God, Faith, and the Recessionby Darrell G. Yardley, PhD The current economic crisis, the most sever recession since the Great Depression. How can God and faith help us? Ever the scientist in me, I was interested to learn that the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, had recently published a special edition on "Surviving the Recession". When a journal like Nature devotes a whole edition to the topic, if we did not already know it, we know things are serious. This is a personal topic for me as well. For the first time in my 60 years, I lost my job in November 2008 and am drawing unemployment. As a once tenured professor I had not had to worry much about such. Once I joined the private sector however, my understanding deepened. It is painful, anxiety-ridden, depressing, embarrassing, and frustrating for me with all my education, degrees, licenses, accomplishments, etc. to be in this place.--Welcome to the real world, no? You might say I feel "called" to write this article. Even as I start to put words on the page, I am not at all sure what I want to say. This is perhaps, in truth, a pep talk for myself as well as others of you out there that may be in the same boat or know someone close to you that is. There are a lot of us these days. Taking out the garbageA quick search of the web this morning turned up some enlightened posts--as well as garbage...To take out the garbage first, there were the ultra-right conservatives out there preaching that the recession is His way of rewarding the Republicans and punishing the Democrats. (Very puzzling as I know as many Republicans as Democrats that are suffering from the recession/economy.) This reasoning is along the same lines of AIDS as a punishment for homosexuals and natural disasters as punishment for sins. We obviously worship a different God. This is ancient, primitive tribal mentality. Pre-scientific, pre-enlightenment, and post-stupid. This is same "logic" we see in Al Qaeda terrorists and fundamentalists world wide: there are no innocents... If they don't believe what we believe, that is if they don't belong to our tribe (or at least tribe-think), then to them death and destruction is deserved. Etc. etc. etc. OK, let's move on to the more positive sides of what I want to say... Will God rescue us?Will S/He intervene and rescue us--as a nation, as a world, as individuals? Hell, most important, will S/He rescue me?The answer is a resounding, "NO." That is not the way S/He works--at least to my experiences. The God of the Old Testament is dead. Actually, S/He never was. That was just ancient Israel's interpretation, which really comes from the fear-based, fight-or-fight response. No God-brought floods, fires, walls tumbling down, or rescues. Will S/He help us to find our own solutions? Yes--if we have faith and pay attention. S/He works through other people in our lives. S/He works through us but won't do it for us. S/He will help us come up with the ideas, but we have to take action to make those ideas a reality. God works, or has worked a lot in my life, by what psychologist, Carl Jung, called synchronicity. Synchronicity is the coincidental occurrence of events that are related but that cannot be explained by conventional mechanisms of causality. Now to the question of faith... Faith and the RecessionCentral to the way S/He works in our lives is faith. By faith, I mean "trust". Trust that if we are open to it, God works with and through us. That S/he will guide us. Many times in the New Testament Jesus and the Apostle Paul refer to the importance of faith in our relation to God.This is pretty damn difficult a lot of the time. Easy in theory, but difficult in practice...especially as the Dow continues to tumble and bills are coming due. Those banks and credit card companies don't seem to know the rules, that is, Her rules. No forgiveness there. Just the $$$ you owe them. Which brings me to... A More Global (a.k.a., Godly) Perspective: God's EconomyMany of these notes come from The Rev. John Nieman, Rector, Holy Trinity Episcopal Parish, Clemson, SC, in a Lenten lecture he gave last night. Thank you, John. The added psychobiology is mine.Right RelationshipsI refer you first to the second creation story in Genesis (2.4b-3), which is thought to be the oldest of the two creation stories. This creation story is really about right relationships:
Sin is realFrom our basic biology we are driven by our selfish genes (Dawkin's The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author ) to look out
for ourselves. This includes our families for which we share many of
the same genes. (This is called kin
selection and is part of our inclusive fitness.)
But we are social animals. This in large part is what makes (or made)
our species so successful = able to survive and reproduce. The genes
for our "social fitness" are often in conflict with the drive
from
our "individual fitness" genes. Likewise our call from God for right
relationship is often in conflict with our biological drives for
individual survival and reproduction.The FallThe Fall is about our tendency to violate these right relationships with God, our fellow human beings, and Creation. It is our insistence on acting independent from God, from right relationship from each other, and from our stewardship to Creation. Which enters sin and the seven deadly sins...The Seven Deadly SinsThese are one way the Church has categorized sin. They promote individual gain or self-interest over right relationship. Or, from a biological perspective, they promote individual fitness over inclusive fitness. They are
Crisis is from the Greek word, krisis, which means, judgment. For too long our culture/society has had a one-dimensional mindset of "the market". Our economy is market driven, the bottom line, the almighty $$$. This mindset puts its faith in the individual and individual gain, not in faith in God. So what would God ask of us? We need to look toward God's Economy. But first, what is "the economy"? What is the economy?The economy is the art of making the most out of life--George Bernard Shaw.The Social Sciences defines an economy as a system of production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics defines it as the social science that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems. Both good definitions--as far as they go. We need a bigger perspective, a more "Godly perspective". We need to look beyond the one-dimensional market consciousness where we are all consumers and/or producer, as opposed to Christians and human beings. God’s economyis based on the web of relationships among people who understand themselves to be stewards of the social fabric and the created order. But what does it mean to be stewards of the social fabric and the created order? A steward is a caretaker or manager on behalf of another. In this case, God is the other.Going back the creation story and right relationships, and the seven deadly sins that promote individual self-interest, God's Economy instead is based on the Seven Virtues... The Seven Virtuespromote the well-being of the social order. The first four are “cardinal” -- from the Latin cardo or hinge. The Cardinal Virtues are hinges upon which the door of the moral life swings. The last three are “theological”. Their primary object is God (theos) – 1 Cor. 13.Cardinal Virtues
Theos Virtues
Is it possible to base an economy on these virtues?Yes, it is possible, but not easy. Christianity, after all, is not a religion of the individual alone. It is a religion that embraces the whole inhabited earth. This is God’s Economy or its economic basis.We need to be stewards of the social fabric and creation. So entrenched is self interest in our cultural fabric that there is enormous resistance and inertia. But this is one of the upsides to crisis, chaos, and our recession... God created order out of chaos, out of the darkness. Let us begin... |
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