The Grace Economy

This is the fourth in a series of theological essays on what most people call ‘the marketplace’ and ‘the economy.’ If you haven’t read the first (A Scandalous Tale of Two Economies), second (The Lie of the Debt Economy), or third essay (The Lies of the Competition Economy) please do so before reading this one.

We’ve reached the part of the scandalous tale of two economies I’ve been telling where we start to move from diagnostics and critique to imagination and practice. Or, to put it a bit differently and more simply, now that I’ve written three essays trying to tell you that the current global marketplace is not the best of all possible economies, it’s time for me to offer you a different—and hopefully better—account of how we can conduct our business. It all comes down to two related false gospels (prosperity and austerity) and one true gospel: the abundance gospel.

Now, it becomes all too easy to start into one of two ditches at this point in theological treatments of economics. Here, Amy Laura Hall, Kate Bowler, and Barbara Ehrenreich help name this pervasive temptation. Hall writes,

[Some] churches fall under the descriptive term “Prosperity Gospel.” My colleague, Kate Bowler, has written a fabulous book on this movement [Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel], and Barbara Ehrenreich helpfully locates the trend more broadly in Bright-Sided. But I am concerned with another tendency in American Christianity, a heresy that I will call the “Austerity Gospel.” In this form of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the way to winning God’s approval is to accept your own suffering as a part of winning. If the “Prosperity Gospel” of Easy Easter and Believin’ Stephen is about praying yourself to a big winning lottery ticket, then the Austerity Gospel is about making yourself as insignificant as possible, and as guilty as possible, in order to win favour from God. In this false mode of faith, I hope to find some success or mere safety within the brutality of the world by rendering myself abject and compliant… I don’t think the Gospel of Austerity is the true alternative to Easy Easter. The resurrected body of Jesus bears the wounds of evil in the world, and yet is tenaciously tilted toward true joy. Jesus is not a body made of titanium. It is a body that still bears the wounds, and yet still dances toward heaven.1

In other words, the prosperity and austerity gospels are two sides of the same works-based theology coin. The prosperity side says you need to have the right amount of faith, work ethic, and positivity to be blessed materially; the austerity side says you need to have the right amount of faith, work ethic, and agony to be blessed spiritually. With either side, the ideology is the same: we have to earn God’s blessings, whether that is through adopting the right mindset, manifesting enough belief, performing a particular set of actions, praying correct prayers, and/or enduring an extreme amount of suffering. Yet, the wonderful truth is, as I have indicated in previous essays, God’s blessings are not earned; they are freely, abundantly given, and they are both material and spiritual. The challenge for a lot of people, however, is that what and how God blesses differs so drastically from what we desire.

Take the famous feeding of the five thousand, for example. Jesus multiplies a meagre meal into enough to feed thousands of people plus leftovers (Matthew 14:13-21 ). I don’t know about you, but if it were up to me, I’d probably want this to be a planned banquet with everything and everyone accounted for prior to the meal being served. But that, it seems, is not how Jesus tends to prepare a feast. He is much more of an on the way meal planner, quite similar to the way in which he restocks the wine at the wedding only after the original reserves have run out (John 2:1-11 ). These are, of course, practices consistent with what he is constantly preaching in the gospels: The Parable of the Rich Fool who preoccupies himself with building bigger barns to house his big yields ( Luke 12:13-21), for instance, or learning from the birds of the air who are provided for on a daily basis (Matthew 6:25-34, for another.

And what about that line in the Lord’s Prayer? It says give us this day our daily bread (Matthew 6:9-13).

And what about Hebrew Bible laws? Let the land rest, cancel all debts, and let all slaves go free every seven years (Leviticus 25:8-38; Deuteronomy 15:1-11); don’t lend at interest (Deuteronomy 23:19 ); and, leave your harvest surplus at the edge of the field so people in need can pick it up (Leviticus 19:9-10).

At the heart of all of these economic values and practices disclosed in the Bible—which, as it happens, are so radically at odds with the ‘values’ (i.e., vices) and (mal)practices of late-Capitalism—is a God who gives freely, joyfully, and abundantly, and asks us to do the same.

That God wants us to approach economics in these ways can be received as bad news, of course. But if we receive it as such then we’re likely to be showing our loyalty to Mammon more than Jesus. And if that is the case, what would it look like to receive this as good news and act accordingly? I think Zacchaeus, the converted crook, is an exemplary figure here. His encounter with Jesus generates the following changes in his life and business practices: “ Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and I if have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much,” (Luke 19:8-9).

Interestingly enough, the text says Zacchaeus “was happy to welcome” Jesus to his house for an unplanned stay and meal.

Beyond individual conversions and abundance gospel practices, I think communities ought to take John Barclay’s reflections seriously when he writes the following:

[The Apostle] Paul’s theology of divine gifts, which we hold in trust for others, has the capacity to generate alternative notions of ownership, foregrounding our accountability to the Giver and thus to others, including future generations. Central Western values, like autonomy and choice, are beginning to show their limitations if they do not serve a larger social purpose, and Paul’s theology of gift-sharing, community, and reciprocity could offer resources for a more balanced and sustainable political economy.2

In this way, God’s grace economy moves in the opposite direction of the debt economy. Whereas gifts are freely, spontaneously, and abundantly exchanged in the former economy, capital is produced, circulated, and grown with great scrutiny, calculation, and exploitation in the latter economy.

Which economy do you prefer? I prefer the former, though I express that preference with a mix of joy and trepidation, because make no mistake, both economies have particular demands. Both demand faith and effort.

The abundance economy demands we trust that God will take care of all of our needs in ways and with means that confound us at times, and a radical commitment to generosity that may terrify the heck out of us with the promise of entry to a kingdom that is here in part but not yet in full. The debt economy demands conditions of labor and exchange that exploit and alienate people with the promise of enforced regulations and material benefits.

So which demands and promises will we pick?

Bread in the wild or meat and vegetables in Egypt?