I’m not a believer in the prosperity gospel. That’s the line of thinking that essentially says God will make you rich if you do the things God likes. (This often includes sending money to the one who is preaching the prosperity gospel, oddly enough.) Somewhere down in there is the idea that God can love us more and will if we’re good. God loves us completely and unconditionally, so God can’t love us any more that God already does. Now, if I only acted like I really believed that, there wouldn’t be a problem.
The problem is that I think I won’t have enough. Actually, that’s not a real problem, that’s a problem I made up. Real problems consist of things like the number of children who go hungry in the United States every day or the kids who are being drafted into armies in conflicts all over the developing world. Or lack of clean water. Or global warming. Or fundamental shifts in sea ecology. You get the picture. And I think I have to choose between working to end these problems or working to pay for that brand new Toyota Corolla sitting in the airport parking lot. It’s clear which option I’m obligated to choose at this point, given that dichotomy.
Except that it is a false dichotomy. We don’t have to choose between what we want to do and what we have to do, especially if what we want to do is bring positive, fundamental transformation to the issues which threaten to take apart our society. We don’t even have to choose to become paupers, although that works better than becoming millionaires for some of us. The same tool which has been used to transform our society to the current point (something I have lingered on ad nauseam in other posts) is available to us for further transformation. That is the tool of market economics.
So before you flip your lid over Enron and Bank of America, consider this: their’s was not a problem of lacking effective tools. Clearly, they had some powerful means. Their’s was a problem of ends. When shareholder value is the primary or only measure of success, then market-based solutions will become unsustainable. However, when we engage our efforts around outcomes that we are passionate about, passions that others share, then the market represents the most efficient and effective way ever devised to make those outcomes a reality. Try to find high-fructose corn syrup listed on a food label somewhere.
Ok, there are flaws to that illustration, but it gets at the fundamental point pretty quickly. When we articulate our passions, when we sing our songs, there is an incredible amount of wealth in the ways our songs resonate with the people around us, people who want to help keep the music going. We hope. That’s the risk. That’s where we have to trust that, when we really follow what we are called to do that we will find we are more supported than we ever could have imagined. That God’s got us, and the whole world, right there in God’s hand.