Reflections on God and Money: July 2013

Saturday 27 July 2013

Babylon and the Beast (20)

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

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.

This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman [Babylon] is seated…

Revelation 1:3, 13:18 & 17:9

We live in societies that believe that an economic system must charge interest, or usury in its original meaning, to be viable. Today's global financial markets have developed ways of trading in money far more sophisticated and much harder to understand than simply renting it.

Many critics of Islamic finance say that it gets its interest under another name, though complex financial transactions. I do not think this is correct, although I can see that the way Islamic banks often benchmark their financial products against ‘Western’ alternatives may help create this impression. But this need only serves to undermine the prevailing worldview.

But what does the absence of usury in the Babylon described in Revelation 17-18 mean? If anything!

We might conclude that the Islamic financial system comes to dominance, replacing what in most parts of the world today are considered to be mainstream financial products and services. But this is by no means the only or, in my view, most likely scenario. During the 45 years I have been a Christian, I have heard the Beast in Revelation likened to contemporary personalities (among them, the Pope, President Kennedy and the European Common Market) that it is plainly unwise to try to do this for Babylon or any other nations or institutions symbolised in Revelation.

I realise that it is often unwise to draw conclusions from silence. But I think that if the absence of trading in money is significant, it is a development we should watch out for. To do that successfully, we need to exercise the quality of wisdom encouraged in the extracts from Revelation at the start of today's Reflection.

Babylon facilitates sustainable trade in real goods, not ‘wealth’ that exists only in sophisticated computer systems or economic growth through the negative of debt. (For more reflection on debt economies and the nature of modern money, see the second week of the Advent Reflections last year, beginning on Day 8.) Moreover, it seems to generate 'honest' gain, not interest, although people are exploited in more subtle ways. The change could come from something as simple as crisis in the global debt economy, the realisation that trading with immaterial wealth is ultimately barren, and a return to more traditional economic structures.

If this weekend you think there has not been much to reflect on about the future, I hope that I have at least offered some food for thought about the present.

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Friday 26 July 2013

Babylon and the Beast (19)

O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart;who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbour, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honours those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.

Psalm 15

I am continuing the theme from last weekend. The most common modern understanding of usury today is that it is excessive interest on a loan. When I used to try to apply that interpretation to the Bible passages, they simply did not make sense. A particular problem was that if usury was excessive interest, what word was used for legitimate interest? I therefore came to accept John Calvin’s interpretation, that usury was interest on a loan to relieve poverty but that interest was legitimate for other types of credit, although I was not entirely satisfied with that explanation.

Soon after I began teaching personal finance skills at schools and colleges, I needed to understand the concerns of Muslims about many modern financial products. Islamic finance (or Sharia-compliant finance) forbids riba, which is the Arabic word for usury. I then realised that in the 5^th Century, Christians, Jews and Muslims all believed that usury meant interest – any and all interest – and that charging it was wrong, even if many religious people did it.

Gradually, people became convinced that usury, or interest, was necessary for lenders to guarantee for themselves financial gain from a mix of borrowers and, during the theological upheavals of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the prohibition was reinvented.

Moreover, theologians began to assume that Jesus had himself sanctioned usury in the parables of the talents and the minas (or pounds), recorded in Matthew 25 and Luke 19, respectively. They decided that this signalled that the prohibition was, like so many other prohibitions in the Torah no longer applicable. I think Jesus was simply acknowledging that unscrupulous people charged interest!

Why is this important? Or even relevant to our reflections on Babylon and the Beast? I hope this will become clear tomorrow.

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Saturday 20 July 2013

Babylon and the Beast (18)

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘And you, son of man, will you judge, will you judge the bloody city? Then declare to her all her abominations. You shall say, Thus says the Lord God… In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbours by extortion; but me you have forgotten, declares the Lord God. Behold, I strike my hand at the dishonest gain that you have made, and at the blood that has been in your midst… I will scatter you among the nations and disperse you through the countries, and I will consume your uncleanness out of you.’

Ezekiel 22:1-15

My concern about the absence of any reference to usury in the passages in Revelation about Babylon extends beyond the list of goods that it trades in. In fact, I recognise that it may have been difficult to include modern financial products in that list. But I would have expected to see something similar to what we read in the above commendation of Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel.

‘In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take interest and profit and make gain of your neighbours by extortion… I strike my hand at the dishonest gain that you have made.’

Taking interest seems to be as wicked as taking bribes! Interest is seen as dishonest gain!

I realise that we are entering difficult territory with these Reflections because it would be very easy for bankers and any other readers who work in the financial sector to conclude that they earn their livings dishonestly. But, of course, it is potentially worse than that! Anyone with a bank account or other investment that increases by interest is implicated.

How should we deal with that situation? A career change to a more traditional vocation? Withdraw our savings and keep them ‘under our mattresses’? Rashness can be as dangerous as complacency!

Every generation has had to grapple with similar issues. Why should we think it easier for Christians to live under capitalism than, for example, communism or fascism? There may be no easy answers or clear ways forward, or obvious changes to make, but there are options and opportunities to be prayfully explored.

I plan to return to this theme next weekend.

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