Throughout our look at the environment, we’ve tried to build on the foundation of what Scripture has taught us, while adding more insights from God’s Word specifically about caring for our world.
We’re thankful for Christians and non-Christians alike who are working to care for the world in which we live. But we’ve also seen some things that I believe are concerning. For example, the fact that such a long chain of suppositions is simply assumed, without being examined. And the fact that so many unbiblical ideas are smuggled into the environmentalist movement being adopted by many leaders around the world.
We also talked about how the Christian’s way of caring for the planet is, in the end, very different.
Here are a few questions to help you think about what we’ve talked about:
What are some ways in which we can promote life and care for creation in our own homes and communities?
What is the difference between a biblical worldview and what the world typically tells us about the environment?
Why does the world mock God’s revelation about how the world will end (2 Peter 3:3-7)?
Why should we be taking local responsibility to care for the planet, instead of relying on countries and worldwide experts to take care of it?
We always must come back to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself as we discuss these topics. He is the Son of God, the Lord of the trees, the Lord of oil and gas, the Lord of your household, the Lord of babies, the Lord of science – the Lord of everything. To God, “who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:15-16)
Additional resources…
This study very much built on all the studies before it, and I’ve linked to a few things along the way. It is helpful to keep thinking about secular humanism, and Got Questions has an article here: What is secular humanism?
Answers in Genesis has a lot of material about environmentalism and climate change. I’ve only read a small portion, but what I’ve read has been thought-provoking. You might start with this article, but take a look at some of their more specific discussions and videos about climate change: Environmentalism: A Biblical Perspective
In our series on Biblical Anthropology we’ve been talking about the environment. My purpose last time was not to take a certain side in the many arguments about environmentalism, but simply to point out that there is more than one side to the story, and to show some of the reasons why that is.
Today we’re going to get specific and actually look at some of the policies that governments around the world are actually signing onto, from the United Nations. The particular document I used when we talked about this as a church, and which I will use here, is called “Principles for Ecosystem Restoration to Guide the United Nations Decade 2021-2030”.
In some ways, it’s time to pull together much of what we’ve learned in the whole entire series. For example, do you remember the “enemy’s headquarters” – the house in ruins that we talked about? Our illustration was a house in ruins – half-built – because the enemy always uses lies mixed with the truth. Lies are nothing, and that’s way the house is only half constructed. But then he uses it as a headquarters to attack us.
As with almost everything, we will see in this document the truth mixed with lies.
It’s laid out with “Ten Principles that Underpin Ecosystem Restoration”. Let’s just talk about four of the ten.
Principle 1: Global Contribution. Of course they’re talking about a global effort under the leadership of the United Nations. Principle 2: Broad Engagement. Everyone is involved, especially “under-represented” groups. Who decides who is most under-represented? You can guess, but they do give some examples: “local communities, Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, women, youth and LGBTIQ+ people”.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that we need everyone working together to care for the planet, right? But there’s more.
I listened to the interreligious panel that was held at COP26. And one of the panellists, from the Christian tradition, explained it like this.
“Our problem is that we have focused on personal responsibility. But often this doesn’t work, because people don’t have the ability. (Poor them.) And so, what we need to do is change the system, to have control from top down. Instead of focusing on personal responsibility, we should focus on social justice. For example, transfer funds from rich countries to people with a darker colour of skin. Et cetera.”
Of course, that was a rather loose paraphrase, but an accurate one. 🙂 So we’re back talking about “social justice”, from our discussion of justice. And now you’re going to hear the phrase “climate justice”, which actually is not biblical justice. In other words, the answer to our climate problem is not so much that you should drive your car less. The answer looks more like neo-marxism. It is the intelligent and powerful who decide who should get the money and how the systems should be set up.
Do you see how so much we’ve learned comes together here?
So how are we going to convince the common people of these things? Well, fear works. Terrible things will happen if you don’t listen to the “experts”. But should that kind of fear be our motivation, as Christians?
Principle 4: Benefits to Nature and People.“Ecosystem restoration aims to achieve and sustain the greatest net gain possible, given project- and programme-level goals, for biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation, and human health . . .”
Well, nice of them to throw “human health” in there at the very end.
It’s pretty common to give humanity a low priority here. Many people believe that the human population needs to be far lower than it is today. I’ve heard it preached that we should aim for between 500 million and 3 billion people in the world, and no more. Many base their estimates on the work of Paul Ehrlich from the University of Stanford.
And so birth control is promoted, and sterilization. The late David Graber, a biologist with the United States National Park Services, wrote in 1989: “Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
And actually, quite a few people have said similar things, in perhaps unguarded moments. Normally, it’s kept a little more quiet. But the truth is, there are many people looking for ways to decrease the human population as soon as possible (actually, as I write this now, I heard a popular news broadcast this morning talking about that very thing!). Why? Because “we’re in a crisis”. But – how does this perspective fit with God’s Law?
One more. Principle 6: Knowledge Integration.“Ecosystem restoration should strive to integrate all types of knowledge – including, but not limited to, Indigenous, traditional, local and scientific ways of knowing – and practices in order to achieve greater kinship with nature, cooperation and effectiveness.”
Now, listen carefully. Because this is also very common. This does not mean that we need information from everyone, because you know things that I don’t. This doesn’t mean that we need different perspectives on a problem. I would agree with both of those ideas. No, this is saying that we need to introduce new ways of knowing.
In other words, we don’t need to use the scientific method, logic, or absolute truth. Science is only one possible thing on the list! Because there are many “ways of knowing”. Paganism is quite popular, for example. So, we’ll decide what to call “truth”. What way to follow. Or more accurately, what to follow in place of the truth.
Are there good things in this document? Sure. But what has been smuggled in along with the good things? Denying God’s truth, and bringing in your own ways of knowing. Shaking your fist at God’s law. Devaluing the importance of human life. Ensuring that certain very “wise” people are in control.
In 2014, Dr. Joe Boot wrote about the difference between a humanist worldview, or we could say a secular humanist worldview (which has been common to some extent since the serpent told the woman that she could be like God), and a Christian worldview.
In a Christian worldview, God limits government. All people and institutions should have limits, because we’re sinners. If we don’t have limits, if we have too much power, what happens? We take more. These limits come from God, Someone apart from the creation. The transcendent God.
Dr. Boot writes:
…the pagan philosophers and statesmen favored statism, emperor worship and tyranny. One reason for this, as we have noted, was that their humanistic worldview (as with all humanism and paganism today) posited an ultimate impersonalism in which man is conditioned by an impersonal environment and not by a personal God. Whilst claiming to be free, in the world of flux, man was seen as conditioned by the stars, his family, his fortunes, nature and the gods (also products of nature and natural forces), and so he became fatalistic in his thinking. As such, pagan thought requires a powerful and priestly state to save man from the environment all around him…
In other words, in the real world, a person is free because he or she is made in God’s image, and is responsible to Someone outside of the universe. But in secular humanism, the person is conditioned by his or her environment, a perspective leading to fatalism, so that true freedom is impossible. We must be coerced into action by the emperor-priest.
Listen to people talking about environmentalism. You will hear religious language. The end of the world, salvation, repentance, it’s all there. But – it’s not the true religion.
So the answer of the world to environmental issues is to create a system to put you in a smaller box. Don’t worry, you can have freedom in your box, but the government will limit you and take care of you as it wishes. And you must believe that the box makes sense, the box is all that there is, the box is the only thing that is important for you.
Beyond questions of world temperatures and snowfall and sea levels are issues that are even more concerning for believers – a host of ideas that are being imported under the guise of caring for the planet.
Many non-Christians are doing good things for the environment. Thank God! And sometimes we can work together. But always remember, Christ is the Lord of Creation. He is the truth. So – ask questions. Research. Don’t be afraid to be different. Take personal responsibility. And don’t be surprised if you end up doing something that the world hates. Jesus warned you.
We’ll take one more brief post to wrap up this discussion, before taking a look back over all 11 topics that we’ve covered.
We’ve been looking at some general principles from the Bible regarding the environment in our continuing Biblical Anthropology study. Yes, caring for the environment is a part of our Christian life, and out of that I’ve noticed four principles that God’s Word teaches:
We care for creation for the glory of God. That’s our ultimate purpose.
We care for creation to benefit people (quality and length of life).
We care for creation through local responsibility. In other words, our priority is our local area.
We care for creation through our general obedience to God. General obedience can be a blessing to the land, or God may directly bless the land when the people on it are obedient.
As we talked about before, it is possible to cooperate with unbelievers to care for the earth – we certainly should! But we also should not underestimate how drastically different our purposes and approaches may be.
So let’s talk about some of the ideas out in the world today.
When we were discussing this as a church, COP26 had just wrapped up. “COP” stands for Conference of the Parties, and it’s a conference that is held each year by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It’s interesting to look at their material, although the message from COP26 or COP27 is the same as what we’ve been hearing for many years. Here’s the introduction in the official brochure for the conference:
CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE GREATEST RISK FACING US ALL. Around the world storms, floods and wildfires are intensifying. Air pollution sadly affects the health of tens of millions of people and unpredictable weather causes untold damage to homes and livelihoods too. But while the impacts of climate change are devastating, advances in tackling it are leading to cleaner air, creating good jobs, restoring nature and at the same time unleashing economic growth.
Despite the opportunities we are not acting fast enough. To avert this crisis, countries need to join forces urgently.
We’re not going to take the time to analyze all the ins and outs of “global warming”. But it may be useful to at least take a look at some of the suppositions that are being made in this whole discussion, and at least point out that there’s another side to the story. Because we tend to hear only one side.
So what is the basic message? First, the earth is becoming warmer. Well, that’s true, but of course it all depends on the segment of time you’re measuring, where you’re measuring, and so on. It’s certainly warmer here than it was in January. Is it warmer than it was a year ago? Maybe. But many scientists and historians believe that the world was once quite a bit warmer than it is now.
Of course, quite often now we refer not to global warming, but simply “climate change”, a basically impossible-to-measure metric. But we’ll stick with warming for now, since that is still a common claim.
The second supposition is that this warming is because of humans and/or their specific activities.
The third supposition is that we can do something about this change in temperature. Well, there are quite a few scientists that would disagree here as well, or at least say that the changes we might make would make only a minute difference. In the United States, for example, thousands of scientists signed a petition with quite a different point of view. And that is by no means an isolated example.
Again, my point right now is not to defend one side or the other, but just to give a reminder that there are people – even scientists in the field – with different points of view. But we have some more suppositions:
The fourth supposition is that natural disasters are increasing. Now if you actually sit down and look at the statistics, you’ll see that … it depends. Again, what segment of time are you looking at? What criteria are you using? (I refer you to the old but useful book, How to Lie with Statistics.) It’s easy to find an unusual natural disaster here, or a time frame in which they’ve become worse. But in many cases they have actually decreased. But this is the general claim.
The fifth supposition. These disasters are specifically increasing because of climate change caused by human beings.
Finally, this is a CRISIS. An emergency. It’s almost too late – or may already be too late.
Why list all these suppositions? Because you may agree with some, and not others. In fact, you may agree with 1-5, and reject 6. This is very common with a lot of the narratives that are pushed on us. We just skip from the first supposition to the last and expect everyone to come along, and perhaps ignore one or two very weak links. It’s very useful to sit down and list exactly how we logically get from one to the other to the other.
Another common thing to check for: Are we commonly only hearing one side of the story? Is debate being shut down? That doesn’t prove that the other side is right, but it is cause to be on alert.
I remember many years ago when they started to install electric hot-air blowing hand dryers in public bathrooms. They would put little signs on them, explaining that they’re much better for the environment than using paper towels.
But I always thought – wait. In Canada, paper towels (at least at the time) were coming from sustainable forestry. That is, the trees were carefully farmed, replanted, and so on. So what about all the new complex electronic parts that we are now manufacturing for these much more sophisticated machines? Where does the metal come from? Where does the electricity come from? I bet these need a lot more repairs – which means tools, replacement parts, delivery, the driving of the repair person…
Things are not always as simple as they seem. As an interesting side note, some studies have shown that hand dryers actually mean more bacteria on your hands, which is why some researchers recommend for hospitals that they use – you guessed it – paper towels. 🙂
There are simply aspects of this whole story that you rarely if ever hear. You’ve heard a lot about CO2 – carbon dioxide. Sometimes media makes it sound like it’s a poison that we need to eradicate from the planet. But CO2 means more plant growth – a greener planet. Plants eat CO2 for breakfast – it’s part of the photosynthesis process that you learned about in school. This indeed seems to be happening – larger harvests, more available food. (Here’s a brief video from NASA on this – you may not agree with everything in the video, but it makes the basic point.)
Many are very concerned about “sustainable technologies”. For example, you may have heard a lot about wind power. In fact, you may have seen evidence of this technology rising from the landscape in your local area.
Wind power sounds like a great idea. But let’s think about the constant repairs that these huge machines require. The problems with the birds that are killed. The farmland that they take over. Sometimes forest areas are levelled to make room for them. Minerals are mined and parts are transported from around the world using – well, gasoline, in many cases!
As we were going over this topic at our church, plastics were a huge topic. Are plastics really pure evil? They have allowed us to transport food in a hygienic and easy way. Give our medicines. Protect ourselves from diseases. And now we know that it can be converted into a very clean fuel. Yes, like everything else, we should use plastics with wisdom. But plastic can be a huge benefit to the community.
There are many sides to every story. And if there is no public debate allowed, it’s a lot more difficult to find the truth. There are some complex issues here, but it doesn’t hurt to dig a little deeper and have a little discussion.
Now, all of this discussion of how warm the planet is and how much carbon dioxide is healthy and how we should use plastics is important – but there are some issues that are much more serious. We’re going to stay with materials from the United Nations next time, and take a closer look at some recommended responses to environmental issues.
One of the first things that we learned in our Biblical Anthropology series was the concept of dependence. We were created as dependent beings – of course, the very fact that we were created means that we are in some way dependent.
And as human beings, we’re not only dependent on God, we also depend on one another, and on our environment in general.
And that’s why our next topic is “The Environment”. And it is, without a doubt, a very current topic. As was the case when I taught this series in Spanish, we are being inundated with news about the earth and climate change. When I first taught this series, the big news was COP26 – “the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties” – in Glasgow, Scotland.
But the truth is that most of us have grown up with environmentalism. Saving a species from extinction – climate change, pollution. It’s one of the great conversations of our generation.
And so we’re going to go to the Bible to study this issue. And as has been our custom, we’re going to start at the very beginning – Genesis 1. We started there at the beginning of our Biblical Anthropology series, and it feels like we’ve been hanging out there ever since!
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
The source of everything – God Himself. And let’s remember what we learn in Colossians – “… by him [Christ, the Son] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … in him all things hold together … in [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 1:16-17; Colossians 2:3).
Our Lord is the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. All wisdom and knowledge is found in Him.
God created all things, and so all things belong to Him. God never sold off His rights to the universe. He didn’t lose everything in a bad investment. All things are His.
The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…
Psalm 24:1
Who has first given to me, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
Job 41:11
And so let’s begin with the basics:
God created all things.
God sustains all things. (Everything ultimately depends on God.)
God owns all things.
God is sovereign over His creation.
God gives all things their purpose.
Remember when God created the first man and woman, He gave them this command:
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 1:28
We’ve talked before about this as the “Creation Mandate” (in our discussion of technology). And in the same chapter, we read about the original state of Creation:
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 1:31
Now, moving on to chapter 2:
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Genesis 2:15
All of this is part of the purpose that God gave to the first humans.
Now, before we go any further… the environment has been a matter of massive debate in our lifetimes, and of course the Church has been involved in that conversation. At times, unbelievers have accused Christians of not caring for the environment, of not being concerned about the earth.
We don’t like to be called bad people, and we don’t want conflict. And so very often the response has been something like this:
“Just look at what the Bible says in Genesis 1 and 2. These verses show that we should be administrators of our earth as Christians. We are indeed responsible to care for the environment. And so – we’re all on the same side, right?”
And we take a giant leap from Genesis 1 and 2 into everything that we are being told to do.
In fact, believe it or not, there’s a “Green Bible”. Listen to this promotional material for this edition:
The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God’s vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it. With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth. This Green-Letter edition of the Bible will highlight scriptures in green ink that teach about God’s care for creation and how God interacts with creation, in an effort to bring greater awareness to how this message is woven throughout the Old and New Testaments. Essays from leading conservationists and theologians on how to read the Bible through a ‘green lens’ as well as a green topical index and Green Bible trail guide for personal study will be paired with teachings throughout the ages to show people how caring for God’s creation is not only a calling, but a lifestyle.
The Green Bible (2010)
First of all, for those who have studied hermeneutics (Bible interpretation), this line “With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love” will be recognized as absolutely horrible logic – counting up references (verses?) about something, out of context, and using that to measure relative importance (now we know that the earth is more important than love?) – ridiculous. Just – don’t buy this Bible.
But anyway, we’ve seen this general strategy before. Take a phrase from the Bible, out of context, such as “love your neighbour”. Next, redefine the words, and use the phrase to promote whatever the world wants to promote. And this creates a “false consensus”. In other words, it looks like everyone is in agreement – on a very surface level – when that is really not the case.
I was at the gas station and someone came up to my window to show me their absolutely marvellous product. And sadly for them, I wasn’t interested. And so she said, “Don’t you like free gifts?”
“Not today, thanks.”
“Don’t you care about the environment?”
“Um… thanks….”
Now of course, if she really wanted to give me free gifts with which I could save the world, I guess I should have paid a lot more attention! But I have a feeling that there was a little more to it than that! 🙂
Yes, we have a lot of agreement with many who are not believers. Yes, as we’re going to see, we can work together – believers and unbelievers – to care for the planet. However, as we’ve seen throughout our study, very often our points of agreement are somewhat superficial. Look at the five absolutely basic fundamental truths that we have already looked at today – how many of these would an unbeliever accept?
And so we’re not going to simply appeal to Genesis 1 and 2 to include all the current ideas about climate change and conservation – we need to go a little deeper.
We’ve started with a look at the world in its perfect state, and God’s first commands. But we know that the world didn’t stay that way. So next time let’s look at the Bible’s teaching about the world after the Fall…
Let’s take the time to apply some of what we’ve learned about justice and partiality. Now, we recognize that justice is applied in different ways in our personal lives, at work, in the family, in the church, in the community, or in government.
But as we look through the Bible, let’s try to pull out some of the most common principles that can apply to all, and especially to our personal lives.
First, what if we experience partiality against ourselves? Someone is against you. Racism, or any kind of partiality. Against you because your a Christian. Whatever the case may be.
Well, maybe we could start by admitting this – yes, I am a bad person. Apart from Christ. I’m a sinner. I’m worse than you think. We start with humility.
(A) I admit my sinfulness. (Psalm 51:3-5; Luke 17:7-10; Romans 2:1)
Now listen – the world will call your good “evil”. Unjust? Yes. But in spite of that, we can admit that we are all sinners in need of a Saviour.
And then we say, I’m not going to “hate you back”. I’m not going to devalue you, because you did it to me. You were created in the image of God. I will be an example.
(B) I aim to conquer evil with good. (Matthew 5:44-46; Romans 12:21; 1 Peter 2:12)
And I aim to live a just and merciful life, and will encourage others to do the same.
(C) I aim to live a life of justice. (Micah 6:8; Matthew 5:15-16; Matthew 23:23)
I am responsible to promote justice and fight against partiality in my family, my church, and my community.
(D) I wait for God to defend me, and bring true and complete justice. (Deuteronomy 32:35-36; Psalm 37; Psalm 73; Romans 12:19)
God will vindicate you. God will defend you. The truth will be known.
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. … For the LORD loves justice; he will not forsake his saints. They are preserved forever, but the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
Psalm 37:5-6,28
In C and D, we see a contentment that acts. That is, we do not have a contentment, a peace, that is weak and passive. We have complete peace and contentment in God, and at the same time we fight the good fight of the Faith. A contentment armed with the sword of the Lord.
Now, let’s make a list of some of the ways in which God wants us to promote justice. And I encourage you to meditate on some of the extra verses I’m including, because the Spirit has a lot to teach us.
Don’t show partiality. Remember that everyone has value; they were created in the image of God. (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:17; 1 Timothy 5:21; James 2:1)
Be honest. Be careful with your words. Don’t gossip. Don’t slander. Look – this can be hard in times of conflict, because we want to find every excuse we can to fight against someone who may truly be evil. But we must always be careful to speak the truth. (Exodus 20:16; 2 Corinthians 12:20; Ephesians 4:25)
Remember that we are all responsible for our own actions. We’re neither innocent nor guilty because of our race, culture, or history. We’re not sin-free because we belong to a certain group. We are all personally responsible before God. (Ezekiel 18; Romans 2:1-4)
Be kind, merciful, and generous to the vulnerable. Those who have no family, or no family nearby. The poor. Those without influence and resources. (Exodus 22:21-27; Daniel 4:27; 2 Corinthians 8:1-5; James 1:27)
Never accept a bribe. (Exodus 23:8; Deuteronomy 16:19; Isaiah 33:14-16)
Study God’s Word, and obey with humility. (Psalm 19:7-11; Ezra 7:10; Micah 6:8; 1 John 2:4-6)
Be sure that the God of the Bible is your God, and worship Him only. Once again, this is contentment with a sword. We imitate what we worship, right?
The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.
Deuteronomy 32:4
And one more thing. I mentioned Jon Harris earlier. He is someone who has studied these things quite a bit. This is some wise counsel that he has given.
I’ve pointed out already that it’s very easy to give the impression that you’re promoting justice. It’s easy to post something on social media. It’s easy to complain about another group of people. Or say something against someone.
The world wants us to “love” in a very abstract way. There are oppressed people, and some of them are us, and so we join a protest, or we mock someone on social media.
But as believers, we should look around us and love real people directly, personally, and with generosity.
Start with your family, and with your local church. How often do you even smile at your family members? Once in a while, I hope. How often do you help someone else before they ask? How often do you simply surprise someone with your generosity? And look, I’m not just talking dollars here, although that’s important. Be generous with treasure, time and talent. Be sure to love with actions, not just words.
And after your family and church, try being friendly with that neighbour or classmate or coworker that you don’t like. Pray for someone specific. Show mercy and love to real, specific people that you know physically. Hey – give actual money to someone in need.
Live like the Lord Jesus.
A prayer to Yahweh:
My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. For when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
Isaiah 26:9
Yahweh is exalted, for he dwells on high; he will fill Zion with justice and righteousness, and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of Yahweh is Zion’s treasure.
Isaiah 33:5-6
Amen to that.
Additional Resources…
We’ve spent a long time talking about justice and partiality! Here are some additional resources to check out on both topics.
And by the way, I’ll be taking a break from the Biblical Anthropology series until after Christmas. We’re still going to talk about creativity (art) and communication, and also the environment. After that, we’ll try to pull everything together in a review. So we’ll get to that, Lord willing, in 2023.
Last time in our Biblical Anthropology series we talked about the desire that many have to make everyone equal. Now, in certain sense, most people would agree that equality is a good thing. But there’s a lot more built into today’s common narrative.
One of the key things we’ve been talking about it that, in the minds of many, there must be a strong central authority to decide what “equality” involves, and then to take from some and give to others in order to enforce this “equality”.
Author A. D. Robles went through an interesting illustration once to demonstrate some problems with this idea. I won’t quote him exactly, but here’s the general idea as I shared it when I first taught this series.
Robles’ main point was that the supposed “mercy” of evil people often ends up being cruelty. How so?
Well, let’s take an imaginary country. In this country, people are at different economic levels. If you’re poor, survival is a challenge. Maybe you have a couple of jobs, just so that you can get by.
Now, let’s say that the imaginary government of the imaginary country decides to control the economy and help the poor people. Now, I don’t think this is the job of a government, but stay with me. They want to help the poor, so what do they do?
First, they give every poor person $1000. Great. Now, they double the minimum wage. Mercy to the poor, right? The most vulnerable.
Wait – here’s a good question to ask: Where did all this money come from? Well, maybe the government took it from the rich people, through taxes. We might call that theft, but they’re doing it for the poor, so we’ll give them a pass for the moment.
Now, what actually happens?
My friend Jake works down at the corner store. It actually belongs to his cousin – nice. His salary is doubled. Sweet! But now the store is having problems – it can’t really afford to pay Jake. Maybe he’s laid off. Or the store has to close.
No problem! There’s a big business down the street. Now, the big business doesn’t exactly have the same concern for Jake as his cousin did. But at least, for the moment, they can pay him the new minimum wage. And as salaries rise suddenly, many small businesses close, and larger companies take their place.
Their bottom line is money, of course. To pay more, they charge more. Prices rise to match the new typical salaries. But now some former small business owners no longer have their businesses. They’re looking for work – unemployment starts to rise.
With fewer people working, there are fewer products, or less variety available. The larger companies have less competition, and so they can afford to charge more.
Meanwhile, Jake is starting to have problems again. Not only are prices rising, he’s now helping to support his cousin.
So who is benefiting most from this “mercy to the poor”? The rich! Big business gets bigger. The rich, who knew how to prepare for inflation, ride out the storm, or even benefit from it. They knew how to invest. They get richer.
Meanwhile, unemployment rose among the poor, some are working in companies that don’t care about them, the $1000 was spent long ago, and if not it is already worth a lot less.
It looked like such a good idea at first. But government simply is not good at controlling all of culture. As we learned in our study of The Authorities, they have their responsibilities and their limits. And sometimes what seems good to us at first can end up as a disaster. The mercy of the wicked can be cruel.
So what’s the answer to a bad government? A new one with more control than the former one? That’s certainly the way we’re moving in our non-imaginary world. “We just need new and better laws! We just need more power to enforce these laws! And then we can finally help the poor children!”
But Jim, I don’t understand – aren’t we in favour of helping the poor? You bet. Absolutely.
So next time we’ll take a deep breath and get back to what the Bible actually says about justice for all.
