The Future – The Law of God and Public Policy: The Economy (7)

The Future

The Law of God and Public Policy: The Economy (7)

Justice, not wealth, is the only asset that lasts.

“You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land the LORD your God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 16:19, 20

As I mentioned earlier, and as is becoming increasingly clear amid our present economic crisis, material wealth can be a most unstable pillar on which to build one’s happiness. As retirement accounts erode, property values decline, jobs evaporate, the national debt mounts, and the value of the currency declines, many Americans are beginning to question whether our economics of materialism, as we have been pursuing it in recent generations, can produce the good life we envision. The cries to tax the wealthy more in order to fund the dependent and the entitled are little more than stop-gap thinking on the part of a people desperate to ensure material prosperity for the present.

The well-being of the future will be built, not on material wealth, but on justice. As long as the notion of justice in our society is treated as little more than a handmaiden to material wealth, the realization of true justice—love for God and neighbor—will continue to elude our society. While Christians do not deny the legitimacy of material wealth, the pursuit of prosperity is not to be the guiding factor in our lives or in the kinds of public policy we seek for our nation.

Christians believe that justice must be the defining norm of any economy. In a just economy neighbor love will be the guiding factor. Children will be educated in the primacy of neighbor-love. Culture will reflect the dignity of human life and promote justice rather than self-indulgence. Government will function not as an advocate for equality of wealth, but as a promoter of the general welfare by ensuring that justice is the defining code of all public policy.

An economics based on justice will go farther toward ensuring a secure future than an economics based on material wealth. If such an economics—such a divine economy—is to have a more significant role in determining the course of America’s future, it must begin in the lives of those who understand the nature and value of justice and who seek it through the Gospel of the Kingdom. The future well-being of this or any nation is not in the amount and distribution of its material wealth, but in the degree of its conviction and the extent of its practice of justice, as defined by the Law of God.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.