The Trouble With Economies Part Two

I think this second part can be addressed with relative "economy."  This has to do with the world's (that is to say, "worldly") economies.

A perfect example of the trouble with worldly economies is shown in a certain American Evangelical fascination with the Jamestown settlement: At first all was held in common, but that didn't work very well.  Captain John Smith instituted a system of private property (chiefly in the form of ostensibly arable land) whereby was to be actualized the New Testament admonition "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10, KJV).

It should be noted, of course, that the instituting of private property (and of private enterprise) does not follow directly from "if any would not work, neither should he eat"--it would merely be necessary for the authorities to withhold food from those persons who refused to exert themselves for the common good.  Of course, "merely" making such judgments would probably not be so easy.

And so we have the Evangelicals' beloved tale of colonists (exempting the gravely ill) being faced with work or starvation.  They were also faced, however, with two other things: the assumption that productivity equaled work (linked to the ultimately unproveable assumption that everyone's "lot" was equal), and the assumption that every application for consideration as infirm would be greeted with perfect justice.

And so we have the economy of The West, wedded awkwardly through the generations to the "Judeo-Christian" ethic.  "Free Enterprise" is, of course, a relatively efficient approximation of what would ideally be spontaneous and selfless collective endeavor, but one wonders if we have ever realized the full extent to which that "approximation" has degraded the teachings of Jesus.

As I wrote in the previous post, "The Jesus of the Salvation Economy may be praised to the highest heavens, but the very logic of an economy places Jesus at a bargaining-table, dealing out salvations and damnations for people as against some corners of existence which--most perversely--might be held to possess competing claims--as though such claimants could exist in a universe created through Jesus."

Similarly, "Free Enterprise" Christianity--from John Smith's day to our own--has given cruel fortune (or, in Job's theology, cruel Satan) a seat at the meeting-table of the community, arguing--even if silently--the crushing presumption that poverty is a just payment.