Phillip Jensen
July, 2011

There is no virtue in poverty but affluence is not the answer.

Heaven is pictured in the Bible as wealth not poverty. Even in this world, God has richly given to us all things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). Paul said of God “he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17).

But mindless acquisition of wealth creates affluence. Affluence is when a treat becomes trite and a luxury becomes a habit. The trouble with affluence is that it is self-defeating. The more we possess the less we value what we possess and the more we are ourselves possessed by our possessions.

Affluent tourists cherry pick the bits of culture that fit in with our affluence and imagine that we have crossed cultural boundaries and become world citizens. We fail to see that a little bit of art, possibly a religious statue or a ‘genuine indigenous’ piece of bric-a-brac displayed in our home is nothing more than our own culture of affluence. When affluence imports culture it evacuates it of its value and distinctive character.  A Chinese restaurateur complained that although he had over 100 dishes, westerners always ordered the same two or three and claimed how much they enjoyed Chinese cuisine.

Similarly, wealth removes the seasons from us and so reduces the rhythm of life and the joy of anticipation. Seasonal fruit such as cherries, oranges and nectarines can be imported and delivered to us all year round. Our refrigerators and freezers can deliver whatever food we wish without any reference to the season of growth. So the rhythm of life is removed from our consciousness. We no longer look forward to something with gleeful anticipation or remember anything with nostalgic pleasure – for everything is immediately available. Certainly it is pleasurable to be able to have whatever you like whenever you like it, but you cannot have that and at the same time enjoy the rhythm of life and its seasons, the anticipatory longings or sweet memories.

Always comfortable

By our affluence we can air condition our weather – from the house to the garage to the car to the office – never moving out of the same temperature range. We have lost the joy of warming up or cooling down for we are always 22 degrees comfortable. The brisk chill on a winter wind or the balmy breeze on a summer’s day is lost to us as we sit in perfectly controlled and conditioned air.

Affluence exercises on the bike and treadmill in the gym without the inconvenience of the wind, sun and scenery. We can gain the cancerous possibility of a solarium suntan without the sand, salt and surf of the beach. We can travel the world for work, socialising with our spouse via Skype while warehousing our children. We can communicate at all times electronically and are constantly contactable by clients and customers on our ball-and-phone. We own houses and apartments, but know no home. We know and are known by more people than ever but the only friends we trust are our trainer and therapist. We are the world travellers who have forgotten where we came from and have never worked out our destination.

So what antidote is there to affluence? It is not the materialism of atheistic secularists. Their philosophy feeds the materialism of our life style. For to them there is nothing more to life than the good life on earth. But placing our affluence in perspective requires living for something greater than ourselves and greater than this world. The carbon pricing debate illustrates this difficulty, as the motivation for sacrifice is ‘the environment’, ‘the future’, or ‘your (non-existent) grandchildren.’

Some forms of Hinduism, Buddhism and the new age Spirituality find the antidote in the denial of this world and its physical pleasures. They reject not only the creator but also reality – specifically the reality of God’s creation.

Antidotes to affluence

The Bible’s antidote comes from viewing the creation as good, created by God to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3f) and created for us to enjoy and to share with others (1 Timothy 6:17f).

So here are two of the Bible’s antidotes to affluence: thankfulness and generosity. They are not separate antidotes but inextricably bound to each other; for our thankfulness to God is for his generosity and his generosity arouses our generosity towards others. These antidotes contribute towards contentment and the removal of envy. They help us see beyond both immediate gratification and our own self-interest.

God’s grace, or generosity, is a key characteristic of his nature which he displayed in his prodigal creation and his salvation of prodigals. His creation is prodigal in its wealth and beauty. His patience with us, in our wilful rebellion, is beyond any reasonable justice. His grace and mercy in sending his Son for our salvation is the love that surpasses knowledge – the riches of his glory. It is with good reason that he is called “The God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). It is impossible to know God without being overwhelmed by giving him thanks and praise for who he is and what he has done.

And what he, by his gracious generosity has done in loving and forgiving us, must find its place in our treatment of others. ‘God loves the cheerful giver’ (2 Corinthians 9:7). ‘Forgive our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors’ (Matthew 6:11). ‘Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another’ (1 John 4:11). This turning of sinful human values on their head is seen in God’s command: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather do honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

Working in order to give to others is not only the opposite of theft but also a wonderful antidote to anyone’s affluence.

We are told that Anders Behring Breivik, the man who bombed Norway’s government buildings and then went on to slaughter 92 of Norway’s youth while they were on a summer camp, is a Freemason. Here he is in his regalia. His Lodge must be appalled by the association. Breivik has been variously described as a ‘Christian fundamentalist’, a ‘neo-Nazi’, and a ‘Right-wing extremist’. His Grace has written before on the disconnect between left-right political philosophy and vernacular terminology, and the pervasive demonisation of the Right: how National Socialism is an expression of the political Right is an interesting discussion, but today His Grace would like to focus on the reported ‘Christian fundamentalist’ who is also a mass murderer.

Religious fundamentalism is not a new phenomenon: indeed, it is as old as religion itself, and is concerned with the believer’s adherence to foundational precepts. There is no one school of thought even within one religion: one Muslim fundamentalist may pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, and adhere to the Five Pillars; another will seek to wage war against the values of liberal democracy, blowing us all to smithereens and martyring himself in the process. The former is ‘devout’ while the latter has become an ‘Islamist’: the one who follows literally the example of Mohammed in bringing the sword to unbelief in order to establish the Caliphate. There are also Sikh fundamentalists and Hindu fundamentalists; indeed, all religions will have those whose belief is concentrated upon the fundamentals of their faith.

Like Christianity itself, Christian fundamentalism is expressed differently within each nation state and community. In South America, adherents of Liberation Theology who seeks social justice for the oppressed are widely considered to be dangerous political subversives and so fundamentalist. In the US, fundamentalism arose as a reaction to religious liberalism and tends towards literalism: that is, every word in the Bible means exactly what it says. For ‘creationists’, this means the world was created in six days. For others, the focus is on issues of morality like abortion and homosexuality: the ‘Religious Right’ are considered fundamentalists simply by virtue of their conservative views on family values. But if such views render Evangelical Protestants fundamentalist, a fortiori must they make Pope Benedict XVI fundamentalist, as many readers of The Tablet may attest. And if he be so, then so are all Roman Catholics who adhere to the traditions and obey literally all the teachings of the Magisterium. In the UK, the socially-conservative, ecumenical parliamentary group Cornerstone is considered somewhat fundamentalist; indeed, Alan Duncan once referred to them as the ‘Tory Taliban’. ‘Fundamentalism’ is a slippery term when applied to Christianity.

But never over recent centuries has ‘Christian fundamentalism’ been used to justify mass murder. We are not talking about bombing Dresden or sinking the Belgrano or any appalling loss of life within a context of war: we are talking about a professing Christian who decides to take the law into his own hands and act unilaterally. Anders Behring Breivik shows a remarkable ignorance of the teachings of Jesus, who exhorted Peter to put away his sword. To be a fundamentalist follower of Jesus would be to dedicate one’s life to celibate pacifism. And not only that, it would be to give away all that one has to the poor and live in a commune where everyone shares everything and all possessions are in common. Socialists often claim their political inspiration from such teachings, ergo the ‘fundamentalist Christian’ would be a ‘Left-wing extremist’ rather than one of the Right. The Christian is concerned with Scripture, tradition, and reason. And there are those who would add experience. But no Christian tradition at all, from the era of the New Testament and the Church Fathers through the Middle Ages, Reformation, Enlightenment, and on to modernity and postmodernity, could possibly, reasonably or scripturally be used to justify the shooting of 92 teenagers enjoying their summer holiday.

The Christian fundamentalist who advocates that such an atrocity may be justified as a reactiontion to multiculturalism is certainly no type of Christian. They may be fundamentalist, but their fundamentals are not founded upon New Testament principles, where we read that we must submit to the ruling authorities, love our neighbours and our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. The foundation, the crucial things in Christianity, were articulated by Hooker for the Church of England:

This is then the foundation, whereupon the frame of the gospel is erected: that very Jesus whom the Virgin conceived of the Holy Ghost, whom Simeon embraced in his arms, whom Pilate condemned, whom the Jews crucified, whom the Apostles preached, he is Christ, the only Saviour of the world: ‘other foundation can no man lay’.

To believe this is to be a ‘Christian fundamentalist’, and His Grace is proud to be so. Individual believers may hold some things ‘weakly’, but those who deny them absolutely are in certain error. No Christian church can directly deny this foundation without ceasing to be such. Everything else – absolutely everything – is secondary, tertiary, or utterly peripheral.