Christian Culpability in the World’s Woes: Finance

There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment, with many people feeling global pressures in the privacy of their personal lives. Most of these pressures are old stories, but their consequences in some cases are relatively recent. While Christians still exhort their example as one to follow for safety or calm during these times, lets consider how Christian action adds to some of these issues. This is not to denigrate, but to remind of our part in the flawed global community, and how we could be doing better. 

Let’s start with finance. Developed countries the world over are suffering as the consequences of greed catch up to corporations and filter down to individuals. However, even on an individual level, there have been people living beyond their means; borrowing more than they could afford, or others seduced by promises of high returns on investment that common sense would have dictated too good to be true.

Were Christians pushing a message of trimming the lamps, coming out in the media with the discernment of the Holy Spirit warning average investors about these investments and how they would fail? Perhaps they did in some quarters, but the most visible theme in many mainstream churches has been prosperity preaching. Whatever the whole message of prosperity preaching has been, the dominant message and practical outcome has been a conspicuous consumption as proof of blessing. The greatest example being the preacher up the front in an expensive suit with the (multi) million dollar house and accompanying car, or perhaps series of cars, a motor-cycle and a boat. This was the example to follow for church goers and the dream to aspire to, which had the nice side effect of justifying higher tithe demand from the church.

Consider a church goer  that doesn’t get the nuance of prosperity preaching, and sees the physical correlation between the message and the material possessions of their church leader, who shows them off as a sign of God’s blessing. Why wouldn’t that church goer raise some debt or enter a risky investment? Theirs is simply an act of faith to bring forth material evidence of God’s blessing that they may witness to others.

Let’s not forget that Christians number among the executives and other business leaders that partially led the way to the current financial crisis with dishonest business practice. In the USA, their number is many in the halls of power politics that called for less oversight of businesses when the discernment of the Holy Spirit should have told them the exact opposite was needed.

Prosperity preaching is a great irony in modern Christianity when you consider that prosperity for so many years has been a facade held up by sub-prime mortgage type greed. Again Christians have pointed to physical trappings as proof of God’s blessing, only to have the assertion exposed by mundane human reality.

There was no great push to warnings amongst the large churches, and many of their congregations have been stung by the financial woes rippling through the world. The shame of it is that many of these churches who didn’t see this coming will have their ranks swell as times get tougher and people seek to cling to faith for comfort. The hope is that going forward they learn to curb their excesses and provide a better example of financial conservation for people to follow.