Turning Beer Into Furniture
The work of frontier missions is the work of bringing the Gospel to a people who have not yet heard, nor have had any ability to hear, for there is no culturally identifiable Christian witness among that people group. In this work of frontier missions we look for the wonderful effects of the Gospel once the people make a decision to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. One such effect (some refer to it as a phenomenon), is referred to as “redemption and lift.” This redemption and lift is characterized by the societies spiritual redemption made by their coming to Christ and thus being spiritually redeemed. “The people who were not a people have now become the people of God.” The secondary effect, the lift, is often the Christian work ethic and the results brought about by the change in the mentality of both work and the usage of that pecuniary income that labor produces. This redemption and lift phenomenon has been seen from villages in Guatemala to Inuit Eskimo villages in Northern Alaska. Whole villages have documented how, after their redemption, they began to have more finances. Their redemption bought about a new work ethic. This new work ethic produced more income, and the new moral ethic they now follow saved more of the income that came in. Drinking bars were closed, night club gambling went out of business, and the financial prosperity of the entire society rose with the lift. This lift is often looked at as the Protestant work ethic that came about shortly after the reformation and helped capitalism, as an attempt to gain pecuniary profit, advance in society.
This growth of capitalism and the connection it has with the Protestant work ethic, and the revolutionary changes it began to leave in its wake and how those changes affect every aspect of society, is the modern phenomenon that Max Weber deals with in his book The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. The questions that both Weber and we must ask when looking at capitalism is: What were, and even currently now are, the psychological conditions that made possible the development of such capitalistic civilizations that we see clearly around the world today?[1] What were the motivating factors within the society at the time, that allowed such a lust for gain, which was at the time considered very anti-social and immoral, to rise as the leading economic philosophy?[2] This philosophy of capitalism has become the number one revolutionary, acceptable, and even respectable triumphant economic system of countless societies around the world. There had to be some major change within the social fiber that allowed such an economic system to gain predominance. Weber proposes that it was the new religious system known as Protestantism that allowed the pursuit of wealth to be seen not nearly as an advantage but a duty for the new Christian mindset.[3]
Indeed the “lift” aspect of Christianity owes its mentality to how the protestants of the past read their Bible and how their leaders help to clarify what they read. As the movement developed we see that the Christian, now renewed in faith and established in their calling, fueled with the resolve to do all that they do to the glory of God, “strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world.”[4] We today as protestant descendants still look at that desire to penetrate our society and with our own glorifying work ethic seek to bring about redemption and lift both within our society and the very individuals we encounter.
Even within my own previous congregation I saw how the redemption and lift phenomenon took place within individuals. One such phenomenon was named brother Mike. A hard working blue color guy who had a firm hand shake and a truly generous giving spirit. He would often tell me, “Pastor Mitch, I may not know much of all the miracles that the Almighty can do, but one miracle that I know first hand is that He can turn beer into furniture.” Upon first hearing this, Brother Mike could see my puzzled expression on my face. Seeing my expression he explained that since he and his wife had come to the Lord the finances that they once spent on beer and other nonessentials were not spent on such things. Thus, there seemed to be an increase in their financial situation. Suddenly the highly sought after couch and dinning room set that they could never afford was now affordable. “He turned all that beer money into furniture money. The Lord sure is good Pastor Mitch.” Redemption and lift, personal and repetitive within many of the lives I have encountered.
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