Day Twenty-Three: Christmas Eve

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath… Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven… And he called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living’. Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues…’ 

Revelation 14:9-12 & 18:1-4 

I conclude this series of Advent Reflections with a ‘feature length’ issue and an invitation to continue to ‘watch this space’. 

Picking up from yesterday’s closing thought, as governments have struggled to curb and control financial institutions, and financial institutions like Fitch and Standard & Poor have downgraded the credit worthiness of governments, the relationship seems to me not unlike Babylon riding the beast in Revelation.

Revelation goes on to illustrate the fall of Babylon in three ways: it is given ‘the cup of the wine of the fierceness of [God’s] wrath’ as judgment for its evil; an angel hurls it like a stone into the sea, symbolising the totality of its fall; ten kings turn on Babylon and 'make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire'. The third perspective seems to imply that national governments exploit Babylon to the point of destruction, although it becomes clear that this was an unintended consequence of their actions and they join the merchants in bewailing Babylon’s fall. 

In Revelation 14, a procession of angels make four announcements: first the Gospel message, then the fall of Babylon, then warning against taking the Mark of the Beast and finally the end of the world. I think this indicates that the Mark is imposed on people after the fall of Babylon and it seems to me that if the world’s financial institutions collapsed, something like the Mark would be inevitable to regulate the use of money – especially as almost all the money in the world has no material reality in our materialist culture, other than like a novel (see Days 8 & 9). 

The second image to consider from Revelation is, then, the Mark of the Beast (666), which is one of the most potent and controversial symbols in history. I have heard many theories about what the Mark might be: most common are a tattoo on the forehead or wrist or an electronic chip inserted just below the skin. I think it more likely that there will be no physical manifestation: in the Bible, the forehead and hand are symbolic of our thinking and doing. What I am sure of is that it will be readily obvious who has the Mark. 

The passage quoted yesterday does say that we can ‘calculate the number’. I think that refers to the Genesis account of creation, where humankind was created on the sixth day, so that 666 is six multiplied by itself to represent what humans can amount to when they ignore God. While I do not think that the Mark (666) is mammon, the personification of money, money that lures and drives our behaviour, it includes mammon because, as we considered at the start of Advent, money has become what people rely on when they do not rely on God. 

On Day 21, I asked if our relationship with money is more important that how we get and use it. I think the answer is both yes and no. Yes, because psychologists have found that people with ‘loose’ attitudes towards money tend to be happier than those who are more controlling, although they are no less likely to be materialists and no less prone to overspending and debt, and therefore just as vulnerable to the same mental and emotional problems. No, because the decisions that we make about how we use money are deeply interconnected with many other issues, such as how we feel about ourselves, who we fear and who we wish to please, and sometimes we can see that something is wrong and dissociate ourselves, whatever our feelings or fondness for it. 

I therefore ask you to consider to what extent are you ‘marked’ by the ways you get and use money? Do newspaper reports of people spending tens of thousands of pounds, even hundreds of thousands, on food and drink in a single night impress you? Do you admire the celebrity culture? Are you intuitively influenced by the lifestyles you see portrayed in the media? Do you think your normal standards of integrity and honesty apply to business activity? Do you instinctively compare what you own to what others have? Do you feel that you have little choice but spend money to maintain a lifestyle that neighbours or work colleagues expect of you? Does advertising create in you a desire for possessions and experiences that feels almost irresistible? Does a shopping trip cheer you up or help you to relax? 

The most remarkable thing about Babylon in Revelation is where God calls on his people to leave it. It was reading this about 15 years ago, at the start of a church prayer meeting, when I realised that what really troubled me was not that God’s people should be called on to leave Babylon but that they should even be in such a place to begin with! I asked the question, could we be involved in anything so obviously wicked but blind to its nature? 

Thank you for joining me in these Reflections: I hope they have been thought-provoking and useful and leave you with something to think about during Christmas and into the New Year. The level of interest has been a most pleasant surprise and I am now planning to continue using this blog through 2013. I hope to produce short series reflections, lasting up to a week, once a month. If you wish to un-subscribe, I understand completely that the extension is not what you signed on for. But I hope you will stay with me to explore more about God and money.

And the angel said to [Mary]… ‘You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end’. 

And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ 

And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God’.

Luke 1:30-35

_____________________________________________ 

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012. 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here. 

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system. 

Day Twenty-Two: Fourth Sunday in Advent

Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon… Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.

I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations’.

Revelation 13:11-17 & 17:3-5

The last book in the Bible is called Revelation because it opens with the words, ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place’. An older name for the book is Apocalypse, which originally also meant an unveiling, or the discovery of something mysterious, but today is associated with catastrophe.

We have previously noted that although history remembers ancient Babylon as a place of splendour, commerce and culture, the Old Testament tells of its love of money, pride, greed and oppression of the poor. In Revelation, at the end of the New Testament, through a series of visions, Jesus of Nazareth, now ascended to heaven, pulls back a curtain on how the world really works. We will consider just two of the images.

Babylon has been symbolic of wealth and decadence throughout history and in Revelation we see how its spirit and influence continue for all time. For a complete picture of this Babylon, read Revelation 14-16, where it is mentioned in the context of unfolding events; then Revelation 17-18, where the writer takes a closer look at it and its fate.

This Babylon facilitates world trade in a wide variety of precious goods and in the ‘bodies and souls of men’: Christians used to think this a reference to slavery but it is a control of humankind that is even deeper – the trade in human character and values. The nature of Babylon is illustrated as being inhabited by demons, foul spirits and hateful birds; it is full of blasphemy and drunk with the blood of Christians. It is portrayed riding on a beast that many commentators agree is symbolic of a government (see Revelation 13): the image suggests the sort of partnership that exists between a horse and its rider.

Is this Babylon a banking system, or the financial markets financial institutions generally? Is it capitalism, as distinct from older forms of free trade? Or a broad reference to our consumer society? As Babylon is an image in a vision, I do not think that it can be ‘de-coded’ so precisely; what matters is that we take the point. It is a way of life; the sum of a generation's received wisdom about how things should be done that few question; the human quest for material wealth with little to constrain it.

With that in mind, to what extent do you think the current relationship between financial institutions and national governments is illustrated by Babylon riding the beast?

_____________________________________________ 

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .


Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Twenty-One

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also… 

Matthew 6:19-21

Jesus told his followers to lay up ‘treasure in heaven’, not on earth; he told a rich, young ruler to give all his wealth to the poor, so that he might have ‘treasure in heaven’; he told a corrupt tax collector that he had found salvation when he pledged to give away most if not all his wealth by compensating the people he had cheated and giving generously to the poor. There are two key questions. 


What is treasure in heaven? In two parables, recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, Jesus explained that this treasure is responsibility in the Kingdom of God: in both, a man going abroad gives resources to his servants and on his return rewards them with varying degrees of responsibility, based on what they did in his absence. In other passages, the other ways to accumulate treasure includes being treated as unjustly as the prophets and helping people become Jesus’ disciples; the treasure is also symbolised by traditional symbols like crowns, sceptres and thrones; Jesus’ earliest followers also referred to treasure as reward, true riches and receiving a prize. 


Can ‘earthly’ money buy ‘heavenly’ treasure? While I can see that what Jesus said and his followers later wrote seems to imply this, a more subtle interpretation harmonises it all. Using money now as Jesus described does not purchase treasure in heaven but transforms people so they can be trusted with the treasure. The transformed people get the treasure they can cope with. 


I think it was a pastor in the 17th Century who likened receiving a heavenly reward to jars being filled up. Each jar is filled to the brim and it is no use the smaller jars complaining that the bigger ones get more because each is filled to its capacity. The treasure is not something we can earn but people get the maximum treasure they can accommodate. This is how those who are faithful with money now will be faithful with true riches later; how those who use what is ‘another man’s’ wealth will receive their own. But when lives revolve around money, God will not be able to trust those people with true riches. 


This is not just a ‘religious’ truth. When I taught financial capability in schools, I explained various reasons for giving to charity and other good causes. For example, because humans are wired for community, we are incomplete as people if we do not interact with others – not just with the people we count as friends but others in our community. Helping others to fulfil their potential therefore helps us to fulfil our own. Moreover, in a society that places so much emphasis on owning things, it is healthy to help others who are less fortunate than we are; if we can provide for all our own essential needs, we should offer help to people who lack the essentials rather than indulge our own wants. Jesus of Nazareth adds another dimension, an eternal perspective, from ‘outside the box’. 


One of the main purposes of these Reflections is to explore right attitudes towards money: a better relationship with it. Would you agree that our relationship with money is more important that how we get and use it, because if our relationship is purified our behaviour is bound to improve?

_____________________________________________ 

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk . 


Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012. 


Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 


These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here. 


You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Twenty

And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority…

Matthew 7:28-29

‘No one ever spoke like this man!’ This was the reason given by the officers sent to arrest Jesus of Nazareth when they returned without him. On other occasions, people were ‘astonished’ at his teaching and it is the same word used to describe their reaction to his miracles. For the two thousand years since, the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth has continued to influence people who expressed no religious allegiance to him.

A few weeks before beginning this series of Reflections, I came across a comment by a 19th Century theologian who thought that if more people knew what Jesus of Nazareth taught, more would be drawn to him. It struck me that most people today know even less about Jesus' ideas than people a hundred years ago or that he taught so much about one of the major moral issues of our time - the right use of money and wealth.

Jesus of Nazareth can speak reality and truth into financial issues, helping to distinguish right from wrong, because he speaks from ‘outside the box’. Not only the ‘boxes’ that make up the cloistered commercial environments where industry practice is distinct from what is generally acceptable in the rest of society but also from beyond the common boundaries of materialism and inauthenticity that define our consumer society.

I know this may seem unlikely. Christian belief is often presented as a blind leap in the dark: a leap in the dark because there is nothing really there; a blind leap because we can only fool ourselves that something is there by keeping our eyes closed. This illusion of self-delusion is fuelled by psychologists who assure us that religion is good for our mental and emotional health, even if it is not true.

Of course, to believe is, by definition, an act of trust but it is wrong to believe that it is necessarily irrational. The 20th Century philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, illustrated the difference between rational and irrational acts of faith in a short essay called Faith Verses Faith.

Dr Schaeffer lived in the Swiss Alps and he describes a group of people climbing to a rocky ledge just as fog closes in. As night falls, they know they will not survive until morning if they stay where they are and yet none of them know the way back to safety. If one of them jumps off the ledge, he may land in safety and find his way home but it would be blind leap that worked out well: luck or fate, depending on what you believe in. But what if the group hear a voice calling to them from the fog, one that said he had lived all his life in the area, could tell exactly where they were from the sound of their voices and knew that if they jumped off the ledge they would be safe? To jump, then, would be an act of faith but faith in a person, not faith in impersonal fate; a rational act of faith based on what they have good reason to believe is true. This faith would be an extension of what is rational, not a denial of it.

The issue, therefore, is whether it is rational to believe that Jesus of Nazareth could speak from ‘outside the box’. For the final three days of Advent, we will consider some of his comments that could only come from there.

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Nineteen

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

Luke 16:8-13

We have one more issue to consider from the parable of the dishonest manager. When Jesus said that we should use ‘unrighteous wealth’ to make friends who could welcome us into eternal dwellings, did he intend his followers to imitate the dishonest manager’s shrewdness?

In his parables Jesus always pointed out when a character behaved badly and he called the manager dishonest for a reason. So the answer must be, No!

On another occasion, Christ told a parable about an unjust judge to encourage his disciples to persevere in prayer (see Luke 18). The judge did not fear God or respect people but he gave justice to an aggrieved widow when her persistent badgering began to annoy him. Was Jesus saying that God is like that judge? Or did Christ expect us to realise how just and loving God is in comparison to the unjust judge?

Similarly, in commenting on the behaviour of the dishonest manager, Jesus was not suggesting that his followers are to be like him. He does not, for example, want people to be good to their business rivals and work colleagues only because they expect something better later. What Jesus really wants is for people to do the right thing, and to do it cheerfully, because it is the right thing to do. Even where money is involved.

In another passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his followers to do their good works, their ‘righteousness’ discretely because if they do it publically to ‘be praised by others’ that that praise will be all they can expect. St Paul brings further clarity to the issue in what is probably the most famous passage in the Bible, I Corinthians 13. He explains that if we do good works without love (literally, ‘charity’), they do not work for our good: ‘If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing’. The word ‘charity’ is from a Greek word that means love in action.

If that is the case, then how can we make sense of what Jesus then says about being faithful in little and in much, and in being faithful when we use another’s wealth? How does it tie in with Jesus’ advice to the rich, young ruler to give away all his wealth so that he might have ‘treasure in heaven’? More pertinently, how could Jesus of Nazareth, a religious teacher from an occupied country in the Roman Empire, speak with authority about treasure in heaven?

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Eighteen

The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Luke 16:8-9

Yesterday we noted that reducing the debts owed to his master was the socially responsible thing to do in the circumstances. That is, it would have been if the manager had been acting out of concern for the community rather than to his own advantage!

Jesus’ other parables about business show a similar social pragmatism. In the parable of the vineyard workers recorded in Matthew 20, the owner hires people at 6am, 9am, noon and 3pm but at the end of the day pays them all the same wage. The owner had promised to pay each worker ‘whatever is right’ and so paid them all the daily living wage. Today we struggle to see how this can be fair but the owner was ensuring the welfare of all the workers and their families, for the good of society as a whole.

By contrast, the rich farmer with an abundant harvest, who we considered a few days ago, was foolish when he decided to hoard it to finance his early retirement. He should have thought about the needs of his workers, their families and the community as well his own future.

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, also in Luke 16, the rich man was condemned because he ignored Lazarus: he did not mistreat or abuse Lazarus, he just ignored the man in need sitting by his gate. Or could we argue that Lazarus was not the rich man’s responsibility, just because he sat by the gate? It seems, however, that the rich man’s indifference can be confirmed by the way he ignored the needs of his own servants, who were his direct responsibility, if we are to understand that he ‘feasted sumptuously every day’ implies they were not allow a day off on the Sabbath!

I have heard Luke 16:8 described as one of the hardest verses in the Bible to interpret but there is difficulty only if we think that Jesus commended the manager. As it is, Jesus says only that the master commended the manager. Jesus did, however, observe that, ‘The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light’. By that, he meant that ordinary men and women living according to the ways of society will do what is right when it is in their own self-interest but the children of light, his own followers, are not usually so pragmatic about living the way he described.

We have contrasted the ways people did business in Jesus’ parables with modern capitalism’s maximisation of profit, once popularly summarised as ‘gaining wealth, forgetting all but self’. Is, however, the growing practice of social responsibility, charitable giving by companies to relieve poverty and to support education and art, curbing corporate greed and creating a form of ‘compassionate capitalism’ more in line with Jesus' ideals?

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Seventeen

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.'

… So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' He said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'

Luke 16:1-7

The parable of the dishonest manager is probably the most misunderstood of Jesus’ parables because our assumptions about the way business should be conducted are different today. We tend to make three mistakes: the manager was called dishonest because he wasted his master’s goods; reducing the debts owed to his master was dishonest; Jesus commended the manager’s dishonesty as shrewdness.

The manager may have been underhand in wasting his master’s goods but this was not why Jesus called him dishonest. Crucially, the manager is not accused of theft, fraud or any ‘serious’ dishonesty: if he had been, his master would not have told him to make up the accounts but put him in prison until everything was repaid! As the accusation can also be translated as ‘squandering’, I expect he was at fault for commonplace slacking and pilfering.

The manager was not dishonest for reducing the debts owed to his master because it was within his delegated authority to do it. Moreover, it was the morally right thing to do. The debtors were probably the master’s tenants who owed rent, although they may have been customers who owed payment for goods. The manager was responsible for the master’s business and, consequently, he was responsible for the welfare of not just the tenants and others who did business with his master but also their families. Making the reductions was therefore the responsible social action: the rich creditor who did not need the money reduced the amounts owed by poor people who did.

The manager was dishonest because he reduced the debts for his own selfish ends. He did it in order to secure his own future, not because he cared about the welfare of the debtors. Today, if a bank executive wrote off a debt on compassionate grounds we would think it a legitimate use of the executive’s discretion. If, however, we later learn that the executive expected a personal favour in return, we would quickly change our minds and question the executive’s integrity. Or would we?

Would the manager be considered dishonest or shrewd where you work? Is there a case for saying that he shrewdly but legitimately leveraged his position? After all, his master lost nothing because the debts could not be repaid in any event and the debtors gained because their future obligation to the manager would be less than the cancelled debts.

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To subscribe, unsubscribe and view past reflections, go to http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Information update

Due to a technical issue, some people may not have been receiving the Advent Reflections daily. I apologise for not spotting the problem sooner and hope that I have now corrected it. The Reflections are circulated at one minute past midnight (GMT) each day.

It is also now possible to post comments.

Thank you for your continued interest in the Reflections.

Philip

Philip Evans, Clubhouse personal finance tutor

Day Sixteen

The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

Luke 12:16-21

The parables of Jesus of Nazareth are stories of everyday life that teach spiritual truths. It follows that to be faithful to the spiritual truth they must promote the sort of practical lifestyle Jesus approved of, such as he described in the Sermon on the Mount. When a character behaves badly, like the farmer in the above parable, the misconduct is clear. Unfortunately, growing up in a deep-rooted capitalist society, and having absorbed since childhood its assumptions about the function of money and how business should be conducted, some of the parables than involve money seem not just idealistic but impossible. It may be helpful, therefore, to consider how the nature of business has changed since Jesus told his parables.

People have always traded for profit: producing goods and offering services are natural ways to get what we need to live. Although there have always been greedy people, on the whole, for centuries most people were satisfied to earn enough for their families to live in a degree of comfort. Among the things of greater importance than hoarding possessions was the amount of leisure time people could enjoy. If a farmer was to increase the hourly rate for his labourers gathering in a harvest, he was more likely to slow progress than hasten it because they would work only long enough to earn the same amount of money as before.

From time to time, however, a businessman would devote himself to commerce with an intensity alien to his contemporaries, with the intention of maximising his own profit. His competitors had to respond in kind in order to stay in business but when the catalyst, the greedy businessman, retired or died, business gradually returned to its normal pace.

Then Benjamin Franklin changed things forever. He is on the US $100 banknote because he was America’s first home-grown, self-made millionaire. He promulgated his success through a series of articles, the most famous of which are, Necessary Hints To Those That Would Be Rich (1736), and, Advice To A Young Tradesman (1748). Franklin taught that money, not labour, created wealth and equated leisure with idleness, as in these two extracts.

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but six pence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.

He that loses five shillings not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old will amount to a considerable sum of money.

Although people deplored this approach as ‘gaining wealth, forgetting all but self’, gradually Franklin’s way became the way to do business. Today we call it capitalism and it is widely considered to be synonymous with trading for profit.

In light of this, what should the fortunate farmer in the above parable have done to gain Jesus’ approval?

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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Previous Reflections can be viewed at http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, however, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Fifteen: Third Sunday in Advent

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’. To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head’. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:19-21

As we have seen before, St Paul builds on Jesus’ principle and gives practical guidance to inform lifestyle choices.

To understand correctly what Jesus was driving at in the Sermon on the Mount, we need to remember what he was opposed to: the egotism and ambition that lies at the root of evil. Jesus own approach was the very opposite. Lucifer, as we saw a few days ago, wanted to be like God; Jesus was God and was prepared to give up the privileges of being God in order to become a man. St Paul described it like this in Philippians 2.

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross…

How quick are we to stand on our rights? To respond to challenges out of pride, in ways that enflame situations? Do we act tough, issuing our own challenges that in past ages would have ended in fatal duels? Rather than react from our egos, Jesus advocated surrendering our rights in order to maintain our commitment to doing good and let God himself deal with any injustice. Do we therefore allow tempers to cool and make time for proper analysis? Do we seek to be innovative, to act creatively and ingeniously in doing what is right?

We do not use the word ‘enemy’ so routinely today: we prefer words like competitor or rival. By telling us to love these people, Jesus was implying the companies we ‘battle’ for contracts and market share, the unscrupulous colleagues pursuing the same promotions and bonuses we are and the neighbours who persistently spoil our quality of life with loud music, extravagant building plans or some other inconsiderate behaviour.

But does Jesus’ way have financial consequences we are prepared to tolerate?

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To unsubscribe, please send an e-mail to: adventreflections({[at]})clubhousew1((dot))org .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Previous Reflections can be viewed at http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, however, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Fourteen

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy'. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …

Matthew 5:38-45

The ‘evil’ Jesus referred to above was not criminal activity but taking advantage of people within the law from positions of superiority. It does not mean that Christian police officers should overlook crime or that judges should pardon it. It does not even mean that we should passively accept all legal injustices.

The slap on the cheek was not the start of a brawl but a formal challenge, a legal act of provocative violence allowed by Roman law. In later times, someone would throw down a gauntlet and the other person could either pick it up and fight a duel or walk away, albeit at risk of conveying the implication they were guilty of what they had been accused or a coward. Today, we might receive a solicitor’s letter and have to decide whether to do what it demands or fight an expensive court action.

Being taken to court for a tunic represents debt collection but Jesus says to give creditors more than they demand - not just the inner tunic but the outer cloak! Today, we might be subject to automated, indiscriminate debt collection and court procedures that add considerably and unnecessarily to the hardship of debt.

Going the extra mile illustrates oppressive demands by State officials: Roman soldiers in occupied countries could require citizens to carry their baggage and equipment for one mile. Today, we might be caught on traffic management cameras for minor infringements that a police officer would have overlooked or we might be fined for accidently dropping a piece of litter.

Lending to whoever asks did not mean to suggest that people should be open to deceit, and so give to fraudsters, but that when faced with a genuine need, give even to people we dislike. Even to our enemies, who Jesus says we must 'love'.

How are we to know when to surrender our rights in the face of commercial, political or social superiority? And how are we to know if an 'enemy', who is opposed to our welfare, is in genuine need?


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You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To unsubscribe, please send an e-mail to: adventreflections({[at]})clubhousew1((dot))org .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Previous Reflections can be viewed at http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, however, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Day Thirteen

Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to [John the Baptist], ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than you are authorized to do’. Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages’.

Luke 3:12-14

As a society, we have become accustomed to inauthenticity. Some forms of deceit are so familiar we think of them as simply the way things are done today. Sales people cold-call, claiming to be conducting or following up surveys; others claim they know about our credit deals, PPI (Payment Protection Insurance), mobile ‘phone contracts and the viruses on our computers. Representatives from utility companies visit our homes, claiming to be investigating the misuse of rival companies’ tariffs but really want us to transfer to them. Building companies tout for work by sending people to conduct property inspections. Many introduce themselves using carefully chosen words designed to leave the impression they have some official status or are performing a public service.

Do these people think they are being dishonest? Are they even thinking in traditional honest/dishonest catagories? In my experience, they think they are doing their jobs in the way they are meant to be done. This is nothing new: the same phenomenon studied after World War 2, when the Nazi leaders put on trial for war crimes claimed that the will of Hitler was decisive and they bore no personal responsibility for following orders.

During the 1950s and 1960s, psychological experiments not only demonstrated the willingness of ordinary people to go along with a majority view, even when they knew it was wrong, but also to obey authority and act against their own consciences to inflict unnecessary pain on people. Professor Philip Zimbarde’s notorious prison experiment saw students so absorbed into their role-play that the ‘prison guards’ began to abuse the ‘inmates’. Just a few years ago, a college re-enactment of the Holocaust was abandoned because in the mock concentration camp the ‘guards’ began to physically abuse the ‘Jews’. By comparison, industry norms may seem very ordinary but the difference is only one of degree.

Business is business’ was originally the English title of a French play written in 1903 and it quickly came to express the assumption that society’s usual standards of personal morality do not apply to business. A few years after the play was first performed in London, the Minister of Westminster Chapel, Dr G Campbell Morgan, said, ‘I am sometimes told that, that business is business! That means that business is rascality’.

Do you think standards of integrity and honesty are the same in domestic and business life? To what extent do you think Jesus of Nazareth would agree with John the Baptist that the usual standards of authenticity and honesty should apply to the ways we earn a living?

_____________________________________________

You have been sent e-mail because you subscribed to this series of Advent Reflections. To unsubscribe, please send an e-mail to: adventreflections({[at]})clubhousew1((dot))org .

Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.

Previous Reflections can be viewed at http://www.adventreflections2012.blogspot.co.uk .

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.

You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, however, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.