an argument for it, and mocks the Left on account of its ‘utopian’ plans, which necessarily lead to catastrophe; while the left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court jester who publicly displays the lie of the existing order, but in a way which suspends the performative efficiency of his speech.”

In other words the response on the right is to throw up one's hands and accept that this is the way things are while the response on the left is to point out what is wrong with the system while simultaneously participating in it. Lots of corporate publishing houses and film studios have done very well by the works of left-wing critics like Michael Moore or Naomi Klein or the aforementioned Joel Bakan.

The church has meanwhile been more likely in North America to join the camp of those that would throw up their hands and accept that this is the way it is. The other common response among some Christians has been the Wendell Berry sort of "back to the land" idea that gets pilloried here in a way that I think describes the impossibility of going backwards. I'll go along with Marx instead and agree that a lot of the limits demolished by capitalism have actually improved our lives. It has after all worked better for more people than either slavery or feudalism. But is capitalism then the final, perfected system? Are we accepting that we should pool our resources into legal fictions that act as psychopaths to enrich us? Here I would like to share something else that Žižek said about Marxism: When describing in what meaningful way he could still call himself a Marxist, Žižek said it was only in the sense that he believed that there was another system coming after capitalism. In other words, we are not at the end of history as Fukuyama suggested. Is this not also the belief of the church, that another age is coming? Is this not our great hope - however we might differ in the specifics from Žižek - that something is coming after this?

Whatever kingdom economics will look like, I imagine it will be quite different from what we have now. The Marxists are right, there is still another system coming.

By Ian C. Mclaren

The good news is not first and foremost a message that gives hope for the afterlife; the good news is not first and foremost a message that one may have inner peace and tranquility; the good news is not first and foremost that one may experience an 'authentic' life; the good news is, first and foremost, a proclamation that the long anticipated rule and reign of God has now come in the midst of human history. The good news proclaims that we may participate in God's new creation if we will repent and accept the new reality.

- Lee C. Camp, Mere Discipleship

With the conference only five weeks away, I thought I would take things back to the beginning and examine what I believe to be the basis for all that will be discussed on April 10th^th. From my point of view, it all comes back to these words of Jesus: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15, NRSV). It is here that all those who wish to follow Jesus are invited to completely reorient their lives and bear witness to the reality that, through Christ, a different way of living has now been made possible.

According to James Dunn, the call to repentance as expressed by Jesus “would have initially been heard as a reiteration of the call of the prophets to turn back to God, that is, by implication, from a life in breach of God’s commandments, from a social irresponsibility which should have been unacceptable in the people of Yahweh;” it is a call “to radically alter the manner and direction of their whole life, in its basic motivations, attitudes and objectives, for a society to radically reform its communal goals and values.” It is a call to determined positive action, taking tangible steps to align one’s life with the Way of Jesus. It requires a decision to leave one way of life and set out on another. In the words of Lee C. Camp, repentance must lead to change; “without change, without deep thoroughgoing change, one could not enter and participate in the kingdom.” Jesus, therefore, was calling people to literally change the course and shape of their present daily lives with a view to impacting the world around them in positive and meaningful ways. Repentance is not solely about personal confession and transformation, but also involves a level of social responsibility in accordance to the arrival of the kingdom of God among us.

Furthermore, the call to repentance is qualified by the call ‘to believe’, whereby Jesus was calling all those that would follow him not to a new set of rules and principles to adhere to, nor to some sort of life-saving equation of repentance and belief equals eternal life in heaven, but to reshape their lives according to his message of good news. He was calling them, according to Dunn, to adopt a new “attitude, an orientation of life, a worldview or mind-set rooted in their innermost being ...  a fundamental conviction that motivated and gave character to the whole range of daily living and relationships;” to truly believe, therefore, “requires a personal, trusting, relational involvement in this comprehensive reordering of reality.” Within the context of powerful and oppressive political, social and religious systems that sought to set themselves as the highest authorities and to absorb all people under their destructive ways, Jesus introduced an alternative Way of living in the world with his proclamation of ‘good news’ for all. He was calling all those that wished to follow him to a life of transforming faith, a complete reorientation of how they were to go about their daily lives. Kingdom economy begins, therefore, with repentance and belief, a literal turning away from the old and believing that through Christ, a different way of living has been made possible.

The implications of this become evident as Jesus begins to call specific people to participate in this different way of living. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus calls specific people to specific actions; in Matthew 4:19, for example, he said to Simon and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” While it is to be noted that these first disciples are described as having instantly dropped their nets in response to the call of Jesus, it must not be understated to what extent they sacrificed their old way of life to begin afresh. This giving up of the old way of life is described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an act wherein “the (participant) is thrown out of relative security of life into complete insecurity; out of the foreseeable and calculable realm into the completely unforeseeable, coincidental realm; out of the realm of limited possibilities and into the realm of unlimited possibilities.” The call to participate in the economy of the Kingdom is a call that separates the participants from their previous existence. One must be careful, therefore, not to assume that specific commands that Jesus made to individuals in the Gospels are to be read as universal in relation to all that may wish to follow him; what is central, according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is the question of whether or not one will trust in the Word of Jesus Christ that has been and continues to be spoken among us, believing it to be a stronger foundation than all the securities of the world.

While the call to participate in the kingdom economy involves sacrifice, and the giving up of the old for the new may not always be an easy proposition, the good news of Jesus’ call is that to deny one’s self and follow him is to begin down a road that can literally change the world. Walter Brueggemann explains it well when he says that would-be participants in God’s kingdom are called to follow a God “who disrupts the lives of settled people, who gives them a vocation that marks life by inconvenience and risk.” At the same time, “the ground of the call is the good news of the gospel that God has a powerful intentionality for the world, which, when enacted, will make a decisive difference for good in the world." To answer the call to follow Jesus and participate in the new economy of his kingdom come is to hear the Word of God spoken afresh through him, and to reorient one’s life according to the reality of that kingdom now present in the world. What this looks like in reality will be different for all of us, but may we be willing to make the necessary sacrifices in order to demonstrate to the world that the call of Jesus has not fallen on deaf ears.

Repentance and belief: this is the necessary starting point of all things kingdom economy and the decisive difference for good that it offers to the world today.

By Michael Krahn

In Mark 5 we read of a man with an unclean spirit. He had been living among the tombs; he was uncontrollably violent; he spent his days crying out and cutting himself with stones.

When Jesus arrives near these tombs, the man runs out and falls down before him. Jesus, wasting no time, commands the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For some reason, Jesus then honors the request of the unclean spirit to be sent out of the man into a nearby herd of pigs. Upon possession, the pigs rush down a steep bank into the sea and drown.

Let’s set aside for the moment an interesting discussion we could have about human and animal demon possession and look at the reactions of the people effected by Jesus’ actions in the story.

The herdsmen, now suddenly unemployed, flee the scene and start telling people – in other words, the story goes viral, and of course the usual ambulance chasers and journalists and presumably the pig’s owners, rush to the scene. There they see a trail of hoof prints down a steep bank and in the water below the carcasses of some 2000 pigs.
Not a pretty sight.

Returning from this gruesome sight, they find the man who was previously possessed by a demon sitting calmly, now clothed and in his right mind. For some reason this causes them to be afraid and they beg Jesus to leave the area.

Why?

Jesus had just healed a man; he had freed him from derangement. This man went from living in tombs, spending his days crying out and cutting himself, and responding with uncontrollable violence to calm, composed, and clothed.  You would think these facts would be cause for rejoicing. But no.

To replace a herd of 2000 pigs, at today’s prices, would cost a farmer upwards of $500,000. You can see why Jesus is suddenly seen as a threat. How could he show such careless disregard for half a million dollars worth of someone else’s assets just for the sake of saving one lunatic?!? Obviously the pigs’ owner is going to have some questions,
like “Who’s going to pay for that?”

Ultimately, by begging Jesus to leave, the people of that region were telling him that they valued pigs over people. Jesus of course doesn’t see it this way, but he honors their request. Freedom from bondage is not your thing? Ok, I’ll take it elsewhere…

In Jesus vision of economy, in the Kingdom Economy, humans are valued over dollars. So is freedom.

This reminds me of a situation I was involved with a few weeks ago. I met and became a friend of a young man who is a cocaine addict about a year ago. It’s been a long, tough year for him. His mother has prayed for him and begged him to enter Teen Challenge and recently, after a bad user experience, he finally called and set up a screening
interview for himself.

It costs $100 just be interviewed for admittance and another $1000 if you are accepted into the program. This is partly because Teen Challenge accepts no government funding in order to remain a Jesus-based solution to drug and alcohol addiction.

So I gladly took $100 of our church’s money and paid for the interview for my young friend. Of course, even if he does get into the program there’s no guarantee he’ll stay or that he’ll be cured of his addiction. Nonetheless, it was a hopeful development and I was happy to pay for it.

At one of our staff meetings that week we talked about this situation. We dreamed of a world where dollars equaled cures and all agreed that if throwing money at serious problems always worked, we’d spend our days raising money instead of doing the heavy but rewarding work of helping addicts and others in bondage. Of course, this isn’t exactly the way it works.

Even so, there are ways in which a financial sacrifice can make a crucial difference in the life of someone in bondage. That sacrifice might look like an emptier bank account, but it might also look like working a few less hours each week so that you can help free someone in bondage.

The question is, given the choice in cases where the mental health of one individual could be restored, would we choose that restoration at a personal financial cost or would we rather choose to live at a reasonable distance from the deranged man living in a nearby
graveyard?

We choose the latter all the time. Just substitute the word “graveyard” with “psychiatric hospital” or “hostel” or “alley” and you’ll see what I mean.