Spiritual Aspect of Prosperity
The economist Max Weber was one of the first
people to systematically study the tie-ups between religion and
economics. Firstly he found that the higher percentage of their
GDP that cultures or nations spent on religion the poorer they
tended to be. That is those that were more religious were poorer
than those that were more secular. Secondly he found that the
“Protestant work ethic” was part of the reason behind
the success of the Western nations and his first major
publication bore that name. Since then many people have
written about the tie up between religion and economics. From an
evangelical standpoint these statistical facts need to be
re-interpreted slightly since we do not believe that all
religions are of equal spiritual value. It is of no surprise to
an evangelical that Protestant nations are wealthier than
equivalent economies with other religious allegiances. God
blesses those who follow Jesus by faith. However why is Africa so
poor? What is it about the spiritual dimension that makes nations
that follow animism, tribal religions or voodoo so terribly
poverty stricken? Also huge spiritual questions are raised such
as “If God loves the poor and is in control of the financial
realm why is there still poverty?” This article will answer
that question in eight ways:
- Prosperity
is totally under the control of the sovereignty of God
- There is
a moral aspect to prosperity involving personal character
attributes and right relationships.
- There is
a spiritual realm of blessings and curses that greatly
influences our prosperity.
- Satan
steadfastly opposes God’s prosperity.
- People
become poor because idolatry creates poverty.
- The quest
for “luck/fortune” creates an irresponsible
mindset that in turn creates poverty.
- The
spiritual realm is used as a means of escape and
illusion, an “opiate of the masses”.
- The
spiritual world of primitive religion is chaotic and in
need of appeasement not logical, lawful and predictable,
it thus does not encourage long-term planning.
So we see that there are primary connections
between religion and prosperity such as blessings, curses, idols
and answers to prayer. Then there are secondary ones where our
religion influences our mind so that we believe in ghosts or in
luck or in gods that must be appeased in expensive ways. These
religious beliefs affect the way we work and plan and have very
real economic consequences. Lets examine these seven spiritual
factors in prosperity and poverty a bit further.
Prosperity Is Totally Under The
Control Of The Sovereignty Of God
This was Nebuchadnezzar's hardest lesson. On
the rooftops of Babylon he cried out "Is this not might
Babylon which I have made?" For this act of pride he was
punished by God by losing both his might and his mind for seven
years. After his sanity and his kingdom was restored he said:
(Daniel 4:34-37
NKJV) ….and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored
Him who lives forever: For His dominion is an everlasting
dominion, And His kingdom is from generation to generation. {35}
All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does
according to His will in the army of heaven And among the
inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand Or say to
Him, "What have You done?" …Now I, Nebuchadnezzar,
praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works
are truth, and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride He
is able to put down.
God is sovereign over the most might of
rulers and "does according to His will in the army of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth". God is able to
influence both position in life and prosperity in life. The
following five verses illustrate and clearly testify to God's
absolute control over the financial, social and political realms
that influence prosperity: He gives them to whomever He wishes.
God Controls Riches , Honor,
Greatness and Strength
(1 Chronicles
29:11-12 NKJV) {11} Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, The power
and the glory, The victory and the majesty; For all that is in
heaven and in earth is Yours; Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, And
You are exalted as head over all. {12} Both riches and honor come
from You, And You reign over all. In Your hand is power and
might; In Your hand it is to make great And to give strength to
all.
God Controls Political Position
(Daniel 4:17 NKJV)
..In order that the living may know That the Most High rules in
the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over
it the lowest of men.'
God Controls Riches, Wealth and The
Ability To Enjoy Them
(Ecclesiastes 5:19
NKJV) As for every man to whom God has given riches and
wealth, and given him power to eat of it, to receive his heritage
and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.
God Controls The Entire Financial
Realm
(Haggai 2:8 NKJV) 'The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine,' says the LORD of
hosts.
God Can Give Us An Abundance For
Every Good Work
(2 Corinthians 9:8
NKJV) And God is able to make all grace abound toward you,
that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an
abundance for every good work.
God is the totally sovereign giver of wealth
and honor. He rules in the kingdom of men. His will prevails on
Earth. He gives prosperity to whomever he pleases including the
lowliest of men. He gives not only wealth, but the power to enjoy
it. For the Christian worker He makes grace abound so the we may
have "all sufficiency in all things" and "an
abundance for every good work".
This is not a fatalistic view but rather an
optimistic view. Since God controls all wealth and honor and
since God cares for the poor then we have a powerful ally in
helping the poor! To take these verses to mean "The poor
have an allotted station in life, its poverty, God has not given
them wealth, so be it" is to deny God's bias to the poor so
evident in the Scriptures.
There Is a Moral Aspect To Prosperity
Involving Issues of Character and Relationships
Some people are poor because they or the
culture they are part of ignores basic morality and wisdom. This
is not just “blaming the victim”. It is a real factor
in poverty. The market factors and structural factors that cause
poverty will be the main focus of the book, however, to be fair,
we have to look at all the causes of poverty including those
mentioned in Scripture. Irresponsible behavior such as
getting drunk regularly, taking illegal drugs, gambling or
engaging in promiscuous behavior leads to poverty. A case in
point is the AIDS epidemic that is destroying the prosperity of
South Africa, which is a resource rich nation with generally good
leadership. The working life of many South Africans requires long
stays away from home at mines, and this has combined with
traditional valuing of virility and the availability of
prostitution to produce widespread promiscuity. Also part of the
culture of virility is a deep scorn for the practice of
“safe sex”. This lethal combination of promiscuity and
folly has led to a vast HIV-AIDS epidemic which according to
South Africa’s Medical Research Council is causing 25
percent of all deaths in the country and 40% of adult deaths in
the 15-49 age group and which may reduce the life-expectancy to
41 years by 2010 (reported in Newsweek , Oct 29th 2001 p) This is further compounded by a culture of shame
about HIV-AIDS and government refusal to acknowledge the problem.
Such a massive epidemic of course causes deep poverty in families
bereaved of the provider and throughout the nation as a whole.
Just one foolish immoral person can do great damage to their
family and friends. When a nation, city or a sub-culture
disregards biblical morality and wise living then disaster is
inevitable. From the gin-soaked London during the time of Wesley
to the drug addicts of New York the effects of immorality,
ignorance, pride and folly are obvious. In addition to the
“sex, drugs cigarettes and booze” aspects of poverty
are attitudinal character aspects such as laziness, contempt for
learning and choosing friendships with “the wrong sort of
people”. These are extensively dealt with in the book of
Proverbs and touched on in the section on prosperity so I will
not discuss them further here. Thus while God desires all people
to be rich the behavior of some people hurls them to destruction
and poverty.
Curses and Blessings Have Great
Influence On Our Power To Generate Wealth
Curses and blessings are generally
considered to be primitive superstitions but they are taken very
seriously in the Bible. In Genesis 1 we find God's initial
blessings on mankind bestowed three things that greatly affect
our prosperity: Fruitfulness, Multiplication and Authority to
"rule over".
Fruitfulness is the proper expression of our
inner nature. Fruitfulness includes the crops in the field and
the seven strong sons and enjoying the work of your hands. The
opposite of fruitfulness is barrenness and sterility, dried up
crops, a life that peters out and goes nowhere.
Multiplication is exponential increase . It
is seeing your abundance produce more abundance and then yet
greater abundance. Its classic illustration is how Jacob got
large herds even though his wages were "the spotted
and the speckled". The exponential multiplication of his
flocks was a clear sign that God was with him and that Laban was
unrighteous. The opposite of multiplication is frustration and
futility.
By Authority to "rule over" we
have dignity, headship, authority, the ability to be ascendant,
to be the head not the tail, to be victorious and to maintain our
boundaries in peace. Its opposite is being humbled, despised,
invaded, to eat the dirt, to be crushed and humiliated, to be
unable to rise.
Countering this in Genesis 3 we see the
first curses in operation. The very opposite of the blessings is
brought to bear by God as He judges Adam, Eve and the Serpent.
The woman is made unfruitful, the man is made to work in futility
and the serpent is told he will eat the dirt and eventually be
crushed in utter defeat. Prosperity was denied. The power to
enjoy Shalom was taken away.
Thus blessings are a spiritual influence
that brings about fruitfulness, multiplication and authority.
Curses are a spiritual influence that brings barrenness, futility
and humiliation. Curses and blessings thus "tilt the playing
field" and make it either easy or difficult to make wealth.
Because the physical world is undergirded by the spiritual world
a change in spiritual reality can profoundly affect human
prosperity.
The close tie between cursing and blessing
and national prosperity is clearly delineated in Deuteronomy
26-28 where the nation would be blessed and prosperous if it
obeyed God and destroyed in futility if it served idols instead.
The nation's power to make wealth thus depended on whether it was
blessed or cursed by God. In the book of Haggai the curse on the
nation (Haggai 1:5-11, 2:16,17 ) that was leading to economic
ruin was removed when the people obeyed the prophets and laid the
foundation on the Lord's temple (Haggai 2:18,19). Then prosperity
was rapidly restored. God's claim in Haggai is that "the
silver and gold are mine". The power to make wealth is thus
contingent on a spiritual universe - which we know is in
conflict.
Prosperity Is Opposed by Evil -
Including Satan Who Comes To Steal and Kill and Destroy
Jesus defines the mission of Satan as
"To steal, kill and destroy" (John 10:10). In Scripture
Satan is portrayed as destroying the prosperity of God's servants
such as Job, unleashing persecution, and afflicting people with
various diseases including mental illness. Satan also lays claim
to the commercial and political realms falsely boasting to Jesus
that he could give them to whomever he wished (Luke 4:5,6). In
the "King of Tyre" discourse Satan is seen as
"wise in trade" (Ezekiel 28:5). Indeed there is a kind
of demonic and godless prosperity that is purely financial and
does not participate in God's Shalom. At the end of history the
choice will be between entering a Satanic world of trade and
investment and maintaining faith in God (Revelation 13:16-18).
The reality of these principalities and
powers can be readily seen in that some of the fiercest and most
irrational persecution these days is directed at Christians who
help the poor successfully and thus break some of Satan’s
society-wide strongholds. (Proverbs 31:8,9). Thus the
principalities and powers behind social evils need to be
addressed as these powers can greatly afflict the power to make
wealth of a city or nation. The battle is not only political but
spiritual.
In fact there are two spiritual battles
here, Firstly is the battle to stop the Satanic destruction of
the bodies, minds and prosperity of the poor - opposing the
"steal, kill and destroy" aspect of Satanic rule. This
requires a strong commitment to pastoral care, healing and
vigorous intercession by Christian workers. The second and more
sophisticated battle is against the Prince of Tyre aspects,
against the power of trade turned evil.
Systemic injustices, drug trafficking,
piracy, the effects of globalization and currency trading and
usurious rates of interest can be seen as based in a power
greater then mere human ingenuity. This requires a strong
prophetic and political stance by Christian workers. Success is
possible. Many of the Scripture passages that most vividly
picture success and prosperity start with the phrase "a new
heavens and a new earth".(Isaiah 65:17, 66:2, 2Peter 3:13,
Revelation 21:1).
This implies the heavens have been cleansed
of demonic influence. Under the new purified heavens demons no
longer torment people's minds or afflict their bodies. The
principalities and powers in the heavenly realms have been
totally defeated and are now bound so that the heavens are
"new" and the blessing of God to mankind can flow
freely and without let or hindrance. The power to make wealth is
unleashed under the new heavens and great length of life and
material wealth is promised in Isaiah 65. It is notable that
during times of revival, when the heavens are renewed, there
quickly flows correction of systemic injustices (e.g. slavery was
corrected by Wilberforce during the time of John Wesley) as well
as a correction of social evils. National prosperity quickly
follows.
Idolatry Creates Poverty
During the ceremony in which the Law of
Moses was enacted God made it very clear that turning to idols
and following wickedness would result in poverty and destitution:
(Deuteronomy 28:15-20 NKJV) "But
it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD
your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His
statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will
come upon you and overtake you: {16} "Cursed shall you be in
the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. {17}
"Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. {18}
"Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of
your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your
flocks. {19} "Cursed shall you be when you come in, and
cursed shall you be when you go out. {20} "The LORD will
send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set
your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish
quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you
have forsaken Me.
What sin could possibly bring such a
devastating economic curse? Worshipping idols.
(Deuteronomy 7:25-26 NKJV) "You
shall burn the carved images of their gods with fire; you shall
not covet the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it for
yourselves, lest you be snared by it; for it is an abomination to
the LORD your God. {26} "Nor shall you bring an abomination
into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You
shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an
accursed thing.
Those nations that are most involved with
idolatry, such as Haiti, the African nations and those that use
voodoo and magic are also the very poorest nations on earth.
Among Christian nations those that follow an idolatrous form of
Catholicism that venerates statues and “Mary- Queen of
Heaven” idols are the very poorest. Everywhere you turn
idolatry brings a curse and creates poverty.
Those nations that rebel most against God
do worst economically. The atheistic communist nations of Eastern
Europe are now utterly bankrupt. The Islamic nations that
persecute Christians are totally frustrated by the way their
economies refuse to prosper. Since Indonesia started looking the
other way when Christians were persecuted its currency has
plunged in value. However the West is by no means exempt. We have
generated a new form of idolatry that worships money and unless
we repent of it we will be just as cursed as a voodoo
practitioner in Haiti.
The Search for Luck/Fortune Creates
An Irresponsible Mindset
Many people do their financial planning by
buying a lottery ticket. They believe that if they win they will
be rich and their problems will be over. But the statistics are
now out and 90% of people who win the lottery are worse off five
years later, the money is all gone and the bills are still coming
in and they have become used to luxury and cannot go back to
where they once were. I believe around 50% actually go bankrupt
within five years of winning a large lottery payout! Why? Because
a lottery win only gives a person money, it does no give a person
the power to make wealth. As we saw earlier the power to make
wealth comes from specific and focused wisdom and knowledge,
applied diligently and responsibly towards a financial goal.
Winning the lottery does not increase a person’s wisdom and
knowledge or give them diligence and responsibility. It only
rewards irresponsibility. It gives a temporary increase in
capital without the means to use that capital wisely and well.
Many “folk religions” around the
world resort to divination, sacrifices, magic charms and
spirit-mediums in the search for “luck”. This can
become brutal and bizarre. In a gruesome incident in Indonesia an
American tourist was lured to a lonely location to partake in a
“religious ceremony”. Instead of a garland around her
neck there was a rope. She was strangled as a sacrifice to a
local god so a spirit-medium could “prophesy” a lottery
number. The number was, of course, a failure and the culprits
were later arrested. However this illustrates the desperate and
criminal lengths people will go to obtain “luck” and
“fortune”. Poverty is inevitable if people think that
the way to get rich is as complex and brutal as “find a
tourist, strangle her as a sacrifice, then get the medium to
prophesy and then win the lottery”. Real economic planning
is defeated by this mentality. As a missionary I have lived in
some places where the “luck” mindset was so prevalent
that even the most basic economic planning was impossible. In one
place I spent three months attempting to teach people just to ask
“Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How” when planning
church projects. I failed miserably. While they were Christians
their cultural background was so imbued with a short-term
“dreaming” and luck pursuing mindset that real planning
was impossible. People who have this kind of thinking will
pray and pray and pray rather than think. Now I do believe in
prayer; but God has also made us to be responsible and wise, to
reign with Him and to exercise His dominion on earth. The
“luck” mindset, which is allied to false religions and
superstitions, destroys this ability to think, reign and rule and
totally undermines the power to make wealth so that cultures
addicted to pursuing luck and fortune will always be in poverty.
Religion Becomes An Escape From
Reality And An Illusion, An “Opiate Of The Masses”
This is probably best seen in some of the
ecstatic ceremonies of the Ancient Greek religions, the dances of
the dervishes and in the peyote ceremonies of the American
Indians or even in the use of drugs by the counter-cultural
faiths of the modern city. It is also seen n some cults that
produce altered states of consciousness or which use intense
spiritual experiences as a way of not being involved with the
world. Religion can create an alternative reality that is much
more pleasant than the real world and this virtual reality can
become “home” to many people. Unfortunately you cannot
earn a living in the world of religious virtual reality. When a
culture sends many of its young me off into monasteries for a few
years of their life or retreats into mysticism and religious
ceremonies or advocates trance states and the use of
mind-altering substances then it is eroding the society’s
ability to be fully productive. Europe during the Dark Ages and
Tibet and similar societies today are desperately poor because
their power to make wealth is being constantly diminished by an
over-involvement in other-worldly religion.
While we serve God, not Mammon, that does
not mean that we need to become impractical and useless. True
Christianity is incarnated. Jesus was a carpenter, Peter a
fisherman, Paul a tent-maker. True Christianity strengthens you
to cope with the outside world and exercise God’s dominion
in it. The true Christian need not be a monk or a mystic. The
true Christian can be a high-school teacher, a farmer or an
A-grade auto mechanic. The Protestantism of Luther and Calvin
encouraged the sense of personal vocation, so that daily work was
seen as a gift from God whereby you actualized His will in His
world. Work, particularly working quietly with one’s hands
is seen as a solid Christian virtue throughout the New Testament.
In the epistles to the Thessalonians Paul exhorts them to lay
aside idleness that came from being taken up with end times
peculations and get down to providing for their daily needs in
constructive ways. The apostle repeatedly takes pride in his won
ability to work hard and provide for his won needs though he was
entitled to ask for support from the churches. (2 Corinthians 8
&9). Thus the gospel does not provide an escape from reality
of from the daily business of making a living. Rather the gospel
connects us with God who strengthens us to take in life fully and
completely.
The Spiritual World Of Primitive
Religion Is Chaotic And In Need Of Appeasement Not Logical,
Lawful And Predictable, It Thus Does Not Encourage Long-Term
Planning.
Western science (including economics) has
flowed from a view of the Universe that sees it as being
superintended by a single eternal God who is constant in His ways
and rational in His laws. Therefore the search for those laws is
a sensible, rational and noble thing to do. Isaac Newton said of
his discoveries and research “I am merely thinking
God’s thoughts after Him.” In direct contrast to this
predictable and rational view of things are those cultures that
believe in a chaotic spirit-world of many gods, demons and
spiritual entities. For them the universe appears to be full of
the personal malignancy of hundreds of spiritual agents that must
be appeased. Magic is the only possible “science” in
such cultures. Without the concept of a basically rational
universe planning and research have no sound basis. Thus,
up until very recently nearly all the world’s great
scientists have been Christian or Jewish or shared the basic
tenets of the Judaeo-Christian world-view such as belief in a
singular, lawful and rational universe. Very few, if any great
scientists, have been committed animists or polytheists even
though hundreds of millions of people still believe in spirits
and many gods.
The Chinese were way ahead of the West for
thousands of years with a complex culture, good administration
and inventions such as gunpowder. At that time though the main
religions were a jumble of ghost stories and tales of demons and
“fox ladies” as well as the worship of spirits and
ancestors. There was a vague and inaccessible supreme deity
called Tien or “Sky/Heaven” but the prevailing
world-view was mainly animistic. Thus there was no basis for
concept-based science seeking out universal “laws” and
so China, despite its ingenuity, never went beyond a certain
basic stage of discovering inventions rather than discovering
deeper laws and principles.
In the world of economics a fascinating book
by Peter L. Bernstein has come out called “Against the
Gods” which sees risk management and economic activity as
directly opposed to superstition and fatalism. He sees the
powerful tools of risk management a rescuing us from the dominion
of soothsayers and oracles and giving us “the notion that
the future is more than the whim of the gods and that men and
women are not passive before nature.” Bernstein is
particularly scathing on the concepts of fate and original
design, which he puts in capital letters and derides, seeing them
as inhibiting serious thought about predicting the future. When
the concepts of fate and original design are strong in the
culture a mindset of helplessness and acquiescence to life is
created that is inimical to developing a workable theory of risk
and economic management. Bernstein’s polemic is at times a
little unfair according to this reader but his point is well
made. If a society believes that life is determined by when and
how you were born and future events are solely determined by the
will of Allah then responsible thinking about the future is
largely stifled. This applies very much to the world of
fundamentalist Islam, as we will see later in this book, and is
perhaps a real contributing factor to why such nations live in
profound poverty.
A Seeming Paradox
It is possible to be very, very confused
by what I have just said. Firstly I have said that the spiritual
dimension and the economic dimension of human life are
inextricably linked and that things such as blessings, curses,
and idols can greatly affect our prosperity. Secondly I have
seemingly said that we are best off ignoring all that and taking
a secular and unbelieving attitude tinged with the Protestant
work ethic. (But I haven’t) Well I think I had better
explain myself.
Firstly our allegiance is to be fixed on
Jesus Christ and on a singular though Trinitarian Creator God who
rules His universe in lawful and rational ways and who will give
us strength and wisdom as we do our work. In Christ alone are
great blessings and shelter from curses. In Christ alone the
spiritual side of economic life is dealt with. Forsaking idols
and primitive religion is not enough. Completely secular and
atheistic nations do not prosper in the long run and Communism
has fallen into ruin. Men and women need to move from trust in
idols to faith in the living God and surrender to Him who
controls all prosperity and embrace His Son Jesus Christ (Psalm
2).
When we grasp what Christ has done for us,
and what the Bible says about life and work, we will be liberated
from our counter-productive and superstitious mindsets. We will
understand Christ’s victory over the supernatural powers
during the cross, resurrection and ascension. We will understand
that God will judge our work when Christ returns and that we are
to do our work “as unto the Lord”. We will not gamble,
believe in luck or let ourselves be ruled by irresponsible and
greedy impulses. Rather we shall cultivate the godly and
righteous power to make wealth through the diligent application
of specific and focused wisdom and knowledge towards a worthy
economic goal. Thus we will refuse to fear minor supernatural
powers and will fear God alone.
The renewed mind is a mind freed from the
dominion of greed, idolatry, superstition and the search for
luck. It is a God-centered mind that is quickened, intelligent,
thoughtful and responsible and which applies itself to creative
work for the glory of God. We move into economic blessing not by
appeasing a host of minor spiritual beings but by playing by the
rules of Almighty God and by diligently applying the wisdom He
grants us to our lives.