21 hour working week

I am reading a report by the New Economics advocating moving to a 21 hour standard working week. Please follow the link and let me know what you think.

The Great Financial Crisis: A Biblical Diagnosis

I came across this challenging article regarding the economic crisis and a Christian approach to finance. Food for thought...

Sabbath in the New Testament

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets: I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17). He then goes on to explain how laws about murder should be extended to anger and verbal abuse (the attitudes and behaviours that lead to murder in the most extreme cases) and how laws about adultery also extend to lustful thoughts. His point seems to be that it’s the spirit of the law not the letter of the law that really matters – and, if anything, the former sets the higher standards.

So what does this mean with respect to the Sabbath?

Sabbath in the Law of Moses

My blogging thus far has, by and large, followed the chronology of the Bible from creation to the exodus from Egypt, picking out stories which, in my view, have something to say about economics. I have now reached the point where God gives the law to Moses at the summit of Mount Sinai. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are chiefly concerned with setting out these laws. I will now turn my attention to the analysis of the law of Moses, as it pertains to the economic life of the people of Israel. I will take a thematic approach, assessing various elements of the law within the context in which they were given and attempting to draw out relevant applications for us today

My first theme is that of Sabbath rest. This theme centres around the fourth of the Ten Commandments:

Supply Shocks in the Delta and the Desert - the Economics behind the Passover

One could argue that the political and economic situation in Egypt at the time of Moses had reached an equilibrium. The Israelites found themselves stuck as victims of extreme oppression, including brutal slavery and genocide (Exodus 1:8-22). Despite their numbers, it is unlikely that they would have had the military might to launch a successful revolution and any attempt to do so would have risked making their plight even worse (suggested by the events of Exodus 5). Moreover, unlike in today’s world, there was no international community to put pressure on Pharaoh politically or militarily. Perhaps their only chance of salvation was to wait until the death of the current Pharaoh and hope that his successor might show more mercy. So what a time for the God of their fathers to reveal himself as a force to be reckoned with, overthrowing the oppressors and coming to the rescue of his people. In the language of economics, he did this by instigating a succession of supply shocks.

The Crisis in Egypt - The Role of Governments

In my last two blogs on the famine in Egypt, I discussed what this story has to teach us about the need to save for the future and how we form our expectations about the future. In this final blog examining Joseph’s governorship of Egypt (Genesis 41-47), I consider whether saving for the future is a responsibility of governments or the private individual.

Let’s start by envisaging the hypothetical situation that Joseph consults a panel of economists before proposing his plan to Pharaoh.

The Crisis in Egypt - Rational Expectations versus Prophecy

When making economic decisions, expectations are very important. We expect to retire at some point in the future and therefore we set some of our income aside for a pension. Similarly, we expect to earn a certain level of income over our career so we take out a mortgage based on the expectation that we will be able to repay it. There are also many things that we expect won’t happen but realise that there is a probability that they may occur (e.g. being made redundant, becoming seriously ill or having one’s car stolen). Unless these eventualities are covered by government provision, we can make provision for these risks through purchasing insurance or “saving for a rainy day”.

Joseph based his expectations on a prophetic dream.

Lent Reflection - Forgive us our Debts

“At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.” Deuteronomy 15:1

Please read Deuteronomy 15:1-11.

When God delivered the Promised Land into the hands of the Israelites, his desire was that the land would be a blessing to all his people, not just a privileged few. The avoidance of poverty was very much on God’s agenda (v4). Unfortunately, the laws of sinful nature (also known as the laws of economics) dictated that this would never be the case, a reality that God acknowledges in this same section (v11).

The Crisis in Egypt - To Save or Not to Save?

In my last post, I introduced the story of Joseph’s governorship of Egypt. I will now use this story to explore some important economic questions. These are:

Is it right to save for the future?

How should we form our expectations about the future?

Who is responsible for ensuring our future security – individuals or government?

The Crisis in Egypt - The Background

Over recent weeks, the world’s eyes have been focused firmly on Egypt as a people’s revolution threatens to reverberate across the entire Middle East region. However, the subject of this post is another crisis that engulfed the region in about 1700-1600BC.

The Wealth of a Nation

Having covered the early chapters of Genesis and Job, virtually the entirety of what remains of the Old Testament is concerned with the history of God’s chosen people, the Israelites. Therefore, this is an appropriate juncture to set out a very brief and overarching economic history of this nation, which will hopefully provide a helpful context for some of the more in-depth analysis to come in my future posts.

Genesis and Property - an update

You may remember from an earlier post that I resolved to build a budget on www.stewardship.org.uk as a way of being more accountable to God about my own personal finances. I have now done this and shared the results with a couple of people with whom I have an accountable relationship.

I have found the process very useful and it led me to reconsider my current giving patterns. I am happy to share further details with anyone who is interested, so please let me know.

Job and Economic Justice

Although the book of Job is found just before Psalms in the Bible (as it is essentially a poem and is therefore grouped with other poetic works), chronologically it should appear much earlier. Job was probably born about the same time as Abraham, and therefore knew God outside of the context of the Abrahamic covenant.

What Genesis has to say about Work

The third theme that I would like to pick out from my study of the opening chapters of Genesis is that of work. Specifically, I feel that there are two key principles that can be drawn out for further analysis. The first is work itself and the second is the opposite of work (i.e. not working, or resting).

What Genesis has to say about Value

I spend a large proportion of my time at work evaluating things. As a specialist in economic impact assessment, these evaluations usually involve estimating the value of projects and initiatives in monetary terms. For example, how much has this business support programme benefited the regional economy? Or, have these youth work projects delivered value for money in terms of generating economic benefits for the young people or society in general that are higher than the costs involved?

As recorded in Genesis 1, God built an evaluation programme into his work of creation. He conducted a final evaluation at close of play on Day 6 (1:31) and interim evaluations on Day 1 (1:4), at lunchtime and close of play on Day 3 (1:10,12), close of play on Days 4 and 5 (1:18,21) and lunchtime on Day 6 (1:25). So what was the conclusion of his evaluation studies? At all the interim stages, he assessed his work as being “good” while at the final stage this assessment appears to have increased to “very good”. But what do these terms really mean? Perhaps a social researcher approached him with a clipboard and asked, “Excuse me, sir, could you spare five minutes to answer this short questionnaire? How would you rate your creation (so far)? Very good, good, satisfactory, poor or very poor? Thank you for your time.”

Insights on the financial crisis

In the run up to the announcement of the Government's spending review on Wednesday I thought I'd share these youtube clips. Click on this link for the first of five parts, then select the remaining four parts from the 'suggestions'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSDGDerFst4

They are from a lecture by Prof David Harvey from City University New York which summarises his new book 'The Enigma of Capital'. The book and lecture seek to explain the structural causes of the recent financial crisis and as such they are the clearest and most eloquent attempt I've come across. Prof Harvey applies a distinctly Marxian analysis to this topic and unlocks a lot of really serious structural questions that I think need to be confronted if we are serious about reimaging the economy in the image of God.

Check it out. Measure it against the plumb-line. I'll post about a couple of specifics shortly and will try to refrain from shouting viva la Revolution since I'm in the library!

Nathan

What Genesis has to say about Property

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

If God created the universe, then either he is the current holder of its property rights or, at some point in history, those rights were transferred to somebody else. I think that the weight of biblical evidence (e.g. Deut 8:17-18, Psalm 24:1) points to the former hypothesis. Therefore it follows that nobody else owns anything.

Does this mean that God disapproves of private property? On the contrary, a large part of the law of Moses is concerned with establishing and protecting property rights. If God disapproved of property, at least two of the Ten Commandments (“Do not steal” and “Do not covet”) would be redundant. This is because God’s law is pragmatic, and designed for a fallen world. A system of property rights is an effective way of managing scarce resources. But this is a discussion for another time, so let’s get back to the more idealistic world of Genesis.

Reflections from Genesis

According to the Biblical worldview, one can think of there being four stages in the history of the universe – creation, fall, redemption and consummation. The first few chapters of Genesis cover the first three of these stages.

If we’re honest, the account of creation in Genesis can sometimes read a bit like a fairy story. The debate about how God created the universe and the extent to which the Genesis story can be taken literally is an important one. However, I don’t want to dwell on this here but rather draw out some of the fundamental principles that will help inform our worldview and hence the way we should live our lives.

Why Metanoia?

As this is my first post on our new blog, I would like to share a few thoughts about why I decided to be part of Metanoia and what I hope to achieve from participating in the discussions on this blog. For a long time now, I have been interested in exploring what God has to say about economics. It is often said that economics is the “dismal science”, a study of the perennial quest to satisfy mankind’s unlimited wants under the constraints of the earth’s scarce resources. However, somewhere inside of me is the hope and belief that “God’s economy” is an achievable place of peace, love and joy.

To discover God’s economy, I am starting with the Bible – Old and New Testaments. Within the next year or so, I am aiming to read the entire Bible, marking with a coloured pencil every reference that, in my view, pertains to the world of economics. So far, I have covered the first five books of the Old Testament plus Job.