DON HEATH

EDMOND — Some people talk about Biblical capitalism. They believe in a prosperity gospel. We hear it from Joel Osteen and we see it in the Prayer of Jabez.

God wants people to be wealthy. He blesses the righteous and curses the unrighteous. The rich deserve to be rich because they work hard; they have a Calvinist work ethic. The poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and uneducated; it is punishment for their poor character.

This theology is reflected in Deuteronomy 28:1: “If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all the commandments, all these blessings will come upon you.”

Deuteronomy 28:11-12 lists some of the blessings that follow from obeying God: “The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your ground. The Lord will cause the rain to fall on you and will bless all your undertakings.”

The Old Testament also presents an alternate economic model. The Book of Job rejects the theology of Deuteronomy 28. The wicked sometimes prosper and the righteous sometimes suffer. Prosperity is not linked to God’s blessing. The Psalms and the prophets lift up the righteous poor and criticize the elite for failing to share their wealth with the poor.

In the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark draws on this alternative model. The rich man asks Jesus in Mark 10:17 what he must do to inherit eternal life. He has obeyed all the commandments since his youth. He seeks confirmation from Jesus that the blessings in Deuteronomy 28 include the promise of eternal life.

Jesus surprises the rich man. He tells the man to do two things: Give all your possessions to the poor and follow me. The man’s face becomes gloomy and dark. He is appalled by the words Jesus has spoken. He goes away grieving, for he has many possessions.

In “A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story,” Diana Butler Bass recalls when her youth group in the 1970s was studying Acts 2:44-45. In the passage, the early believers sold all their possessions and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. They shared everything.

One of the teenagers in Butler Bass’s group was skeptical. He pounced on the youth pastor: “This is in the Bible? They sound like Communists, not Christians.”

The youth pastor softened the story: “The birth of the church was a very special time, different from the rest of history. There were strange signs to witness to God’s power. After the Book of Acts, these things cease and Christians form a more normal kind of church.”

Butler Bass recalls that her friend was relieved. Capitalism was safe. It did not conflict with the Bible. After Acts ends, we can get back to normal.

The thing is, the early Christians took this teaching seriously for at least the first five centuries. Lucian, a pagan critic of Christianity, wrote in 160 C.E.: “They scorn all possessions without distinction and treat them as common property.”

That changed when Constantine adopted Christianity in the fourth century. Then the state started pouring money into the church. It filled the church with treasure. Churches became wealthy. Bishops and priests started reading the text allegorically. This doesn’t mean give your money to the poor. It’s a metaphor. It means that we should be totally dependent on God instead of on our wealth. We can keep our wealth as long as we focus on God.

John Chrysostom was one of the saints of the early church. He was appalled by the wealth that poured into the imperial church. He ordered the luxury items in the bishop’s palace to be sold to feed the hungry. He suggested that private property should be abolished, as in Acts 2: “It is the living separately that is expensive and causes poverty.”

Jesus issues a radical command — sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, then come, follow me. I don’t think we should soften it by reading it metaphorically or by saying it applies to the early church but not to us. It is radical because it asks us to give up our possessions. Why are we addicted to our possessions?

Fifty years ago, during the 1950s, only the husband worked in most families. During the 1970s many wives started working outside the home. Today, most families have the husband and the wife working. Many also have taken out second mortgages and built up a mountain of debt. And rural America has been depopulated during the last 50 years as Americans have moved to where the jobs are — the cities.

Are we any better off than we were 50 years ago? What have our possessions gotten us? We have a weaker sense of community. We have moved away from our families or they have moved away from us. We don’t know our neighbors.

Maybe Jesus was on to something. Maybe if we get off the treadmill that leads to consumer goods and debt we will become attached to people instead of possessions. We will bring the poor into community with us. We will build up communities that see a higher purpose in life than Hummers and 3,500-square-foot homes.

It is a different vision of prosperity. In God’s economics, we enrich our lives by building communities instead of accumulating wealth.

DON HEATH is pastor of Edmond Trinity Christian Church. He may be reached at donheathjr@sbcglobal.net.