"Events such as the Evolving Church conference help us address several of our core values. We are committed to social responsibility and specifically we uphold biblical justice. Furthermore, we are committed to strategic cooperation, partnering with those of like-minded message, mission, passion and purpose."
- David Freeman, Vice President, The Christian Missionary Alliance in Canada
It’s one of those stories that jumps from the page at you. A man – a good guy by all accounts – comes to Jesus with the blunt question that others had probably been too scared to ask: how do I get eternal life? You can imagine the wry smile breaking across Jesus’ face. ‘It’s simple, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Just obey the commandments.’ The man is perhaps more relaxed, more confident now, and comes back at him: which ones? To which he gets the obvious reply: don’t kill people, don’t be unfaithful, don’t steal stuff, don’t lie… Yeah, yeah, yeah the man says, cutting Jesus off before he recites the entire list. ‘I’ve done all that…’
And then comes the hit. Jesus turns, fixes him with his gaze and speaks right to the heart of the matter: go and sell all you have, and give the money to the poor. The man turns away sadly and walks away, the camera holding a long shot as he walks off into the distance, slowly and thoughtfully. He is a rich man, gutted.
As we’re thinking about ‘Kingdom Economy’ I think this story is very pertinent because the economy of the Kingdom is so different to the economy that we are so deeply enmeshed in. Capitalism is not simply an economic system, some way we have chose to order our lives, it is the very iris of our society – almost nothing enters our consciousness without being filtered by it.
So if we are to think about how to order our lives around a Kingdom Economy, the first question that must go is ‘how much should I give?’ We’re used to thinking about tithes, about percentages and figures – the amount we can hand over to be ‘good enough.’ Jesus makes it clear: if you’re thinking about how much, you’ve still got your Capitalist glasses on, not your Kingdom ones, your ‘what can I do’ work ethic, not your ‘what can God do’ spirit.
Slajov Zizek (a Marxist Atheist philosopher who remains completely fascinated with Christianity) gave a brilliant talk at the Royal Society of Arts recently (see video embed) in which he critiqued the Altruist-Capitalist agenda of ‘the new philanthropists’ like Bill Gates. The issue is complex, but I want to be provocative and suggest that Zizek is right: in Kingdom economics, the Gates foundation is ultimately part of the problem, not the solution.
When you are buying a coffee from Starbucks, you are simultaneously ‘buying into’ an act of altruism by doing something for the poor coffee farmers etc. etc. As their strapline goes, "It's Not Just What You Are Buying, It's What You Are Buying Into." Through this sort of company – and through schemes like Brand (Red) we are encouraged to see that we are purchasing our redemption from being only a consumer: we are buying in order to fulfil our ethical duties. We are attempting to buy, in other words, something that cannot be bought – a gift, an act of generosity.
It’s this sense of capitalism being the mode by which we will help the poor which I think Jesus is critiquing in this story too. When he tells the rich man to go and sell all he has he is asking him to totally change the economic mode by which he sees the world. He is saying that the Kingdom works not as a by-product of capitalism, but as a radically different economics – ‘ordering of the house’ – altogether. As Zizek concludes with a quote from Oscar Wilde: ‘the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves.’ Why? Because this superficial pleasantry prolonged a destructive system.
In a world which has been ravaged by the pursuit of profit, grand gestures of altruism by those who have harvested huge profits through companies with less than altruistic market strategies are, in Jesus’ eyes, like the money thrown into the collection box by the rich. Showy, but not part of the solution. In a world where huge bonuses are paid to bankers for making money, while governments step in and protect their jobs when they lose on a huge scale - while letting low-paid manual labourers go to the wall - the new economics of the Kingdom is desperately needed.
So in a sense then, Starbucks are right. It’s not what you are buying, it’s what you are buying into. And we need to be very aware of what we think we are buying into whether that be paying for a coffee, playing the stock market or paying for a conference - as James Shelley points out below.
Kester is a part-time teacher and writer on theology, education and pretty much anything else. He's also a consultant for BBC Education, and has published regularly around issues in Secondary Education. His works include The Complex Christ, published poetry and he's just finishing a novel entitled Nothing. A new book following up the ideas raised in The Complex Christ is due to be published in Spring 2010. Kester blogs at kesterbrewin.com
I have been stewing over this question since I first read about the premise for the Evolving Church conference this year. It is an economic choice to go to a conference, especially to go to one with an economic theme. Doubtlessly the guys at Epiphaneia are fully aware of the subtle paradox here: titling a conference “Kingdom Economy” forces potential participants (like me) to ask, “How do Christian conferences fit into the economic picture of this ‘kingdom’ we speak of?”
If we fail to ask this question then we fail to actually recognize the theme of the conference itself. So let’s think this through…
Full disclosure: travel, food and registration expenses for me to attend the conference would equal about one hundred dollars. This expenditure is first and foremost an investment in myself: my own learning, growth and perspective (all of which, of course, are arguably valuable—nay, essential—to this kingdom way of life).
Conversely, if I were somehow able sweet-talk the conference organizers into giving me a free ticket and paying for my travel then I could hypothetically show up at the Kingdom Economy conference and hold up $100 bucks that I saved and ask everyone, “What is the best way to use this money in the kingdom of God?”
I do not suspect that anyone there would say, “You should take that money and go to another conference!”
Ironic.
The explicit message of the Kingdom Economy conference will probably not be that followers of Jesus should leverage their funds for hosting more conferences.
Herein lies my struggle: if I give away my $100 to a person or family in need then I am in fact modeling some small dimension of this kingdom-oriented economy. If I sacrificed my capacity to go to the conference by this alternative (“crazy”) economic behavior, then the conference indeed served its purpose (even though I didn’t actually attend) by elevating my consciousness to the way I control the resources I have in light of the kingdom priorities around me.
But let’s be honest (or employ some holy cynicism, take your pick) – who would actually give up going to the conference in order to give away their money? We both know that I’m darn well spending that cash on myself either way, so I might as well use it to go to an event that will challenge me to be less selfish, right? Does the fact that my lifestyle choices are already so far removed from my “stated” kingdom convictions mean that I actually need to go this thing? Or does it mean that I need to not go?
Or…perhaps the subject of economics simply tends to disintegrate into idealistic naiveté: Conferences, like all forms of learning, are embedded in their own material economics. Whoever first penned the phrase, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor,” first had to purchase (acquire, trade, whatever) the physical papyrus to write it on! The choice to “publish” one’s convictions generally requires a certain “suspension” of the idealism they preach. We naturally accept this whenever a charitable organization sends us a glossy brochure telling us that they need our money to do their good altruistic deeds, while obviously they are also spending money on glossy brochures. In the same way, the topic of “kingdom economics” demands that we live, at least temporarily, in a rather ambiguous paradox.
This is the natural tension of the kingdom economy. It is like an eternal, shifting equilibrium—one debated by the mystics, ascetics, and theologians for hundreds of years.
In the final analysis, the issue is not whether or not you go a conference in May; the issue is whether or not you choose to wrestle wholly, fully and deeply with the implications of this economy in your life, including its relationship to this conference itself.
James Shelley describes himself as an educator, storyteller, fitness instructor, and fledgling author. His writing reflects his belief of the interplay between writing, ecology, solidarity, leadership and ecclesiology. He blogs at plumblinemedia.com
At past Evolving Church conferences we've felt like we have overwhelmed people with too much content in a short amount of time, making it difficult to process anything. Thinking takes time. Recalibration is a process. In an effort to curb this content overload we're going to begin the Kingdom Economy conversation sooner than you might have expected. We've invited over 40 bloggers to guest post every other day on this site beginning on January 11th and going all the way until the conference.
"The Evolving Church conferences are an opportunity for my students to hear top-notch speakers, who are leaders in developing and promoting ideas that encourage and challenge the church to be church. They learn of a great variety of views that are presently or potentially influential in our time in a setting which is intentionally gracious and worshipful.
I tell my students that they will not necessarily embrace every idea or practice they encounter, but they will learn, and most certainly grow, if they pay attention." - Dr. Mark Bowald, Assistant Professor of Religion & Theology, Redeemer University.
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