The Great Economy

The Great Economy

Our minds are on how the stalemate with the 4 trillion deficit is going to end. Will our country be able to save its credit and who is going to be cut in order to bring the deficit down. Along with this there has been a terrible heat wave throughout the Midwest and drought in Texas. It is affecting the corn crops, which will mean higher prices for most of beef and food products we eat. These are hard economical times.Few of us think of the economy having anything to do with creation other than finding a way to reengineer it for our survival. The world has discovered in the past two or three years, that our economic system embodies irresponsibility with the meltdown of financial markets. This is an anxious time for all of us. We need a new way of managing our resources that are becoming scarcer as the world population grows and takes over what breathing space is left on Mother Earth. In Luke 12 we read about a farmer stockpiling his grain, seeing it as an entitlement that was actually built on the backs of the poor. The context of this parable centers on large estate owners who expanded their land by expropriating the lands of smallholders by debt foreclosure. Jesus makes the point the bumper crop of this farmer should have been redistributed to those in need. Private accumulation does not fit the Great Economy that God designed for his people In Exodus. This parable is an example of avarice and greed. The land belongs to all of us. It will be redistribute in the long term due to our mortality.

Benedict was adamant about the distribution of the material needs of the monks being done in this manner: Chp.57:20-21 Distribution was made to each one as he had need (Acts 4:35). In this way the abbot will take into account the weaknesses of the needy, not the evil will of the envious, yet in all his judgments he must bear in mind God’s retribution.” Further, on Benedict writes in verse 7: The evil of avarice must have no part in establishing prices, which should, therefore, always be a little lower than people outside the monastery are able to set, so that in all things God may be glorified (1 Pet. 4:11)

Greed is lethal, according to Jesus as reported in Luke. We really don’t have to search hard for its evidence. The health care reform bill is still being worked out because there is too much being asked of those who are controlling the way healthcare is being delivered. Jesus knows that His father is aware of our legitimate needs, but God does not accept affluence that weighs on the backs of the poor. Jesus is proclaiming an economy of enough. We are called to lives of simplicity so that our brothers and sisters in nations struggling to develop can simply live.

We are being fools if we continue to keep on acting “this is the way we have always done it”. “Jesus invites us to have ‘eyes to see’ a Great Economy from which we are deeply alienated.” Chad Myers, Souljourners,Dec. 2009; Paying Attention to the Birds” pg. 29-53. We need a new economic story and perhaps, the birds and the lilies of the field can teach us. God’s wisdom can be found in nature as readily as it is found in the Holy Book. “Jesus understands that our preoccupation with “market security” blinds us to the truth of the Great Economy and asserts a counter-imperative (12:24,27) Don’t be anxious; refocus your attention. Ibid. pg. 30 (sojo.net) I have found in my own spiritual experience that God is enough and I usually have all that I need to live so that God may be glorified.