Early Christian America

-    Governments, unless restrained by a system of checks and balances AND checked by pulpits and Christian living throughout the culture DAILY, will become “beast-like”.

-    Money is the result of an exchange of your TIME and labor, for payment. In other words, if a thief steals your wallet full of the money representing your 45 hour paycheck, he has NOT just stolen “money”…he has stolen 45 hours of your LIFE. And though you probably will recover, if the thefts continue, such thefts will amount to nothing less than “murder on an installment plan.”

-    People will starve … and there will be unutterable anguish and sorrow if money is repeatedly taken from them. But, long before they reach actual starvation, they will become EXASPERATED… provoked by temptations of vengeance they might not have entertained without the exactions. Read here  the tragedy of Joseph Stack, whom I did not know, but who appears to have been exasperated for a long time, prior to the incident. Such provoked individuals unfortunately, can lead others to act in like manner, drawing upon public sentiment to create a fire of cultural unrest.  (That said,  one question, though, bothers  me: How could there have been such billowing smoke and flames from a single engine, 30 gallon Piper (airplane)? If  I understand it correctly (from a former Piper pilot),  no Piper could have produced such an explosive reaction – at least, not the kind we see in the pictures online. No explanations are forthcoming from the media. Are we being told everything?)

-    Money redeems, temporally, from the evils of the curse around us by enabling us to pay for services, health care, food, shelter… all the things needed for LIFE.

-    Money provides an inheritance for our children and grandchildren. “A good man”, Scripture tells us, “leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.”

-    Inheritance, the very monetary advantage William Jennings Bryan so popularly condemned (in the name of a perverse “Christianity”), is  the only category  in the Bible that can stop a capital sentence. That’s how important the subject of money and inheritance is to God. II Samuel 14 (see especially verses 4-11), shows us that the wise woman of Tekoa used the Law of God to declare damage to her inheritance if the (murderous) son were executed. Therefore, the judge (David) waived the death penalty and saved her inheritance.

Taking away the wealth, home, land and investments of a man IS disinheriting him… Biblically, it is murdering him while he continues to walk and breathe. Such rapacious activity  by governments are unconditionally condemned by God as criminal,  provoking and dangerous (Psalm 82). They provoke people to acts of desperation. They lead others  to  emulate their  acts. They can lead  to  strife and excess.

3.    Blood and  Money: The Church must stop  fictionalizing money

Perhaps, it is time the Church of Christ stop allowing “money” to be fictionalized into something “Always evil”, something only the greedy are interested  in gaining. Of course, the Church has  also fictionalized the government’s motives as the only  entity  that can forcefully strip you of all your wealth, and still remain pure,  right and  humanitarian … in sermon after sermon.

Remember, 20th century liberal historian Arthur  M. Schlesinger, Jr., was the one who wrote concerning the American clergy and  its economic “understanding”:

The Social Gospel, which had endorsed the liberal view of planning in the twenties, now also tended to more drastic conclusions in the thirties. Early in 1934 about 21,000 clergymen responded to a questionnaire sent out by the World Tomorrow. One question asked whether they thought capitalism or the “cooperative commonwealth” more consistent with the  ideals  of  Jesus. Capitalism was chosen by only 5 per cent. Of the 95 per cent who favored the co-operative commonwealth,  10,700 came out for “drastically reformed  capitalism” [Ed. note: Our current liberalized redistributive society, not yet  fully  socialized is one version of  “co-operative commonwealth”.], and nearly 6,000 declared outright for  socialism (which led the veteran Kirby Page to exult, “Among all the trades, occupations, and professions in the country,  few can produce as high a percentage of Socialists as can the ministry.” 

God has put concept of money into the soul of mankind.  It is supposed to be honest money… commodity money! (See Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 60ff (1971, FEE edition). It is not supposed to be fiat (artificial, therefore, ever-depreciating wealth). It is to be “redeemable” (great theological term!) in honest commodity, usually gold and silver. It  used to be you could go to the bank and get silver for your  paper currency. Thus, money should be backed up with real worth and exchangeable for it. Under the circumstances, I don’t care if it’s a chicken, if I can get something of worth for  my money, then it’s a more honest money.  We do NOT have such money today.

Money represents life (blood) exchanged for it. Christ’s death uses monetary terms to  describe His Sacrifice. In contrast, as wealth is extracted by coercive decrees, more and more individuals will be economically marginalized and provoked as Joseph Stack was apparently provoked. That bodes ill for our people.

So, let’s start teaching people to build real wealth, offering “something for something”. The Bible tells us that the Church will be responsible for teaching the nations to “beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks”… We will teach to nations to get gain through tools (capital investment), not warfare. 
Out  of our love for Truth and our neighbor, it’s time to rethink “money” and its  redemptive stewardship. Unfortunately, it’s too late for that to matter in the tragedy of “your neighbor”, Joseph Stack.

-submitted, Wayne  C. Sedlak, ICHR