St. Maximos' Hut

David Beito and others have an interesting blog that has recently come to my attention - Liberty and Power - and which is now on our blogroll. Worth a look.

David has done fascinating work on the history of voluntary associations. You can buy his excellent book on fraternal societies on Amazon.

On ProfBainbridge.com

over at Mirror of Justice.

In response to the question relayed by Andy about the role of churches in implementing government programs, I'd like to say that I'm worried about such "faith-based initiatives." Not so much because I'm worried that people in need might get prayed for or prostelized to, but because Churches should be doing this work in such an effective way that they don't need government dollars.

I heard a report on the radio today (o.k. Andy, I admit it was NPR) about churches looking to get re-imbursed by the government for aid they provided to hurrican Katrina victims. That just doesn't sound right. I don't remember Christ saying, "if you see man without a coat, give him yours, since Ceasar will give you another one later." I don't remember Christ saying "If you love me, apply for federal monies to feed my sheep."

More broadly, history is pretty clear that when the line between church and state gets blurred, its the church that suffers the most. Rather than acting as the government's sub-contractor, the church needs to be so effective in meeting the needs of suffering people that people start wondering why the government is in the redistribution business in the first place.

Andy, I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head. Prosperity, like all blessings from God, has a built in risk. There is always a danger that instead of being used to glorify God, blessings are used to obscure our vision of God. My thinking on this subject has been clarified by reading John Piper’s (a self-proclaimed “Christian hedonist”) book Desiring God.

All that is good and pleasing comes from God, what matters is “what we do with” them – and I don’t mean just in the literal sense of “do” that Andy is talking about (though that’s obviously important). I mean what matters is how we think about it. If I give my wife flowers and she accepts them in a manner that brings her closer to me and helps her understand my lover for her in new ways – all is good. If, however, she accepts them and holds them up in such away that obscures her vision of me, then the flowers have become an obstacle between us. So, contrary – perhaps – to the asceticism of St. Maximo (though I don’t really know much about what was motivating him to burn his hut), there’s nothing wrong with enjoying material and sensual pleasures and comforts, as long as we do so in a way such that these things reflect, rather than obscure God.

And enjoying such pleasures in an excessive way when we know others around us are suffering may be a sure sign that we have made an idol of the blessings God has bestowed on us. I think its great – Andy – that you chose to contextualize your comments in your reading of Rick Warren’s book because, not only does his book provide a much needed reminder of why we’re here, but because Warren’s life since the unimaginable success of his book has been a terrific example of what we can do with the prosperity that markets can bestow upon us. He and his wife have capped their living expenses, paid back Saddleback Church for every dollar of salary he has taken over the last 20 years and could possibly take over the next few decades and have poured every other one of the bazillion dollars they’ve made off the book into relieving the suffering of aids-torn Africa. And his example is causing many, many, many other Christians to do likewise.

A Faithful Reader emails me to ask what the various folks here think of involving churches in implementing government programs. Does it encourage better behavior in the implementation or does it just corrupt the churches?

I am not sure what I think and will have to ponder the issue. I hope the rest of the group will help out on this.

My wife and I have started reading The Purpose Driven Life (by Rick Warren) with our neighbors. (I'll let the priests chime in on this to correct my theological musings.) The book is a 40 day program of reflection. We won't manage the "do it all in 40 days" approach - three chapters a week is our more, manageable goal.

The first three chapters offer some insights that helped me with this thread.
Almost the very first lines in the book are

"It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God."

That seems like an important means of keeping the material life in perspective. Yes, markets offer us fabulous wealth - even if we aren't particularly wealthy. The riches of our society are so great that even the poor among us live lives unimaginable even 100 years ago. For those fortunate enough to be among the relatively wealthy, as my family is, we live lives unimaginable even 30 years ago - the increase in my well-being from Google alone is so vast as to be almost incomprehensible to me.
Yet none of that ultimately matters. (Maybe we can lure Fr. M out of the comments and into a post here - he's much more eloquent than I am on stating what does matter.)
2. Knowing one's purpose in life "simplifies your life. It defines what you do and what you don't. ... You simply ask, 'Does this activity help me fulfill one of God's purposes for my life?'"
Material prosperity offers a chance to put great resources to work to gratify our personal desires or to serve God. Warren concludes the third chapter of the book by pointing out that we are accountable for how we do this.

One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity. ... From the Bible we can surmise that God will ask us two crucial questions:
First, "What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?" ...
Second, "What did you do with what I gave you?"

One lesson I draw from this is that our material prosperity not only creates challenges for us to keep our focus on God but also challenges us to find ways to use that prosperity to serve God. We have been given much, and so we will have to account for much. (The parable of the talents seems to suggest the same thing.)

Thus while I take PJ and Robert's points that the wealth produced by markets can distract us from Christ, I don't think that's the entire picture. The wealth created by markets - and the wealth that could be created by extending markets - is an asset we've been given by God to use for his Glory. If we don't, that's something we have to answer for. It is not enough, therefore, to simply withdraw once we've reached an optimal amount of prosperity. We must risk prosperity for prosperity offers us the means of contributing to efforts to glorify God, and surely that is one of our purposes (I will admit that I peeked at the end of the book....) There may be an optimal amount of prosperity to free us from the distractions of want and misery to allow us to focus on Christ without the temptations of material plenty. But if we stop at that point in the social creation of wealth, we neglect the wonderous things the greater wealth could do that would be to God's glory. The risk, of course, is that we forget that it's not about us and turn that wealth to lesser purposes.

P.J.'s comment about alternatives to the market having an even worse track record with regard to temptations and distractions are well stated. Although, there are clearly some markets that are so full of temptation -- e.g. pornography -- that many (myself included) have a hard time accepting the libertarian position.

The verses he quotes from Deuteronomy echo my deeper concerns. There is an optimal amount of prosperity. Has the market economy given us too much? I know that there's no clear answer to this question, but it's important to wrestle with anyway. I'm beginning to lean in the direction of thinking that in many places we now have too much prosperity and value the thoughts of the others on this blog on this topic.

I quote Proverbs 30: 8-9 in class when we discuss this issue -- "give me neither poverty nor riches; (provide me only with the food I need); Lest, being full, I deny you, saying, "Who is the LORD?" Or, being in want, I steal, and profane the name of my God."

Robert is correct, the Pew Study does support the secularization hypothesis – although only in an indirect way. It shows low percentages of people reporting that “religion is very important” in rich countries, but it doesn’t show a “drop” since we don’t know what these percentages were before these countries became rich.

In a chapter (in Acts of Faith) entitled “Secularization R.I.P” Stark and Finke provide a lot of evidence that challenges the secularization hypothesis – including historical accounts of the impious behavior of church “leaders” during Europe’s “religious” past. Like Smith, their claim is, briefly, that it is state involvement in religious markets that discourages piety and that these patterns were in place long before modernity brought about lots of resources to distract people with. In The Churching of America they go on to argue that after the onset of competition in American religious markets there was a huge growth in piety throughout the 19th century. In addition, Gallup polls have shown that most indicators of religious belief have been, essentially, flat since the first half of the 20th century (though I admit some polls say otherwise).

So, I suppose I would find the Pew study more convincing if it controlled for interference in religious markets and/or used changes in income and changes in the importance of religion.

Finally, I can’t resist adding that I believe that many devout followers of Christ in the church circles I travel in would say that “religion” isn’t very important to them – their relationship with Christ is, but “religion” isn’t (I admit, I think they’re being a bit cheeky, but there you have it).

Bill closed his last posting with this: "And now, to wax a bit more empirical…the notion that material comfort is a distraction from heavenly pursuits suggests that as societies become wealthier they become less pious. In recent years scholars have written what I take to be devastating critiques of this “secularization” hypothesis."

I have not read widely on this subject, but the empirical evidence I've seen suggests the opposite. I'm particularly struck by the findings of a recent Pew study ("Among Wealthy Nations...U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion," The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, December 19, 2002). It included data on about three dozen countries giving the percentage in each country reporting "religion very important." The regression that fits through these country-level data points is cold and harsh -- showing a substantial drop in the percent reporting religion very important as per capita income rises. The regression line's predicted values fall from about 80% in the poorest countries to under 20% in the richest countries. The regression controls for nothing else and (thank God) the U.S. proves to be the biggest outlier in the group.

I appreciate Robert and Andy's postings on the benefits and dangers of markets. My take on the issue is that every social coordination device and every age have their own temptations and distractions. I think the biggest problem (I wouldn't call it a failure) with markets is the fact that they are so successful in creating material wealth. In so doing they create an enormous temptation to find material well-being as the sole end of life.I am grateful for the coordinating functions of markets (really property rights and prices)but I also find that the abundance of the market economy can seduce me into incorrect valuations of what is important and unimportant.

I don't have a good metric for comparing the temptations and distractions that lead us away from God in different societies and at different times. However, as I read history I find that alternative mechanisms of social coordination usually involve concentrations of power, and such concentrations provide enormous temptations for sin, temptations that have caused more human suffering than the materialism fostered by markets.Therefore, I come down on the side of free markets as the best way of organizing impersonal relationships across time and space. But I think we should be aware of the particular distractions markets offer and do all we can to keep them from overwhelming our lives and taking our eyes off of God and his goodness.

I also find plenty of warnings in the Bible on this issue. For instance, when God had led the the Israelites into the Promised Land and blessed them materially he said:
"When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine house and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. . . You may say to yourself, 'My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth . . ." (Deut. 8: 10-18a, NIV).

I would interpret that last verse about God giving us the ability to produce wealth as also applying to God giving us the ability to use social coordination mechanisms (property rights and prices) that produce wealth. God seems to see that as a good thing, but also warns us that the wealth contains real dangers, namely, it can take our eyes off of God. Thus I come down on the side of using markets as the way of carrying out exchange (especially at the impersonal level) but I don't think such a system is without its problems.

One of the best books that I have found on the subject is Craig Gay's Cash Values: Money and the Erosion of Meaning in Today's Society. (Eerdmans 2003).

Robert asks a question well worth grappling with. I thought I'd share a few related thoughts.

If free markets have produced an abundance of wealth and put us in the lamentable position of having to choose between worldly pleasures and God, we are in precisely the position that Genesis tells us He put Adam and Eve in. God gave them everything (and, apparently, a taste for everything) except for one thing - He cordoned off one tree and said "you can't have that" …and we have been struggling with the moral and ethical dilemmas that ensue when boundless desires confront budget constraints ever since.

Seems to me that there’s something about this set-up that is central to what God is doing with this world in the first place. My pet conjecture (and I’m not theologian – as I’m sure you know by now) is that God is constantly confronted by trade-offs that are necessitated by His decision to give us free will. He is torn by the fact that he loves us and wants to help us on the one hand, but wants (on the other) for us to experience the fullness of life that comes from having meaningful choices. He also sees the distributional implications that would flow from in decision to intervene in human events – shift the path of a hurricane and you help these, but harm those… etc.

As we confront tough choices and wrestle with the ethical trade-offs involved we are – in a very small way – walking a mile “in His shoes.” Over time, such experiences have the potential to transform us in a way that makes us more like him. One consequence of which, is that we will someday be able worship him with a degree of intimacy that would not have been possible, had we not been faced by some of the same challenges he has faced since the dawn of time.

And now, to wax a bit more empirical…the notion that material comfort is a distraction from heavenly pursuits suggests that as societies become wealthier they become less pious. In recent years scholars have written what I take to be devastating critiques of this “secularization” hypothesis.

Robert raises an interesting point about economic success as a distraction from our spiritual lives. I don’t think markets fail because humans make bad choices. We’re presented with a fairly clear set of instructions about how to live from Scripture, church tradition, the writings of the fathers, and so forth. We can’t blame the distractions offered by the world, distractions made different by the abundance markets make possible. There were different distractions 1000 or 500 years ago – when infant mortality was so high that historians debate whether parents deliberately distanced themselves from their young children in recognition of the likelihood of the death of substantial proportion of them, when disease cut lives far shorter than we enjoy today. Robert is absolutely right that we face a lot of distractions from our spiritual lives as a result of the success of our economy. But I’ll take our modern distractions over the kind of distractions Christians faced in 1000 or 1500 or 1700.

I’ve just returned from the first-ever Eucharistic Congress in my diocese. The turn out was overwhelming and the speakers and events got me thinking about how disordered are my life and the world around me. God wants us to make him the center of our lives and all we keep doing is getting distracted by less important things. Our most important decisions are about how to use our time. Once, we were compelled to spend much of it toiling to feed our families, but as we’ve harnessed our God-given ingenuity to solve this problem and loosen this constraint, we seem to have succeeded in getting farther and farther away from God - spending our time in meaningless, frivolous ways.

As we’ve discussed on this blog, the free market has many virtues when it comes to allocating scarce resources. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. externalities), it’s quite effective at bringing us to the point where the marginal cost of additional output equates the marginal benefit. But I’ve got this gnawing feeling that the free market has failed on a grander scale. In countries like the U.S., the free market machine has solved the problem of material poverty, but in its place we’ve got a problem just as big – not knowing what to do with our material abundance. Consumer sovereignty is the essence of the free market. If people want it and it can be made, producers will make it. The big problem is what people want. We (me included) want things that are so pathetically trivial. We spend our time chasing ephemeral desires.

Am I right in damning the free market for these failures? Is it culpable of abetting our culture in leading us farther and farther away from what’s really important?

I’m teaching Business Associations this semester and one of the central issues in designing a business entity is resolving the agency problems that exist when ownership and control are separated. Corporations use a variety of methods to realign incentives – stock options, when properly priced, can give management an incentive to focus on the stockholders’ interests. (Of course, improperly designed incentives can encourage fraud. See Enron.)

There is not an equivalent for charities. The agency problem becomes more severe as the charity moves away from visible, easily measured efforts (distributing clean water to hurricane victims) to more complex endeavors (funding long term research programs). We can also observe more severe problems as charities become bigger and the monitoring is more expensive for the donors. This might account for what I perceive to be a lower rate of misbehavior in local churches compared to larger scale, national ministries. (This could also simply be because we don’t hear about smaller scale misbehavior as it isn’t as newsworthy or caught as often.)

I’ve found my own charitable giving has shifted more toward organizations that I have enough knowledge about to be confident that they are engaged in actually using the resources I donate for the purpose for which they are donated. (I feel particularly good about the Linderman/Russell families’ efforts in Albania and the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, if you are looking for recommendations.) How charities resolve the agency problem is a puzzle that hasn’t been solved yet. But one solution seems to be to foster connections between the people giving the money and those spending it – perhaps we’re less likely to cut corners on both the giving and the spending when we know to whom our money goes and from whom it comes.