{"id":17018,"date":"2018-03-09T13:26:54","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T21:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17018"},"modified":"2018-03-09T13:27:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T21:27:04","slug":"jesus-the-capitalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/jesus-the-capitalist\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus The Capitalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title is offensive: Jesus the capitalist. Even for someone who is proud to be American, it is painful to see Jesus boiled down into a narrow ideological and political party. Jesus the Socialist, and Jesus the Communist don\u2019t seem to work either.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This relevant tension between religion and politics is part of what makes The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em> by Max Weber such an engaging read. Overall, it is a convincing book bringing light to the previously unnoticed link between a particular combination of religion and politics. To Weber, there is no separation of church and state. They have at the very least, been very influential to each other. Granted some might say this is only an imagined connection or perhaps that there is a correlation but not necessarily a causation. Weber says that Protestants, more than other Christian denominations, have had a tendency to be driven to work. And they do this out of a sense of piety in a way that their work honors God. This \u201cwork ethic\u201d was seedbed that allowed capitalism to rise across the west.<\/p>\n

One of Weber\u2019s more insightful points is his consideration of the 2 Thessalonians 3:10 \u201cIf a man will not work, he shall not eat\u201d (NIV). This verse has been highlighted, underlined, and championed by Protestants. Taken to it\u2019s logical conclusion this verse would imply that even those who are rich still need to work, because work is commanded by God. Secondly, it could also imply that those who are eating, or have more to eat are being honored by God because of their faithfulness.<\/p>\n

Something that I feel like Weber was missed was consideration of how this protestant work ethics actually has strong Jewish roots. Ancient Hebrews and the Jewish people today alike consider work to be Holy and a gift from God. This is Biblical after all! Even back in the Garden of Eden, Adam was given work before the fall had happened. While some might be confused as to why God would have given us work in paradise, the answer is simple. Work is good for us, and God gave it to us as a gift. (This also might point to the idea that there will be work in our next paradise, heaven.) Rabbi Daniel Lappin points out in Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money<\/em>, that this belief is what has engaged Jews to be successful in almost ever culture they have found themselves diaspora\u2019d into. Rabbi Lappin goes farther than just saying \u201cwork is Holy\u201d, (this is something Jews and Protestants might agree on) but also claims that to profit is Holy. This is a \u201cone up\u201d on Protestantism which often portrays the over-profiting businessman as a villain across all medias. Without diving into all of this Judaic worldview, the point is made that this effort toward capitalism and tendency toward industry was around long before Protestantism.<\/p>\n

My point in bringing this is up to show how Max Weber\u2019s claim is too strong and gives too much credit to Protestantism because much of this was around already around in its christinaity predecessor. Still, I agree with Weber that the capitalistic spirit was elevated in some ways due to Protestantism. Or was it the other way around?<\/p>\n

This does lead me to ask deeper questions. is the Bible capitalistic? Is it Socialist? Was Jesus a Capitalist?<\/p>\n

While these are too big of questions to answer here, I have a few thoughts. First, you could view Genesis 23 and the story of Abraham buying land as an indicator of Capitalism[2]<\/a>. Second, the story of Naboth and King Ahab seems to be an obvious rejection of Socialistic ideas.[3]<\/a> And yet when we look at the early church of Christianity we see much more sharing and socialistic framework.[4]<\/a> And Lastly, one more thing to make all of this just that much more confusing, Israel itself today can\u2019t seem to decide if it is socialist or capitalist. The best definition of Israel I can find is that it is a \u201ccorporate socialism\u201d. Which is somewhat of a meshing of it all, although one should know that calling someone a \u201ccapitalist\u201d in Israel is quite the pejorative.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

One last concern I had about Weber was on his conversation about wealth. At times this sounded like a primer to prosperity gospel and in fact , t could have actually laid the groundwork for the prosperity gospel to form. Or perhaps it just points us to the cause of the prosperity gospel that the formation of Protestantism made it so the prosperity gospel was only a matter of time. In fact, there is a missing link we need to talk about. If Protestantism did not lead to the prosperity Gospel it certainly was a major contributing factor to the overwhelming belief of Manifest Destiny of Americans in the 19th<\/sup> century. Prosperity Gospel is wrong because of it\u2019s emphasis. There are very few things that made it into all four gospel, and of those Jesus saying \u201cdeny yourself and carry your cross\u201d is in each gospel. If this was Jesus\u2019 main emphasis, it should be our main emphasis as well. The prosperity Gospel steals focus away from dying and serving and shifts it on to blessings and optimism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Jesus the Benevolent Dictator is the correct answer. Unfortunately, this title does not quite apply until his Second coming.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Charles Eaton, Social Vs. Capitalism Lecture.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> 1 Kings 21<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Acts 2:45<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> “Is Israel a Socialist Nation,” Quora, https:\/\/www.quora.com\/Is-Israel-a-socialist-nation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is offensive: Jesus the capitalist. Even for someone who is proud to be American, it is painful to see Jesus boiled down into a narrow ideological and political party. Jesus the Socialist, and Jesus the Communist don\u2019t seem to work either.[1] This relevant tension between religion and politics is part of what makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1017,814,11],"class_list":["post-17018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lgp8","tag-protestant-work-ethic","tag-weber","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17018"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17021,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17018\/revisions\/17021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}