Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what relationship does Christ have to our traditional economic system, that of capitalism? I'm in the midst of unpacking for you a comparison that I'd like because it's very simple for me. Three C's compared with three S's.

What America needs is Christ, Constitution, and Capitalism. What we have is Secularism, Statism, and Socialism. We need Christ in our spiritual lives as opposed to Secularism, which is really another God altogether. There is no such thing as Atheism or No-God-ism or Secularism. Every nation, every culture has a God.

We need Christ instead of Secularism. We also need the Constitution for our political life, not Statism as we have it presently. We have Statism for our political life, and it's stifling us. It's strangling the American people and her freedoms. And then for our economic life, we need Capitalism rather than Socialism, which is what we have presently.

What I want to unpack for you today is the relationship between religion and economics, the relationship between Christ and capitalism, because there is such a relationship. Many people never even consider that there might be a connection between an economy and religious faith, but there is. There always has been. And what I'd like to put before you to begin today are the questions that every religion must answer about economics. And believe me, every religion answers these questions about economics in one way, shape, or form.

Number one, who creates wealth? Every religion on the face of the earth has to answer this question. Who is it in that culture that creates wealth? Who is it in that religion that creates wealth? Throughout the centuries, pagan systems, for example, say that wealth, and I define wealth as value defined by others.

Money is not wealth per se. It is only a means for keeping score, money. No, wealth is something other altogether. And pagan cultures say that wealth is a gift of the gods bestowed on men and then distributed to the people by beings such as pharaohs or kings and emperors. We see this in the ancient nations of Assyria and Babylon and Egypt and Rome.

Godless atheistic socialism, which we see around the world today, says that wealth is created by the community. That is by the people, unless we have communism, since wealth is created by the community. But this wealth of the community is then distributed by the state, if you will. Capitalism, on the other hand, developed in the Christian West. Indeed, capitalism is not religion-less.

It is developed in the Christian West. Capitalism says that wealth is created by individuals, by the grace and providence of God, and then distributed through the free market. This is capitalism. The second question that every religion must answer is, who owns and dispenses wealth as well? Every religion answers this in one way, shape, or form.

And throughout the centuries, pagan systems say that wealth, and wealth is things like lands and precious metals and food and manufactured goods. Wealth is automatically the property of kings and demigods, like the pharaohs, who then decide what everyone else gets. Atheistic socialism, on the other hand, says that wealth belongs to all the people collectively, and then the state decides who gets what. But capitalism says that wealth belongs to free individuals, and that those individuals in a free market economy decide who gets what, based upon free individuals determining the value of that wealth themselves.

Not the gods, not an atheistic state, but rather free individuals determine the wealth of a culture. Well, the third thing that every religion must answer in terms of an economy is the role of government in an economy. Oh, very crucial here. Classic paganism, of course, presumes that wealth and property belongs to the king tyrant demigod, and that he determines what the average person can get or keep and what can be taxed or taken. And under atheistic socialism, the presumption is that all wealth, all property belong to the state, and then it decides what we get and what we keep and what can be taxed and taken.

But under capitalism, it is the people through their representatives who decide what can be taxed and taken. And also, what we get to keep and get is not the government's. It is ours. Nothing can be taxed or taken without our consent under capitalism. Well, we're now ready then, examining these three things about religion.

We're looking at Christ's constitution and capitalism today, and today we're looking at capitalism in particular. We're now ready to offer just a brief definition of capitalism. It is the indeed the conviction that the individual's labor and its fruits, that is property, is his to do with as he pleases in a free market. Now, as John Locke so famously noted, that which a man transforms from the state of nature and makes useful and productive for himself and others is by definition his property, that is the fruit or the product of his labor.

For example, and Locke uses this example as well, harvesting trees from a forest, turning those trees into logs and planks for construction, makes those his property to do with as he pleases because he has contributed his labor to the formation of those things. He can use this wood, these planks, these logs to build a house for himself or sell or trade them with another or give them to charity or burn them for fuel if he wants. The principle is that the lumber is that worker's property to do with as he sees fit.

The investment of his labor has made it so, and our government was originally founded in America to protect this principle and not violate it by seizing it at its will. Now, while this might make common sense to most of us since we have been raised with this from our mother's milk, if you will, it's not so throughout history. We've just reviewed other systems with you, and dear listener, we see the results of those systems all over the world. Islam, for example, is a destitute, poverty-ridden world wherever you go, wherever Islam predominates.

It is a poverty-ridden world where all wealth belongs to Allah and then given through his capricious will. In old Hindu India, for example, too, the people lived in abject poverty while a precious few in the Brahmin and priestly classes lived in luxury, all because of the Hindu idea of caste and reincarnation. And then in old China and the Soviet Union where atheistic socialism prevailed, people lived in backward systematic privation, all because godless atheistic socialism bled individual initiative from the people by asserting that wealth is the property of the state. If it belongs to every one property, then it belongs to no one.

And then in Buddhist countries like Tibet, wealth and property are an illusion, according to their philosophy, according to their religion, and every religion has its impact on economy. And of course, in Buddhist countries, wealth and property are an illusion, which are but a part of a universe of suffering. Only in the Christian West have we observed over the centuries the gradual greater and greater accumulation of wealth and prosperity by the average man. It's part of why the 20th century is called the American century. In America, property belonged to individuals in families.

In biblical principles, too, this was the case. In old Israel, property belonged to individuals in families. It was the Old Testament notion of Jubilee, for example, where tribal property was returned every 49 years to the original family given it by God. And then in the New Testament, we have principles like this. He who does not work does not eat.

The necessity of labor. Also, Paul also said, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Unquote. All of these principles and many, many more contribute to the assumption that God has given wealth and property to individual families and men as a trust from God to husband and to nurture for their own prosperity and the glory of God. Wealth is not the property of kings and emperors, but rather individual men and families.

The original command to Adam and Eve, which we know as the dominion principle from Genesis chapter 1 verse 28, the dominion principle says that we are to expand and to fill the earth and be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over all the earth. Individual men and families are to get and accumulate wealth as they labor over and acquire property in an ever-increasing radius over the entire earth. This is the dominion principle from Genesis chapter 1 verse 28. But unfortunately, the self-loathing progressives in the West have come to a strange pass, dear listener.

They blame our success, unprecedented wealth, and our prosperity for all men, and they blame it on a supposed greed and repracious plundering of the rest of the world and the poverty and the failure of cultures that I have mentioned due to their own fault. Rather, progressives say, blame it on us and on our being a plunderers and taking advantage of the world. In fact, one author in the publication Poverty and Power, a classic progressive liberal treatise, says what is typical of many who think this way.

And he says, and I quote, we see poverty in the third world as a result of colonial looting in the past and neo-colonial exploitation in the present, unquote. Classic. And the term third world, of course, derives from the classification of relative wealth and development. There's the first world, that is the developed, highly industrialized world, places like the United States or Japan, most of Europe. And then there is the second world, that is those nations experiencing an emerging middle class and some modernization and some industrialization, places like the old Soviet Union or China or Brazil.

And then there's the third world, that is those nations and peoples who still live largely in a subsistence economy, devoid of a middle class, even a nominally developed industry and technology. And we see here most of the Muslim world, and it's because of their religion. We see the continent of Africa, and it's because of their religion. And we see this in much of Asia as well. And much of it is because of their religion, dear listener.

The condition of these places is blamed directly on capitalism, however, wrongly so. I quote now Dr. Paul Baran, who's professor of economics at Stanford University, and he puts the blame on capitalism in this way, and I quote him, to the dead weight of stagnation characteristic of pre-industrial society. And here he's talking about the third world. And he goes on to say, was added the entire restrictive impact of monopoly capitalism. Oh, that devil capitalism.

He blames poverty in the third world on capitalism. It's those greedy, conniving capitalists in the West who are responsible for the abject poverty of the rest of the world, according to him. After all, knowing as we do from the principles of tolerance, diversity, and egalitarianism, it cannot possibly be anything that they do in the third world that could be responsible for their condition. No, no, no, no. We can't judge another society as better or worse based simply upon its culture, its religion, its practices of those religious principles, their theology.

No, we can't blame that. Oh, we can't blame Islam, for example. We can't blame Islam for Muslim poverty. Just because the Muslim believes wealth comes to him either through finding hidden treasure, and these are the three places where wealth is found. I encourage you to read the book, The Arab Mind, The Arab Mind.

And he outlines there the three places where Muslims classically think that you find wealth. It's from treasure, finding hidden treasure, or getting an inheritance, or maybe having it given to you by a genie. And you see these things culturally expressed in works like the Arabian Nights, or Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. You get your wealth from these sources, not from hard work, not from accumulating savings, not from investing those savings wisely. No.

Well, we also can't blame a Hindu in India for his brief, blighted, and miserable life just because he accepts his fate as an untouchable in his caste system, where additionally, and this always just bothers me terribly, that steak and hamburger on the hoof in the form of a cow, it can't be slaughtered and eaten because of their religion, because animal life is just as sacred as human life. This is so, so wrong.

And we also can't blame, excuse me, the primitive tribal family in the Australian outback for their backwardness either, simply because they see their ancestors as inhabiting the very land, trees, and animals they would otherwise chop down for wood products, or cultivate for crops, or domesticate for consumption. Oh, the basic religious impulse in paganism is animism, the belief that the universe, that is, animals, and rocks, and trees, and hills, and rivers are filled with and animated, if you will, by spiritual entities. That's where we get the word animism. That is, nature is filled or animated by spiritual entities.

Wow, dear listener, we are covering what capitalism is and what it means theologically, what it means religiously. Every religion answers questions about economies, and we're talking about Christ, constitution, and capitalism, Christ for the political life, Christ for our spiritual life, the constitution for our political life, and capitalism for our economic life. It is not easy, is it? And I do not intend for you to easily accept the claptrap of the progressive left. Ideas and theology do have consequences, dear listener.

It's been true throughout history, and it's true today. We have been asserting that all economies are directly rated to theologies, and so is ours. Capitalism did not begin and flourish and mature in a vacuum, did it? Capitalism. Only gradually and incrementally did we come to what we now know as our economy.

There are several stages through which capitalism grew. Let me just outline some of these very briefly with you. Number one, Israel stood alone in the ancient world for private property. Israel stood alone in the ancient world for private property. As we have described for you, the pagan nations surrounding Israel, nations like Egypt and Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, all of them understood property as belonging to the state who represented the particular gods of that state.

The labor of the lowly individual belonged to that god as service to that god. There were no individual property rights. The state could tax, take, or tote away anything they wished, anytime they wished. Whatever was given to him or left over to the individual after the state had taken what they wanted, well, then maybe he could use. But the principle of the sovereignty of private property was unknown in the ancient world.

And then we see that this could not happen in Israel, however. God saw to it in the Torah, for example, that all land belonged in families, not to kings. It was the family's private property. It was divided this way at the conquest. And then in the years hence, it belonged to a family, a private family.

It was their property to do with as they saw fit. And at the end of every 50 years, even the year of Jubilee, there was an automatic reset where all of the land returned to its former original owners in families. In Israel, then, unlike the other nations, the principle of private property was sacrosanct, promulgated by God in the law and then practiced by Israel in the land. Secondly, we also see that the early church established private property, not only Israel, but also the early church in the New Testament.

In addition to the previous verses, look what Peter observes about private property to Ananias and Sapphira, who he rebukes in the book of Acts. Peter said, and I quote from the New Testament, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While the land remained unsold, did it not remain your own, i.e. it was his own private property? And after it was sold, Peter goes on to say, was it not at your disposal?

Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? Oh, dear listener, this is a perfect example of capitalism combined with Christian morality. While the land they so pretentiously sold and donated, that is, in part, and then lied about the rest which they held back, it was theirs to do with as they saw fit. That is, it was private property to be employed for use in investment or charity, and to do so dishonestly and deceptively was immoral. God rewards diligent stewardship, dear listener, and he punishes the abuse of private property.

Thirdly, the third growth point in capitalism, we see, number three, the Church of the Middle Ages. The Church of the Middle Ages practiced feudalism that grew into a kind of proto-capitalism. So, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, with the onset of the Dark Ages, all of Europe saw the gravitation of property into the hands of a few strong princes and lords, while the rest of mankind lived the life of a peasant or a serf. This was based in part upon the biblical model of covenant. The medieval lord acted the part of the Old Testament king, protecting with his knights the property and persons of his domain.

The part that was left out, however, with these medieval kings and feudal lords was the part about individual and familial property. Only gradually, with incremental steps, did the serf or the present come to hold property himself. Oh, it culminated, of course, in England in the Magna Carta, for example, and the English Bill of Rights, all of which our system is built upon, later served as a model for our own constitution and Bill of Rights. Fourthly, the fourth development came during the Reformation and Enlightenment, which gave birth to the individual.

History acknowledges, for example, that Martin Luther's brave individual stance against the Roman Catholic Church ushered in the age of the individual. With a Protestant Reformation, the age of the individual conscience, guided by Scripture and plain reason, as Luther put it. So, a perfect example of this is the tiny nation of Holland on the sea. I have Dutch heritage, so I embrace this. Holland, which soon set out enterprising ships on the sea to far from places on the globe to get and trade goods from Africa and India and the New World and bring them back to sell all over Europe.

Individuals formed corporations in Holland that pooled resources to put up these ventures. We get much of our venture capitalism, for example, from the idea of the Dutch. The risks were high for the Dutch. The ships were occasionally wrecked at sea or they were robbed by pirates, and sometimes a poor trade was made and losses could not be made up, and sometimes speculators feverishly threw money at a venture, like the notorious tulip bulb speculation in 1637, where one bulb, one tulip bulb at the time, would sell for as many as thousands of today's dollars.

Hundreds of Dutch merchants lost everything in this period by risking what they had, but the rewards were also very high. Tremendous fortunes were made in Holland by smart and enterprising men when things fell right. When exotic cottons from India or potatoes from America or mosaics from Africa were found and purchased and then brought safely back to Holland on these merchant ships, they could be marketed all over Europe for tremendous sums. During the early period of the 17th century, Holland then became the pioneer of venture capitalism. They became the models of what today we call the entrepreneur.

Yes, as we are looking at Christ's constitution and capitalism today, especially capitalism. The Dutch were reformed Christians as well, and they applied their Christian principles to capitalism. This new class of merchant and his wealth soon became targets of government for taxation. I'm shocked. Isn't that a surprise?

Not really. Princes and kings had no scruples about taxing away or outright seizing the fortunes of these men. Even the church in places like Spain and France viewed with suspicion this new movement, and they called it immoral and novel. The Roman Catholic bishops and popes, for example, had come to rely comfortably upon wealth that was concentrated in the hands of kings and princes and royal families, not common individuals that they could not control. Oh, dear listener.

Suddenly, they found a whole new class of persons began to appear that history had never seen before. Not a royal class, not a peasant class, not a priestly class, but something in between, a middle class. You and I, brothers and sisters, these individuals were independent of the treasure chest of princes and popes. They had their own money, and they didn't need the pittance doled out by the church or the king, and consequently, they began to think for themselves and to act for themselves. Our principles of liberty and free thinking are based upon capitalism, brothers and sisters.

In Holland, they formed trade guilds to protect their interests from predatory government and unscrupulous businessmen and the church. They spent money on homes for their families, food for their tables, education for their children, and additionally, they found they had enough money left over for little things like some lace for the wife or buckles for one's shoes or a toy soldier at Christmas for the boy, or maybe even a gift for the church. And what do you think was the net effect on the rest of Holland's economy by these merchants?

Oh, not only did the individual entrepreneur profit and prosper, but down the line, the lace maker across town who made the collar for his wife benefited, and the cobbler in the neighboring village who fashioned his shoe buckle benefited, and the toy maker down the lane who carved the wooden soldier at Christmas benefited. In other words, wealth began wealth, and the entire nation of Holland began to prosper. Religion and theology, my dear friend, has an impact upon economies. Capitalism has been impacted by Christianity, by biblical Christianity. This is how real wealth is created.

This is how genuine prosperity comes about. It is not government that creates and dispenses wealth. Government has never created a nickel's worth of wealth ever in its history. It can help create favorable circumstances to create wealth, but government always depends for its very existence upon the wealth created by the private sector. The only way that government gets wealth is by taking it from you and from me.

In order to guard and protect one's property, various thinkers begin to ponder the true biblical nature of government, and what did they come up with? On the North American continent, fifthly, the final development, the North American continent, economic revolution gave sanctuary to capitalism. Yes, our revolution was in part an economic revolution, giving sanctuary to biblical capitalism. Dear listener, entirely lost in the socialist tyranny of today is the principle articulated by Madison that government is instituted to protect, to protect property of every sort, this being the end of government.

Dear listener, instead, as we see with our Marxist socialist president, the basic assumption is that your property is not yours, but his. If they decide they need more, all they have to do is take it. And thus today, our federal government does not exist to protect your property, but to appropriate your property in increasing measure. This violates every principle of scripture, reason, and the constitution. We live in a constitutional republic where capitalism reigns.

Oh, brothers and sisters, may you work and act to preserve and protect not only your own property and rights, but also the property and rights of your fellow citizens. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196.