Reflections on God and Money: Sooner or Later (9)

‘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; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities…’

Revelation 18:2-5

My third reason for expecting an economic catastrophe is the description in Revelation 17 & 18 of the fall of Babylon, a global economic system – the ultimate consumer society. We looked at this in detail in the series, Babylon and the Beast, earlier this year and I will not repeat it here.

Ancient Babylon is looked on by many as the first capitalist society and the Babylon in Revelation, referred to in the passage at the start of today’s Reflection, is the culmination of generations of money-love, a system that is a ‘haunt for every evil spirit’ and trades ‘the bodies and souls of men’.

Whatever your view of Revelation, Babylon is symbolic of a financial system so corrupt that faithful Christians should separate themselves from it. That is why God calls on his people to leave it. The danger is clear: whenever Christians have remained part of an corrupt, wicked system, they have suffered along with everyone else when it has collapsed.

Our capitalist, consumer society is ultimately unsustainable; our debt economy must, at some stage, reach a point where the collective imagination of people needed to create still more debt is bound to falter and fail. Moreover, I cannot see God - the God who makes his concern for the poor clear in the Bible - ignoring the evil it accommodates and the injustice it creates for ever. So it must fall, sooner or later.

Everyone content to live as consumers in a consumer society, whatever their religious belief, will be caught in the collapse. God may have blessed them, they may have enough for their needs and for most of their wants and they may be generous with the rest. They may tithe and give to good causes. But if, for the most part, their attitudes, aspirations and activities follow the consumer society’s pattern, their situation is precarious.

Starting next weekend, and continuing each day through Advent, I plan to explore how to escape Babylon's influence, using St Paul's guidance about how we should make lifestyle choices. His teaching builds on what Jesus of Nazareth taught about a lifestyle based on love for people. Paul wrote for Christians living in the Roman Empire, where idolatry was commonplace, and I think in capitalist, consumer societies today we face the same challenges living in the shadow of the great idol that money has become.

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Sunday 24 November 2013

Sooner or Later (9)