For months now, Jim Garlow has been telling anyone who will listen that they need to read the book “Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards because it perfectly explains how economic issues should be handled from a biblical perspective. He even dedicated a segment during the first Pray and Act webcast to promoting the book and its ideas:
If we have 535 people in Washington, DC – House and Senate – who are voting through laws that cause grandchildren and great-grandchildren of yours yet unborn to be saddled with a debt they cannot handle, that is called thievery.
There’s a law against stealing: Thou shalt not steal. We have no right to steal from future generations. So the whole economic issue is a biblical issue.
Debt like we have in America is immoral. It is wrong. There should be a screaming up. This could cause a suffocation and a complete destruction of all we hold dear. The taxation is becoming oppressive.
The reason that we have these kind of bad laws passing in our Congress is very simple: what percentage of the people making the laws are attending a church where the Bible is being taught? Let me go further though: if it’s a small percentage that are there, let’s just pick an arbitrary number – 10%, 15%, 20% – are attending a church where the Bible is being taught, let me ask you a question, how many of them are going to a church where biblical economics is being taught so the person who goes to make the laws has the moral foundation, the biblical background, to be able to vote through the right kind of laws? We have been silent and I believe the spirit of God is stirring something at a deep level.
Garlow brought it up again the second Pray and ACT webcast and preached a sermon on it at his church last weekend:
I preached then, and in four Sunday services, on a topic about which I had never taught: the biblical economic principles related to the current crushing national debt and the oppressive taxation. The Bible has much to say about civil governance (and how peace and tranquilly can be experienced in our communities) and has much more to say about the underpinnings to our national economic situations than I had previously anticipated. If you have the time or interest, you can hear it at http://www.skylinechurch.org/skyline/?page_id=26. And, as I have stated before, I commend Jay Richard’s exceptional book, Money, Greed and God to everyone.
To date, Garlow had pretty much been all alone in recommending the book and its teachings, but that looks like that is about to change as the Family Research Council has announced that they will be hosting an event featuring Richards and his book in December:
Jay Richards is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a Contributing Editor of The American at the American Enterprise Institute. In recent years he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute.
He has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects. His most recent book is Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem.
I had resisted reading this because for a long time it seemed that only Garlow was recommending it, but now that it looks like it might be becoming a playbook for the movement, I guess I’ll have to actually take a look at it.
