Rich Christians in an Age of Envy
In 1977, historian Ronald J. Sider's book was published, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. It became a best-seller. It was co-published by the neo-evangelical Inter-Varsity Press and the Paulist Press, a Catholic publishing firm.
The book was a call for the creation of a huge welfare state, all in the name of Jesus. His social theology was a warmed-over version of the Protestant social gospel movement, which began in the late 1880's. He taught history at the inner-city campus of Messiah College. Today, he is a professor of theology at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University (formerly Eastern Baptist College).
In early 1981, I hired David Chilton to write an answer. I gave him the title: Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators. He had three months to write it. He did it on time. The book is a masterpiece: Bible-based, rigorous in terms of economic analysis, and rhetorically devastating. Sider never recovered from the experience. He rewrote his book slightly, but he never mentioned Chilton's name. I had Chilton write a refutation. Then Sider rewrote that edition, but again failing to mention Chilton. I had Chilton write a third edition. You can download it here. Two decades later, in 1997, Sider backed away from his most socialistic statements in the first edition. This was the fourth edition. That was the year Chilton died. In that edition, Sider even adopted some of Chilton's suggestions for economic reform: shrinking the state. Yet throughout the entire 20 years, he never mentioned Chilton's book. "Chilton? Who's Chilton?" In 1997, I wrote an essay on his transformation: "The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider." I reprinted it as Appendix F of Volume 4 of my economic commentary on Deuteronomy. It is here.
Meanwhile, since 1977, hunger has almost disappeared. The vast increase in the supply of agricultural products that was well in progress in 1977 has continued. Around the world, the price of food has fallen. The percentage of the world's population that is now suffering from hunger is about 10%, according to a 2015 United Nations estimate.
In 1981, the year Chilton's book appeared, the world's poverty rate was over 40%. It has steadily declined. An interactive chart published by the World Bank reveals this. Put your mouse's cursor on any dot to see the poverty rate in that year.
https://data.worldbank.org/topic/poverty?end=2018&start=1978
This historically unprecedented reduction in Third World poverty was accomplished by the free market. This shift was marked above all by the abolition of Marxian Communism in China, beginning in 1979. In that year, Deng Xiaoping freed up Chinese agriculture. Farmers were allowed to sell at a market price. That launched China's economic revolution. Next, the Soviet Union self-destructed in December 1991. India also began freeing its economy from massive regulations in 1991. In short, this incomparable reduction of hunger was achieved without Sider's recommended system of government-enforced wealth redistribution. On the contrary, it was achieved because of reductions in government-enforced wealth redistribution: in Communist China, the USSR, India, and the tribal dictatorships of sub-Saharan Africa.
David Chilton was right, and Ron Sider was wrong. That was because Chilton was right theologically and economically, and Ronald Sider was wrong on both issues.
In Sider's first edition, he titled a section of Chapter 3 with a question: "Is God a Marxist?" (pp. 72-77). He prudently refused to offer an answer in that section, but he quoted Bible passages on caring for the poor. The answer to his provocative question is simple: "No."
The age of hunger is almost over. By 2050, it will be over. That is because the free market is spreading around the world.
Maybe someday Sider will change the title of his book. Maybe he can retitle it Rich Christians in an Age of Obesity. He can call for compulsory government programs of dieting and exercise.
THE SOCIAL GOSPEL IS POLITICAL JEALOUSY
The social gospel calls for the state to redistribute wealth. It does this in the name of helping the poor.
To use the state in this way is to violate the 10th commandment. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's" (Exoidus 20:17).
It is also a violation of the eighth commandment: "Thou shalt not steal" (v. 15). But defenders of the social gospel insist that their call for wealth redistribution by majority vote is not actually a violation of this commandment. They substitute a new commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote."
Defenders of the social gospel want to redistribute wealth by threat of state violence. They want to use other people's money to help the poor. They argue that the state has a legitimate function in transferring wealth from rich people to poor people. They position themselves as defenders of the poor.
Social gospel defenders are in fact rich. Compared to a villager in China, India, or sub-Saharan Africa, they are wildly rich. Yet they do not call for total wealth distribution of everybody in the West on behalf of the poor in the Third World. They know that this is politically unacceptable. The voters in the West would not tolerate it. So, they limit their calls for wealth redistribution to the nation, the state, or the local civil government. Somehow, the social gospel's general principle of wealth redistribution does not apply to the whole world. In short, it doesn't apply to them as upper-middle-class defenders of the social gospel. It applies only to the rich.
They are hypocrites. As with all hypocrites, they resent when somebody points out the obvious hypocrisy of their position.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
The free market has not been shown to reduce economic inequality. In every society, there is economic inequality. Each society will have different systems of ownership that enable a relatively small number of people to get wealthy, but it is not possible to eliminate inequality by government programs of wealth redistribution. The reform merely changes the rules by which some people are successful.
The Bible is clear that great wealth is a blessing to people who obey God's laws. The clearest statements of this are found in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. In both passages, about a quarter of the passage is devoted to gaining the blessings of God through obedience. The rest of the passage describes the many negative sanctions that God imposes on those who disobey him.
Here is Deuteronomy 28:1-14.
And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways. And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of thee.
And the Lord shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give thee. The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.
And the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath; if that thou hearken unto the commandments of the Lord thy God, which I command thee this day, to observe and to do them: And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand, or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
Except for Leviticus 26, there is no passage in ancient literature or religion that praises economic inequality with greater specificity.
The model of great wealth in the Bible is Abraham. Regarding his wealth before God changed his name from Abram, we read this: "And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold" (Genesis 13:2). In second place was Job.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east (Job 1:1-3).
Jesus spoke against the temptation of sacrificing your life in order to attain great wealth. He called this the pursuit of mammon, which can also be translated as wealth. But neither Jesus nor the apostles ever said that great wealth, in and of itself, is a mark of evil. What matters is how someone got his great wealth. If he got it through honest dealing, then his wealth is legitimate. What also matters is what he does with it.
THE TITHE
There is one biblical test above all other economic tests that reveals the character of the person who possesses great wealth. That test is his willingness to give 10% of his gross income to the church.
After a great military victory, Abraham tithed his economic increase to a priest, Melchizedek.
And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all (Genesis 14:18-20).
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we read that Jesus' position as high priest is based on his covenantal descent from Melchizedek.
For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace (Hebrews 7:1-2).For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God. And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest: (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:) By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament (Hebrews 7:19-22).
The rich Christian, as with the poor Christian, pays 10% of his gross income to his local congregation. That congregation is part of the bride of Christ, and the bride of Christ is a judicial representative of God's priesthood in history and also eternity (Revelation 21, 22).
I have written a book on this: The Covenantal Tithe. You can download it here: www.CovenantalTithe.com.
This is God's flat tax which the church lawfully collects. The same percentage applies to rich and poor. Contrary to Ronald J. Sider, there is no such thing, biblically speaking, as a graduated tithe (Rich Christians, 1st edition, Pages 175-78). He invented the concept in order to justify the fundamental principle of theft of the modern world, namely, the graduated income tax, in which people with higher incomes are forced to pay a higher percentage to the state than people with lower incomes. The graduated income tax is a violation of a fundamental judicial principle of the Bible, the rule of law. "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour" (Leviticus 19:15).
The fundamental principle of the social gospel is this: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." You never see any defender of the social gospel, whether it is Ronald Sider or Jim Wallis, devote even a paragraph to Leviticus 19:15. For them, this verse is the equivalent of a crucifix for Dracula.
AN AGE OF ENVY
We live in an age of envy. Envy invokes moral outrage against rich people.
Envy was analyzed in a detailed, scholarly fashion in 1966 by Helmut Schoeck, who wrote a book on it: Envy. I regard it as one of the great books ever written on social theory.
He made this distinction: envy is not the same as jealousy. Jealousy is the desire to take away something that another person legally owns. The jealous person expects to benefit by becoming the owner of whatever it is the other person owns. A classic example of a jealous person is a thief.
Envy is much more insidious. The envious person realizes that the other person possesses something of great value. He would like to possess it. But he cannot have it. He cannot take it away from the other person. Usually, envy is directed against rich people. A person driven by envy chooses not to imitate the other person's lifestyle or abilities in order to achieve the wealth the other person has achieved. He wants to destroy the other person's advantage. He does not care if his own situation deteriorates as a result of the destruction of the other person's advantage. The joy of destroying the other person's advantage is so great that the envious person is willing to discount the negative effects in his own life that the destruction of the other persons advantage produces.
There is a proverb which is attributed to numerous societies. A man is offered an advantage by a wizard. The wizard tells the man that he can have anything he wants. But there is a proviso: his neighbor will get twice as much. The man thinks about it and declares: "Make me blind in one eye." This is the essence of envy.
A biblical example is found in Genesis 26.
And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great: For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him. For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth (vv. 11-15).
The local residents knew that they could not steal Isaac's wells for themselves. The king had forbidden this. But they could fill Isaac's wells with dirt. They might have bought water from Isaac. Isaac might even have given them water. But that did not matter to them. What mattered was this: they resented the fact that Isaac was richer than they were. They would show Isaac! They would show him by ruining his well, which made them poorer. They did not care that they were poorer. The important thing was this: Isaac was poorer.
Schoeck wrote that these people cannot be dealt with. A jealous person can sometimes be bought off. A person with wealth can agree to transfer some of his wealth to the jealous person. Then the jealous person will leave him alone. But the envious person resents the fact that the other person is in a position to offer him a bribe of this kind. It enrages him. The only thing that will satisfy him is the destruction of the other person's wealth or advantage. This is why the sin of envy is insidious. I describe it this way: the difference between a jealous person and an envious person is the difference between an extortionist and an arsonist.
ENVY IN THE CHURCH
There are people who call themselves Christians who do not share the left-wing ideology of the social gospel. Yet they are as driven by envy as the defenders of the social gospel are driven by jealousy.
These people do not suggest that their local churches have the right to forcibly redistribute the wealth of rich members of the congregation to them personally. They know there is no biblical justification for this. They also know that they would not have the votes to do this.
Any congregation that attempted this would find that rich members of the congregation would transfer their membership to another congregation. They would vote with their feet. In most congregations, something like a Pareto distribution of wealth exists. About 20% of the donors to the church supply 80% of the church's total revenue. The departure of the top 20% of donors would bankrupt the local congregation within a month. The pastor would have to find another church to hire him. If he publicly pressured the ruling officers of the church to impose this system of wealth redistribution, he would never get hired by another congregation. He would wind up having to sell insurance for a living. Pastors don't want to do that. So, there is no possibility that a local church's authorities would come to the rich members of the church and insist that they literally owe twice as much or three times as much money as the poorest member of the church owes.
This places the envy-driven members of the congregation in a difficult position. How are they going to get even with those rich Christians who have achieved so much in their lives? How can they inflict some kind of guilt on those people? They can't. Their frustration has no outlet.
If they went to specific members of the congregation who are rich, and they confronted them face-to-face by telling them that they are going to hell for their riches, or that they are seekers after mammon, the rich person would go to the officers of the church and complain. Within a matter of days, the officers of the church would call in the complaining member for a hearing. They would tell him to stop making these accusations. They would tell him to apologize to the person he accused of mammon-seeking. The envy-driven critic would be brought under church discipline if he failed to apologize. Church discipline is rarely applied in most churches, but it would be applied in this case. Church officers are not going to bite the hands that feed them.
So, some of these envy-driven critics go looking for rich Christians who are not members of their congregation. They look for strangers who are both rich and Christians. Then they send accusatory emails to them. That will show them! That will get even with them! That will put the fear of God into them!
No, it won't.
BLINDED BY ENVY
I received this unsolicited email.
If your going to create a website promoting your views on economics and the Bible you should have a comments section. Jesus wasn't a capitalist or a socialist. He didn't advocate for either. Instead of viewing the Bible through a worldly lens you should try looking at the world through a Biblical one. Your promoting idolatry.
He should have written this: "You're promoting idolatry."
I replied by sending him a link to an article I wrote in 2011 about such unsolicited critical emails: https://www.garynorth.com/public/7599.cfm.
He immediately replied:
Philippians 2:2-3 English Standard Version (ESV)2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Your promoting idolatry. Christianity isn't about building wealth.
Again, he confused your with you;re. He has a serious problem with grammar. He also has a serious problem with theology.
He followed with this:
Mathew [misspelled] 6:19-2119 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I have written about this passage at considerable length in Chapter 13 of my commentary on Matthew, Priorities and Dominion. But he of course never bothered to read what I have written.
He sent me another passage.
Mark 12:41-4441 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.
43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.
44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
Capitalism is a secular economic system created by man. It takes the surplus of ones labor and rewards it to another. A prime example is Apple. The iphone is produced at the Foxconn plant where they put suicide nets around the dorms that house the factory workers. Wealth is created by human labor, not ownership.
This poor soul -- and he really is a poor soul -- does not understand the source of his ideas. This argument against capitalism is straight out of Karl Marx's Das Kapital (1867). This is Marx's theory of surplus value. He presents it in Part 3. If you want to read some ancient history about this economically erroneous theory, read my critique of the theory of surplus value. It appears in my book, Marx's Religion of Revolution (1968), pages 119-24 (1989 reprint edition). You can download here. This critique was not original with me. It goes back to Böhm-Bawerk's refutation of Marx in 1884. He presented it in his book, History and Critique of Interest Theories.
Marx's central economic critique of capitalism still finds supporters. As Karl-Friedrich Israel wrote in 2019.
Despite the tremendous and fatal blow that Marx’s exploitation thesis received at the hand of Böhm-Bawerk, the exploitation theme continues to thrive in the hearts of those who operate from envy or even a misconstrued sense of justice. Exploitation has a compelling emotional element that can animate the spirit of those who tend to be aghast at the very existence of a separation between a laborer and an owner of the means of production.
The problem is envy.
My critic is completely unaware that he is relying on the Communists' number-one argument against capitalism. He has never read Marx. He has never read any economic theory. He is completely ignorant about economic theory. But he knows he is right. He knows that anyone who is wealthy and is also a Christian is in violation of God's morality. He knows that the capitalist system is immoral. He knows that the Bible doesn't teach it.
How does he know? He never says. But he knows.
Did he read my commentaries to see what I have written on the passages he sent to me? Of course not. What I have written is irrelevant to him. What matters is this: he knows that capitalism is immoral. He knows that the Bible is not favorable to it.
Does his pastor preach this from the pulpit? Of course not. The pastor is not going to drive out the largest donors in the congregation. If this email writer started badgering rich people in the congregation about their illegitimate riches, the pastor would bring him under discipline. If he continued to do this, the church would excommunicate him. So, he must content himself with sending emails to me. Nobody else listens to him. He thinks I should. And so I have.
He is not alone. Envy is quietly alive in today's churches . . . and in the voting booths.
THE TITHE AS A SHIELD AGAINST ENVY
A person who tithes to his local church does not owe an apology for his wealth to any other member of his church. He does not owe it to some leftist promoter of the social gospel. He also does not owe it to some person with no savings and low income who resentshis presence in the congregation.
The tithe also keeps a person from becoming obsessed with obtaining more money. The tithe demonstrates to God and also to himself that he is not a follower of the god Mammon.
Somebody who tithes knows that he is obeying God's law. He knows that his economic success is not a liability. On the contrary, it is evidence of his success as a God-fearing person. This does not mean that wealth is a mark of salvation. It does mean that wealth, when accompanied by the tithe, is not a mark of God's condemnation.
A middle-class person who tithes to his local church is not resentful of rich people who also tithe to their local church. It means that the local church will be able to expand. It will be able to send more missionaries into foreign lands. They will be able to give more aid to the poor.
In contrast is the envy-driven member who does not tithe, and he resents the fact that rich people do tithe. He will not admit that God says that he has stolen from God. That is unacceptable. So, he indulges in the sin of envy. Those rich people must be evil. They must be God haters. They are successful. He is not successful. They have a lot of money. He does not have a lot of money. They are therefore evil, because he is an economic failure.
It never occurs to him that he is an economic failure because he refuses to tithe. He ignores what the Bible tells him about his own lack of success in life.
Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it (Malachi 3:9-11).
If anyone points this out to him, he responds along these lines: "I'm under grace, not law. I decide how much money I'm going to give to the church. God doesn't care, one way or the other. The reason for my lack of money is because other people are rich. They don't deserve their money. They worship mammon. They don't worship the same God I worship -- the God who doesn't care that I don't tithe."
Meanwhile, he wants rich people out of his sight. If this means that rich people will transfer to another church, this is satisfactory to him. He does not care about the church. He cares about the fact that other people's success is an affront to him.
If you pay your tithe, you can safely ignore these people. You can ignore the fact that they think you are morally deviant. Their opinion does not count. If you can make more money by serving consumer demand, do so. If you accumulate wealth, enjoy it. I recommend giving a lot of it away if you get rich enough to secure your retirement. You will find that giving away money beyond the tithe is enjoyable. But don't do it because of some envy-driven critic who rails against capitalism in the name of Christianity.
CONCLUSION
The theological ignorance of most Christians is matched by their ignorance of economic theory. This is why I have devoted the last six decades to studying what the Bible has to say about economics. This is why I have been publishing books and articles about this since the mid-1960's. Somebody had to do it. So, I did it.
For most Christians, ignorance about economic theory and what the Bible says about this is not a huge liability. They don't think about such things. But a few of them, driven by either envy or Left-wing politics, work towards the undermining of biblical civilization. They don't think they are doing this, but they are. They want to undermine the capitalist system, which is the only system that has ever brought prosperity to the masses. In this sense, these people are liabilities to society.
There are people on the Left who are in churches who call for wealth redistribution by the state. They do so in the name of Christianity. They cannot defend the position exegetically . I have written 31 volumes of commentaries to show why the position is not accurate. But these people do not read Bible commentaries. They do not read economics books. They do not read anything except articles written by other defenders of the social gospel. They have been doing this for over a century.
There are also Christians who regard themselves as Bible-believing people, but they are utterly ignorant of economics and utterly ignorant of what the Bible says about economics. Worse, they are driven by envy. They hate the fact that there are people in their congregations who are wealthy. They would like to get even with these more successful members. They would like to give these people a piece of their mind.
In order to inoculate yourself against both the social gospel and the envy-driven members of your congregation, who resent the fact that you and others are more successful than they are, you would be wise to spend some time studying the Christian economic materials on this website. Forewarned is forearmed.