Questions to evaluate technologies

How do we evaluate the benefits and costs of technologies? Neil Postman spent a lifetime wrestling with such questions. In a talk given in 1998, he considered five things we need to know about technological change. Postman's enduring influence and relevance are marked by the fact that these five things featured in a column in The Washington Post, "Is the Internet Evil?" by Christine Emba, published in 2018.

Below, I summarise the five ideas from Postman's talk and provide questions (in italics) we should ask about any technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI).

1. All technological change is a trade-off. 

"the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences" 

Don't just ask the question "What will a new technology do?" Also ask, "What will a new technology undo?"

"a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends."

Through adoption of the technology, what will we lose, individually and as a society?

2. The advantages and disadvantages of a new technology are never distributed evenly among the population.

Who will benefit? Who will be harmed? 

Winners will try to persuade losers that they will benefit as well.

Benefits and harms can relate to employment, finances, social status, health, and political power.

3.  Embedded in every technology are powerful ideas. 

"These ideas are often hidden from our view because they are of a somewhat abstract nature. But this should not be taken to mean that they do not have practical consequences."

"The telegraphic person values speed, not introspection. The television person values immediacy, not history... the computer person values information, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom." 

"The medium is the message."

 What ideas are embedded in the technology?

How does it make us use our minds and bodies?

How does it affect our personal relationships and social cohesion?

4. Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. It changes everything.

"The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible."

The entrepreneurs who started the television industry "did not mean to turn political discourse into a form of entertainment."

The consequences can be social, economic, political, environmental, religious, and health-related.

What are the unintended consequences of the technology?

5. When a technology becomes mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.

"...our enthusiasm for technology can turn into a form of idolatry and our belief in its beneficence can be a false absolute. The best way to view technology is as a strange intruder, to remember that technology is not part of God’s plan but a product of human creativity and hubris, and that its capacity for good or evil rests entirely on human awareness of what it does for us and to us."

How does the technology lead to idolatry? Do people worship it, its creators, or its owners?

Finally,

Do we use the technology or does the technology use us? 

In different words, will we shape our lives to fit the requirements of the technology, rather than have our values shape our use of the technology?

In Praise of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea is a beautiful and fascinating country. It has incredible biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity.

The island of New Guinea has more than 18,000 described plant species, an estimated 150,000 insect species, 740 species of birds, 276 species of mammals, 641 species of amphibians and reptiles, 600 species of coral and 3,000 species of reef fish. PNG is a magnet for research biologists. A glimpse of this beautiful diversity is captured in the book, New Guinea: Nature and Culture of Earth's Grandest Island by Bruce M. Beehler and Tim Laman.

I love this video about the mating ritual of one of the iconic birds of paradise.

New Guinea has around 840 living languages, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world. This is more than ten per cent of the world's living languages. 

Papua New Guinea (PNG, the political entity that covers the eastern half of the island) and Australia have a long and intertwined history. Australia inherited it as a colony from Britain and ruled it until 1975 when it gained independence.

Port Moresby, the capital, is only a three-hour flight from Brisbane, where I live. But, it is a different world.

I have visited PNG five times to visit my son, who works there. Next month I will be there for his wedding! 

Recent experiences and reading have increased my appreciation of PNG and of the challenges that it faces. Unfortunately, there is a lot of negative media coverage in Australia. Most focuses on problems such as crime, tribal violence, corruption, and political instability. These are real problems but should be put in the context of positive achievements, the role of outside actors, and history.

Only one hundred years ago, most people in PNG lived in villages and had not even encountered white people, let alone have any awareness of Western culture, democracy, or economies. Since becoming independent of colonial rule, PNG has maintained a parliamentary democracy, free elections, a free and independent press, an independent judiciary, and the army has not interfered in politics. PNG has not suffered from a civil war, a military coup, or political repression. This is incredibly impressive, considering how after the end of Western colonial rule, so few countries in the world have avoided such failures.

Australian actors have played a significant role in some of the challenges that PNG faces. For example, the Australian branch of the bank UBS, charged the PNG government hundreds of millions of dollars to arrange a loan for a dubious investment that led to the PNG government losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The closest thing to a civil war has been the conflict on Bougainville Island, which seeks to become independent of PNG, something the national government is not keen to allow. Unfortunately, Australian actors helped create this problem, as it all began with the establishment of the hugePanguna mineby the Australian company Conzinc Rio Tinto . The conflict ultimately led to the Sandline affair, where the PNG tried to hire mercenaries to "resolve" the conflict.

Like many Majority World countries, PNG is plagued by corruption. This occurs at multiple scales from the small to the large. An example of the small is a government bureaucrat taking a small bribe to speed up the processing of some paperwork. An example of the large is a politician diverting millions of dollars from a government bank account into their own personal bank account in Switzerland or Panama.

Large scale corruption would not be possible without Western enablers. On Britain, The Economist, stated, based on the book Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals.

"No other country offers a comparable array of enablers; from banks and lawyers to public-relations firms and other “reputation managers”."

The rapid change of PNG is beautifully captured in the autobiography of Albert Kiki Maori, Ten Thousand Years in a Lifetime. It also describes how he experienced discrimination and racism by Australians, but was empowered to have a political vision for independence from his brief time studying in Fiji.

The Embarrassed Colonialist (2016) is a helpful and short book by Sean Dorney It does not gloss over PNG's problems but emphasises how there is much to celebrate and nationals should be proud of what they have achieved since independence. 

A helpful discussion of Australia's fraught relationships with its Pacific neighbours is discussed in a podcast by Gordon Peake, Statecraftiness. 

Totalism of dominant cultures

“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” 

 The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann, page 3.

Consider the "cultural moments". For each there was a dominant culture that claimed to be the only option, was well-ordered to protect the power and wealth of the rulers who stifled questioning and criticism.

The first four are considered by Brueggemann in The Prophetic Imagination.

1. Israel in slavery to Egypt. Pharoah ran a royal household and extensive system with absolute rule. The Israelites were enslaved not just for productivity but also for subjugation. Moses gave the Israelites and alternative vision of a community built around the freedom of God [YAHWEH, I am who I am, I will be who I will be], justice, and compassion.

2. Israel under King Solomon. Some considered this period to be the "golden era" of Israel. The twelve tribes were united in a single kingdom. The king was wise and just. Jerusalem was secure and there was a beautiful temple for worship. 

But actually, Solomon was an idolater, an adulterer, who murdered political enemies, made dubious foreign alliances, and had an insatiable desire for wealth, power, and women. People were heavily taxed and conscripted for his vanity projects such as his palace [which was much bigger than the Temple]. Through his family life and public life Solomon sowed the seeds for the division of Israel, civil war, and the eventual destruction of Israel and Judah.

3. Israel in exile in Babylon. The people were subjugated by the violence, power, economic might, vanity, and idolatry of Babylon. To this day Babylon remains a symbol of iniquity. The people seemed to have no option or hope. Many capitulated and enjoyed the comforts of assimilation.

4. Palestine in the time of Israel. Oppression occurred via two powers in a dubious and symbiotic relationship: the Roman imperialists and the Jewish religious leaders (Pharisees and Sadducees). The only economic option was to pay the heavy taxes to Rome and eke out a living. The only political option was to submit to Roman law, enforced by violence. The only religious option was to accept the power of the male elders and their theology and interpretation of the law. The only social option was to conform to the expectations and social norms prescribed by the Pharisees, particularly concerning relationships with Gentiles, "sinners", and the marginalised. The Prophet Jesus disrupted all this presenting a very different theological, moral, social, economic, and political vision. The cross was the embodiment of this vision.

5. Life in communist countries of Eastern Europe ruled by the Soviet Union in the 1970s. The only option was to accept the rule of the Party, parrot empty slogans, not ask questions, trust no one, vote in sham elections, pretend to work, and queue in line for hours for bread. Vaclav Havel captures the dehumanising nature of this totalism in his book, Power to the Powerless, published illegally in 1978.

6. The Western world today. On the one hand, it seems a different context to those above. We enjoy freedom of the press, democratic elections, accountability of individuals and institutions through the rule of law, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and economic freedom. On the other, there are dominant ideologies that we are soaked in: individualism, consumerism, and instrumentalist. These ideologies define the lives of individuals and how institutions (government, schools, hospitals, universities, churches, and charities) function. They are all hard to question. Many assume these are good. Others may acknowledge there are problems but consider there are no alternatives.

Individualism defines identity, sexuality, autonomy, careerism, and self-actualisation.

Consumerism defines social relationships and priorities. Relationships are transactional. Comfort, materialism, acquisitiveness, immediacy, and insatiability are the order of the day.

Instrumentalism is concerned with efficiency. Truth is defined by what works. It leads to a focus on money, marketing, metrics, and management. People are defined by their performance and productivity.

Here is what Havel said almost half a century ago. 

“It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of technological civilization and the industrial consumer society, for they, too, are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the post-totalitarian societies.”

Jesus hears the cry of oppressed Africans

But, do followers of Jesus hear the cry?

This month in the theology reading group we discussed My Faith as an African, by Jean-Marc Ela. It was largely written while the author was working as a Catholic priest amongst the Kirdi people in northern Cameroon. It was published in French in 1983 and translated into English in 1985. Ela was particularly concerned about the poverty, hunger, and suffering of the village communities that he was ministering too.

Here, I focus on some broad questions that are raised by my reading of the book, as a WWW (Wealthy White Westerner).

Is Jesus relevant to every context?

Ela and I would both answer yes. But, Ela argues that the Catholic church was not relevant to his context. The everyday life of his congregants was one of a daily struggle for existence, exacerbated by external oppressive forces. The dogmas, catechisms, liturgies, and rituals of the Catholic church were not relevant. They were entrenched in Western culture and thought, and ancient traditions that are alien to Africans. Furthermore, by aligning itself with the powerful and presenting a gospel that focuses on the afterlife, the church is complicit in the oppression of the poor. 

Although Ela writes from a Catholic perspective and experience, many African Protestants would agree with his perspective.

Yet, Jesus is a liberator. He identified with the poor, with social outcasts. He suffered with them in his crucifixion and death. Thus, the church needs to change. 

Universality vs particularity

This dialectic tension is embodied in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He claims to be the Saviour and King of the whole world and for all time. The Gospel is for all cultures, languages, and ethnicities. Yet, there is the scandal of particularity. God chose a specific people, the Israelites, at a specific time, to reveal Himself, and to use as an instrument to bless all nations. Furthermore, Jesus was a particular man in a particular place, at a particular time. The New Testament writers wrestle with how the church is to express itself in a new cultural context, such as Gentiles across Asia minor. The struggle to balance universality and particularity, and to relate the Gospel to local culture has continued in two thousand years of church history. Ela was at the forefront of that struggle in his own context.

Abstract vs concrete

Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, has delighted in and endlessly divided over abstractions, from the precise wordings of creeds about the nature of the Trinity or the Eucharist, to endless theological -ologies: soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, ... The outcomes of these intellectual debates have debatable relevance to concrete situations in everyday life or church life.

There is no connection between these abstractions and the everyday life of an African from a village or a slum.

What about Jesus? His life and teaching was rather earthy. Much of his ministry concerned eating and drinking with people, particularly those on the margins. He did not present abstract doctrines but told stories. His teaching and life were integrated.

Sacred vs secular

Valuing church traditions and abstractions imported from the West at the expense of engaging with local realities is an example of the sacred-secular divide. It values the spiritual and the eternal, liturgy, sacraments, over non-Church activities including temporal and material concerns.  

Jesus was certainly concerned about peoples spiritual needs and their eternal destiny. But, Jesus was also concerned with the material needs of the people he encountered, healing and providing food. Furthermore, he urged his followers to provide clothing, food, shelter, hospitality, even just a cup of water, to those in need. 

What is the meaning of the Incarnation?

John 1 states that "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Emmanuel means "God is with us."

Ela says the church thinks that "The Word became a text." A text is not of much use to illiterate peasants. In contrast, the church, as the Body of Christ, Jesus, the living Word can be present, concrete, empathetic, in solidarity, and relevant to African communities.

What are African realities?

Ela uses the term "African realities" repeatedly. There are many dimensions to this, including the following. Villagers traditionally survived with subsistence farming, growing crops such as millet. They now go hungry as they are forced to grow cash crops such as rice for external markets. The main beneficiaries are multinational companies and African urban elites. Disease and death flourish with access to Western medicine reserved for the urban elites. They are the only people with access to schools and hospitals started by churches to help the poor.

Poverty and suffering have been compounded by the massive migration of people from villages to urban centres, where they now suffer in slums.

Post-independence politics is dominated by corrupt autocracies who use violence to maintain power. Colonialism [oppression by Western rulers] has been replaced with neo-colonialism, the exploitation and oppression of Africans and their land by multinational corporations and national governments. 

African traditional religion has been misinterpreted and demonised by Westerners. Rituals that honour ancestors are not idolatry. What about witchcraft? People resort to it due to the irrelevance and the impotence of the church on matters of everyday existence.

What are possible ways forward?

Ela advocates community development. This involves conscientisation, self-determination, and agency. There are similarities to the basic ecclesial communities in Latin America, whose practices were influenced by the ideas of Pablo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

What is African culture?

Too many people think of African culture in terms of the traditional culture that existed prior to colonisation. That assumes culture is static, rather than dynamic. Ela points out that African culture today is a rapidly changing hybrid, being a mix of traditional and Western culture. This hybrid culture increases alienation and a crisis of identity because of the internal contradictions and unpredictability of such a hybrid.

Ela considers it a mistake to advocate a return to the past traditional culture. This is both impossible and undesirable. Furthermore, many attempts at inculturation, contextualisation, or indigenisation in theology and liturgy are superficial. They merely consist of incorporating traditional songs or dress into worship. Ela sees this as a tool of oppression as it sidesteps the more substantial challenges of the church having a theology, practice, and communities that engage with current African realities.

Are African realities different now? 

The book was written almost forty years ago. My limited understanding is that many of the issues discussed in the book are just as relevant today. Perhaps some of the problems are even worse.

How is the book relevant to Western Christians?

Yes. A large fraction of Christians now live in Africa. Westerners need to know their reality, be in solidarity with them, and learn from them. Furthermore, engagement with different cultures and contexts can force us to reflect on our own culture and context and be more self-aware of our own limitations and challenges. 

Latin American conceptions of the Kingdom of God

This week at the theology reading group we are discussing In Search of Christ in Latin America: From Colonial Image to Liberating Savior, by Samuel Escobar. It takes a historical approach to Christology, surveying how ideas about Christ developed over time in Latin America. Particular attention is paid to the changing context: cultural, political, economic, and literary.  Previously, I posted about some of the earlier chapters that discuss the period up to about 1950.

Here are some of the things that I appreciate about the book, and why it should be read by those outside Latin America.

A model for doing contextual theology

The many different ways of doing contextual theology. They all have strenghts and weaknesses. Escobar recounts the long and substantial efforts of Latin Americans to do theology in their own context. They took their own context (historical, cultural, religious, literary, economic, and political) seriously, particularly with regard to politics, justice, human rights, and poverty. They brought that context into dialogue with their theology and with the Bible. In particular, they worked very hard to engage with the Bible and biblical scholarship at a deep level.

Respectful and substantial engagement with other views and traditions. 

Although distinctly Evangelical, Escobar carefully engages with a wide range of views different from his own (Marxists, liberation theologians, missionaries from the USA, public intellectuals, Catholics, ...). He takes their views seriously, does not caricature or dismiss them, and appreciates, while also sometimes giving significant critiques. It refreshing that the book has a generous and gracious tone. 

The view of theology and mission is holistic (integrated) and multi-dimensional. For example, the redemption and reconciliation offered by Christ are deemed to be personal, social, global, and cosmic.

The multi-dimensional perspective on the Kingdom is nicely summarised in a quotation at the beginning of Chapter 10 (page 173).

All these explicit or implicit, understandings of the Kingdom, throughout Christian history, have focused on some aspects of the kingdom at the cost of others, by putting emphasis on its present or future reality, on its historical or eternal nature, its social or personal dimension.

Each interpretation has understood a part as being the whole, thus contributing to a distortion, an eclipse, a reduction of the biblical message of the Kingdom. It is time to risk recovering the totality of the kingdom Gospel, to appreciate its multidimensionality and to take on our commitment to that the kingdom presents to us here and now. This requires sincere biblical exploration.

Mortimer Arias, Venga Tu Reino

I agree as I consider that theology is intrinsically multi-dimensional, and any theological discussion must seek to find a balance between a range of interpretations and intrinsic tensions or dialectics (e.g. the action of humans and the action of God, Jesus being human and divine, grace and law, faith and works, ...). However, too much theology is partisan and excludes such multi-dimensionality.

David C. Kirkpatrick completed a Ph.D. at Edinburgh University on the history of Latin Americans contribution to global evangelicalism. He expresses admiration for Escobar's book in a recent review in the journal Church History.

[Escobar] moves seamlessly across fields to fashion a book for which I know very little comparison.

... one of the particular strengths of Escobar’s book: careful attention to the transnational nature of Latin American Protestantism without overlooking local Catholic and Protestant constructions.

...one of Escobar’s strengths: his willingness to give credit where credit is due, even if it cuts across political narratives or appears to export agency to northern thinkers.

While Escobar pays careful attention to a broad spectrum of literature, his work should dispel at least one surprisingly persistent myth: Latin American Protestants lack their own intellectual tradition. 

Perhaps the only weakness I see in the book is its lack of depth in its engagement with the social sciences, including Marxist perspectives, and economics, including discussions of capitalism and socialism. Sociological perspectives are referred to but it is not clear what key methods and concepts from sociology are actually being used. 

Escobar presents a view of capitalism and socialism is somewhat one-dimensional and dualistic. Must one choose one or the other? Unfortunately, Latin America has suffered from countries veering to extreme forms of either socialism or capitalism. Both forms have been corrupted by entrenched oligarchies and foreign interference. Some of this history and the associated problems are documented in  Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson.  They argue that a key to posterity is to have inclusive, rather than extractive, political and economic institutions. The iron law of oligarchy is that if the leaders of an extractive political institution are replaced, particularly in a revolution, that the institution will remain extractive. 

How might Christians respond to poverty?

 On the one hand, the world has never been so wealthy and prosperous as it is today. On the other hand, it has never been so unequal. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Billions live on a few dollars per day. The covid-19 pandemic has made this fragile existence even more tenuous and has pushed hundreds of millions more into poverty. Poverty is not just material but also involves limited access to education, health, social networks, and political representation. There are also psychological and spiritual dimensions to poverty.

Addressing global poverty has become a massive billion-dollar "industry", for better or worse, involving governments, philanthropists, NGOs, universities, and researchers. Yet, the effectiveness of this industry in alleviating poverty is contentious.  

The Bible, from beginning to end, says a lot about poverty, wealth, inequality, injustice, and caring for the marginalised. Hence, addressing these issues should be central to the mission of the global church. But, this is a complex issue as it involves theological, political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions. 

A helpful place to begin is the book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett. They state

one of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich—their god-complexes—and the poverty of being of the economically poor—their feelings of inferiority and shame.

There is also an excellent small group guide with videos that my wife and I have used with a church small group.

For those who want to go deeper, either because they are academically oriented or are practitioners, there is a "textbook".

Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development by Bryant L. Myers

Myers worked for World Vision for many years and now teaches at Fuller Seminary. It is comprehensive, balanced, easy to read, and has helpful diagrams. There are many things I like about the book.

Integral mission

"The Christian message is an embodied message, carried by living witnesses." Word, deed, and sign cannot be separated. Poverty alleviation and gospel proclamation are both acts of love that go together. Transformational development has spiritual, relational, and material dimensions. It is central to the Kingdom of God.

Bringing together theology, social science, and activism

Activism and programs need to be informed by both social sciences and by theology. Activism receives motivation and direction from theology, being informed by a Biblical worldview.  That provides a framework to understand who humans are, how they act, and how they change. The themes of creation, fall, incarnation, redemption, and re-creation are central. 

Poverty occurs in a social context. A community is "disturbed" by any outside intervention or internal initiative that aims to reduce poverty. Social sciences can be useful in understanding social structures and dynamics, including designing and evaluating the impact of any program.

A compact overview of state-of-the-art thinking and practice on development

There is a huge academic literature on development, from both Christian and secular, Western and Majority World perspectives. 

Myers provides a succinct introduction to the ideas of Jeffrey Sachs, William Easterly, Paul Collier, Banerjee and Duflo, Muhammad Yunus, Amartya Sen, ...

There are methods for planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluation of projects. These include The Logical Framework (logframe), Participatory Learning and Action, Appreciative Inquiry, and Positive Deviance. They are all introduced and critically evaluated.

Sensitive to culture and context

Most poverty alleviation programs are led and funded by WWWs (Wealthy White Westerners) but implemented in Majority World contexts that are not WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic). Given the hubris that too often goes with money, power, and education (a god-complex) it is hardly surprising that many programs fail, particularly in the long term, because of a lack of understanding and sensitivity to local culture such as social structures, values, methods of communication, ...

The modern Western worldview presupposes dichotomies between the spiritual and material. The figure below shows pairings of categories, such as religion and science, faith and reason. These pairs are assumed to be in conflict or completely independent of one another. These dichotomies are often presupposed by Western Christians. But, they are not part of a Biblical worldview.

Postmodernism does not accept these dichotomies, and rightly points out they are naive. For example, faith and reason can never be separated, either for a Christian or an atheist. Everyone starts with some presuppositions. Rationality takes place in the context of a particular tradition, as emphasised by Alisdair MacIntyre.

Myers draws on ideas from the anthropologist, Paul Hiebert, who contrasts modern and traditional worldviews, illustrated below. A key idea is that of the "excluded middle" in the modern worldview: there is no room for forces and phenomena that bridge the spiritual and seen world. 

This presents a problem for development initiatives in communities with a traditional worldview; this excluded middle that may be seen to determine health, prosperity, natural disasters, and conflicts. Hence, a community will not be receptive to technical "solutions" that are presented by Westerners.

Treats the poor with dignity  

The poor and non-poor are all made in the image of God. They are of equal value in God's eyes. Hence, the poor should be valued, respected, celebrated, enjoyed, empowered, and listened to. 

Myers reviews social science research that shows that the poor actually know a lot more than they are often given credit for. They are incredibly resilient. It is a miracle how they manage to survive and persevere. Myers describes the work of the Peruvian economist, Hernando de Soto who "demonstrated the vitality, creativity, and entrepreneurial activity of Peru's urban poor." However, this positive energy is significantly constrained because they are required to operate in the informal (underground) economy which means they do not have protections from the rule of law or the property titles that others use to access capital. 

Discussion of complexity theory and emergence

Communities are composed of many interacting units (individuals, families, businesses, churches, ...) that are embedded in an environment (e.g. a city and the global economy). For such complex systems, it is hard to predict how they will behave, including in response to a "perturbation". Hence, the concept of emergence and ideas from complexity theory can provide some insight into development.

Principles are relevant to other Majority World issues

The focus of the book is on poverty alleviation, particularly extreme poverty in the Majority World. However, most of the principles (theological and social scientific) and practices are relevant to any initiative of a Christian organisation that aims to have a transformative influence in a community. Part of my interest in the book is because it addresses many issues that we face in the IFES Logos and Cosmos Initiative.

If you want to know more about the book you can download the Table of Contents and Chapter 1. The latter provides a nice overview of the book, introducing some of the key ideas, and describing how it came to be written.

Should a follower of Jesus pay taxes to an oppressive government?

``Giving to God and Caesar— the Complicated End of Dualism'' is the title of Chapter 4 of  Money Matters: Faith, Life, and Wealth by R. Paul Stevens and Clive Lim. It begins with the following quotation.

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.”

In my opinion, the entire problem of life in contemporary culture can be defined as the challenge to understand that saying of Jesus. 

Jacob Needleman

The relevant passage is from Matthew 22

17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the poll-tax to Caesar or not?’ 18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, ‘You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.’ They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, ‘Whose image is this? And whose inscription?’ 21 ‘Caesar’s,’ they replied. Then he said to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’

Stevens and Lim claim (page 45) 

In this extraordinary incident Jesus asserted that money can have a holy purpose. He fulfilled the desire to meet a divine purpose and this-worldly obligations at the same time. And teasingly, he left open the question of what “giving to God” means.

I fail to see this. In The Gospel of Matthew: A socio-rhetorical commentary, Craig Keener suggests that this passage may be descriptive not prescriptive. It is mostly showing how great Jesus is. He can easily put the Pharisees in their place.

I also wonder if this story should be read and interpreted in conjunction with the following passage from Matthew 17. 

 24 After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” 25 “Yes, he does,” he replied. When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?” 26 “From others,” Peter answered. “Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. 27 “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

Keener (p. 445) states that the main points of this passage are the following.

Jesus cares about his disciples' social obligations.

The disciples need to be ready to surrender their privileges and rights for the sake of the gospel.

Jesus supplies needs like these as well as other needs

Putting both these interactions about money and taxes together, I would say they highlight how money is tied up with power and questions of allegiance, honour, and authority. People play these silly games with money.  Let people play their silly games. Play along. Instead, followers of Jesus should focus on his kingdom.

Much of the chapter is arguing against the dualism of the sacred-secular divide. The authors' state (p.47-8) that

by the fifteenth century only the monk, nun, and priest were regarded as having a calling. Karl Barth’s summary is apt: “According to the view prevalent at the height of the Middle Ages [secular work] only existed to free for the work of their profession those who were totally and exclusively occupied in rendering true obedience for the salvation of each and all.” 

[“Vocation,” in Church Dogmatics, III/4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 601]

This is not far from the contemporary idea that business people in the church are “walking checkbooks” needed to support the pastor. But what they do to make this money is not sacred. So what happened?

The Reformation promoted some of the problems of duality, particularly because it led to a dis-enchantment of much of life.

 With the disenchantment of work and exchange, money makes rational calculation and accounting possible but it does this by re-reducing everything to “mere quantities.” This is something that the German social philosopher Georg Simmel elaborated in his massive volume. So, as is said of some merchants, they know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

 In summary, the dualism that persists globally among Christian people has multiple sources: the persistence of Old Testament patterns, the Greek philosophical influence, the decline of the holiness of everyday life following the Protestant Reformation, and the influence of other faiths and philosophies.

 So how then do we reconcile both sides of the coin, God and Caesar? How can we give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s? This can happen only with a thoroughgoing integration of faith and life. R. T. France, commenting on Matthew 22:15–22, suggests that “this is not the rigid division of life into the ‘sacred’ and the ‘secular’, but rather a recognition that the ‘secular’ finds its proper place within the overriding claim of the ‘sacred’.”

Where did money come from? Does it matter?

Does the historical origin of an idea, method, or system matter when considering how to respond to it?

Modern psychology began with Freud, whose personal life, ideas, and methods have received robust critiques. Does that mean modern psychology is flawed?

The administrative structures of many nations were built by colonialists. How is that relevant?

If something has Christian origins does that mean it is necessarily good? 

``Holy Money—A Brief History and Why It is So Complicated to Handle,'' is the title of Chapter 3 of  Money Matters: Faith, Life, and Wealth by R. Paul Stevens and Clive Lim.

They consider recent scholarship that argues that the origin of money was not the barter system but actually religion, Babylonian and Jewish, .. 

Caroline Humphrey’s definitive anthropological work on barter concludes. “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever being described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.”

The authors state (p. 40)

Money, since its beginning, has been a spiritual matter and was created within the temple for the sacred management of the temple. The earliest use of money was within a canopy of sacredness to moderate the wealth of the temple and to justly distribute goods among the residents of the city.

 Thus, "money has a soul". They continue.

Like all the “principalities and powers” named in the Bible (Eph. 6:12), money has a dark spiritual side. As we saw in the temple context, money demands devotion, devotion that should be rendered to God himself.

On the one hand, I found this chapter interesting.  My wife less so. But, I remain to be convinced that the issue of the origin of money is that crucial to developing a Christian response. 

In ancient life, whether Jewish, African, South Asian, or Babylonian, everything had a religious dimension, and much of life (food, family, politics, economics, warfare,...) was centred around temples. Some was pagan and evil. Some was good and promoted human flourishing. That is a long way from the world that the readers of this book live in.

Some, or even many readers, may find the chapter heavy going, and the momentum and interest build by the first two chapters may wane.

Where to from here? How should the West respond to its Christian heritage?

 Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland is an amazing read. In just over 500 (!) pages he presents a compelling story of the interplay of Christian theology, church history, and the intellectual and political history of the Western world. 

This month in the theology reading group, we are discussing the third and final section, Modernitas, which covers 1645 to the present. The scope is amazing. The cast of characters includes Oliver Cromwell, Baruch Spinoza, Benjamin Lay, Voltaire, Marquis de Sade, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Karl Marx, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Nietzsche, J.R.R. Tolkien, the Beatles, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., ... The issues and topics discussed include the abolition of slavery, evolution, human rights, capitalism, communism, democracy, war, sexual morality, secularism, homosexuality, and the #MeToo movement.

A helpful summary of the main point of the book is at the end.

 If secular humanism derives not from reason or from science, but from the distinctive course of Christianity’s evolution – a course that, in the opinion of growing numbers in Europe and America, has left God dead—then how are its values anything more than the shadow of a corpse? What are the foundations of its morality, if not a myth? 

A myth, though, is not a lie. At its most profound—as Tolkien, that devout Catholic, always argued—a myth can be true. To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it – the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilisation to which it gave birth. 

Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.

(p.524-5, Abacus 2020 paperback edition).

A specific example of the type of argument Holland makes (and his beautiful prose) is the following. Even Marxism is deeply indebted to Christian theology.

 Marx’s interpretation of the world appeared fuelled by certainties that had no obvious source in his model of economics. They rose instead from profounder depths. Again and again, the magma flow of his indignation would force itself through the crust of his scientific-sounding prose. For a self-professed materialist, he was oddly prone to seeing the world as the Church Fathers had once done: as a battleground between cosmic forces of good and evil. 

Communism was a ‘spectre’: a thing of awful and potent spirit. Just as demons had once haunted Origen, so the workings of capitalism haunted Marx. ‘Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.’ This was hardly the language of a man emancipated from epiphenomena. The very words used by Marx to construct his model of class struggle—‘exploitation’, ‘enslavement’, ‘avarice’—owed to the chill formulations of economists than to something far older: the claims to divine inspiration of the biblical prophets. If, as he insisted, he offered his followers a liberation from Christianity, then it was one that seemed eerily like a recalibration of it. (pp. 441).

So what? What might be appropriate responses to this book? It is receiving considerable attention from those with a wide range of perspectives, both Christian and not. There seems little argument about whether the book is historically accurate. The debate is more about the implications for life today. Here is a caricature of two responses, briefly alluded to by Ross Douthat in a column in the New York Times a year ago.

An atheist who identifies with the secular political left may concede the Christian origins of many issues that are central to their vision for society: economic justice, human rights, equality,... However, they may say that we can take these good things and we can dispense with all the theology and Christian institutions. They are outdated, unscientific, superstitious, have served their usefulness, and on balance have been instruments of oppression.

A Christian who identifies with the political right will be proud of this heritage and argue that unless Western society returns to these origins, and institutionalises them in terms of law and education we are doomed to societal chaos.

I find both problematic and actually dangerous. Both seem to assume that all you need to do is legislate and institutionalise morality and values. Both may have a strain of self-righteousness. It is just different sins that they focus on.

As much as I love the book, Tom Holland presents a "secular" history of the human dimension to Christianity, which is almost one-dimensional. On one level this is fair enough as it is where his expertise lays and is the ground rules for public intellectual discourse.

There are some more fundamental questions that need to be addressed.

Holland highlights some aspects of the Western world that are distinctly "Christian" But, what about the many aspects that are not, such as individualism, consumerism, neoliberalism, ...?

Is there a role for the divine? Is there something amazing and powerful and transcendent also going on in all this history? Who was Jesus? Was he more than a profound teacher who died a brutal death? Did he actually rise from the dead? Jesus' death on the cross was certainly a powerful, counter-cultural, and inspiring symbol of suffering. But did it actually bring into being a new spiritual reality and achieve a real reconciliation with God (i.e. atonement)? Were Christians who changed their worlds able to do that just because they were inspired by radical ideas (power through weakness, the last will be first, the dignity of all humans, ...), or were they actually tapping into a powerful spiritual force that not just transformed them but also those they interacted with? Is the positive influence of Christian ideas and values on Western society an example of common grace?

In different words, what actually is authentic Christianity? Is it true? Is it real?

Has the modern church lost the radical and counter-cultural edge of the teachings of Jesus and Paul?

The book highlights the necessity of the western world to grapple with such questions in a humble, honest, and open manner. If Christianity shaped our past and present, how should it shape our future?

Reflections on the coronavirus crisis. I

I am a wealthy Westerner who has a comfortable and orderly life. But now I am experiencing minor inconveniences, such as limited travel, canceled events (will Liverpool still get to win the Premier League?), working from home, and a drop in the current value of my financial assets.

Like most people, I have been surprised, anxious, confused, and stressed by what is happening to the world. Here are a few preliminary thoughts on the things I am learning. Many are interrelated.

Perhaps I should not be surprised at this unexpected event.

 Let's take a historical perspective. Consider the twentieth century in the Western world. We made amazing scientific, medical, and technological advances.
However, there were also two World Wars, the Spanish flu epidemic (which killed more people than World War I), multiple stock market crashes, the great depression, natural disasters, terrorism, AIDS epidemic, the cold war, ..
Now, consider the first two millennia. It is even worse: an endless story of wars, earthquakes, famines, epidemics, ...
And then there is life in the Majority World today: chaos, instability, scarcity, disease, corruption, civil wars, epidemics, poverty, starvation, violence, ...
My predictable stable life of the affluent Westerner is not normal. It is a historic and geographic anomaly.

We are not in control as much as we think we are and wish we were.

Normally we have the luxury of making plans and setting goals: social events, travel, holidays, work, retirement, a medical check-up, shopping, ...

We are more interconnected than we may realise.

In the modern Western world, we pride ourselves on individual identity and individual freedom. I am the master of my destiny. I am defined by my achievements. If I succeed that is because I worked hard and used my extraordinary abilities. I deserve to enjoy the fruits of my success, and not others. I should be able to do what I want. I can choose my friends, my family, my work, my hobbies... It is all about me!
The coronavirus pandemic brings home just how interconnected the globalised economy has become; from international air travel (rapidly spreading the virus) to industrial supply chains.
There are merits to individual freedom, meritocracies, and individual initiative. However, the coronavirus is a rude interruption that things are not quite that simple. We do depend on others, for better and for worse, far more than we may like to admit. Our health depends on the health of others. Our economic well being does too. I am not the master of my destiny.

One response: selfishness
Many of us have responses to the crisis such as the following. Will I get sick? Well, even if I do I am young and healthy so it will be just like the flu. Will I lose my job? Will I still graduate from college this year? How much money have I lost on the stock market? Can I get a refund on my travel bookings? Is the government going to save my company? What about my social life?
In Australia we have people hoarding toilet paper, even fighting other customers. We have people with minor colds abusing hospital staff who will not test them for the virus because of limited resources. Political and business leaders are doing cold calculations of how certain actions they take may hurt or benefit them personally. Adversity can bring out the worst in us. It reveals a dark side to our nature.

Another response: fear
This is scary. On many levels. The future is uncertain. Will things get worse? How much worse? This can lead to panic and over-reacting. This reflects itself in hoarding toilet paper, panic selling of shares, believing rumours, ...

Another response: denial 
It isn't really that bad. We can handle it. We have the best medical system in the world. It is no worse than regular flu. Things will soon blow over. Let's wait and see what happens and not take drastic measures.

Another response: love, concern, and sacrificial service
Adversity can also bring out the best in us. Thinking beyond ourselves. Caring for others. Doctors and nurses who work to exhaustion. Some get sick. Some die. All in order to save the lives of others.

The desires of our hearts are revealed
We often hide from others (and ourselves) our inner self; what we really value, want, and think. Calamities can reveal our priorities and values. What are we most upset or worried about? Is it health, the economy, individual freedoms, our stock portfolio, ..?

Who will suffer the most?
Wealthy Western countries are ill-equipped with the medical resources to deal with this epidemic. Majority World countries will particularly struggle due to their extremely limited medical resources. As usual, the poor, the marginalised, the sick, the weak, and the elderly, will suffer the most, both in the short term and the long term.

There are invisible realities.
It is pretty amazing. We cannot see the virus. We don't know if we have it or someone else does or if it is on a doorknob. [I know that you can see it with an electron microscope and that there are medical tests for it]. However, in everyday life the virus is invisible. But it is a reality; one that has serious implications for everything, not just our health, but even for our close relationships, for the global economy, and for politics.
In spite of all that scientists do know about viruses (which is pretty amazing!) we currently know little about key properties of this virus and the associated epidemic: exactly how it spreads, which individuals are more likely to carry it, incubation periods, who is most at risk, .... We do not have a vaccine.

All this ignorance should humble us and make us open to the possibility that there are many things we do not understand in our lives now. Further, we should be open to other realities that we may be oblivious to, poorly understand, or have important implications for our lives. The Bible claims that there are spiritual realities; we cannot see them directly. Nevertheless, the spiritual realm does exist and has important implications for every part of our lives.

A time for re-evaluation
Our worlds are being turned upside down. What will we learn from this experience, both individually and collectively? Will we change? Or will we go back to ``normal''?

In some future posts, I hope to look at how Jesus engages with some of these issues.

Government regulation can be important for free markets

Free markets can be a wonderful thing, creating prosperity and a better life for many. Consequently, there are some who oppose any sort of government regulation of business. However, if you visit a country where there is no such regulation (or laws are not enforced) one inevitably sees corruption, monopolies, exploitation of workers, pollution, and environmental destruction.
The grand challenge is to find a balance.

In this TED talk, MargretheVestager, makes a compelling case for why regulation, particularly of large corporations is important. Part of the issue is that many of these companies are actually not committed to free markets but rather to protecting their market share.
I found it interesting that she started with a Biblical view of human nature, referring to Genesis, and also emphasised values such as trust and community.

Towards a Christian perspective on an individual academic discipline

I have had some interesting discussions with friends about how one moves towards a Christian perspective on your own academic discipline. Here are some slides and a questionnaire.

When did you last hear a politician give a speech like this?

One that questioned the value of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of the health of a country.
Indeed, it is extraordinary that the speech below was given by Robert Kennedy in 1968 when he was running for President of the USA.

The question no one is game to ask

... except for raging grannies.
Why do we need endless economic growth?

My wife and I watched the documentary, "Two Raging Grannies".
You can buy it on Vimeo.
Two Raging Grannies from Faction Film on Vimeo.

Here is the theme song from the Raging Grannies activist group.

Deconstructing "give a man a fish ...."

My wife brought to my attention this video can gives a simple but profound deconstruction of the popular proverb:
"give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Poverty alleviation in the 21st century is much more complicated than that.

 

Social and economic inequality undermines democracy

B.R. Ambedkar was largely responsible for writing the Constitution of India. He gave the following sober warning which seems even more relevant today, particularly in Western democracies.

“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.  

How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.” 

I first encountered this quotation on a large poster placed on a building wall at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi.

You cannot love God and money

At the theology reading group on monday we will discuss The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World by Daniel Bell.

Paul Tyson [who is in the group] has a brief and helpful summary of the book here. Another summary is here.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it. Bell begins by discussing how capitalism is not just an economic system but has come to be totalising force controlling all of life and society. Furthermore, he draws on the highly influential French postmodern [also Marxist and atheist] philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze to develop the idea that the real defining feature of capitalism is desire: creating it, developing it, marketing it, ...
Although I thought these chapters were original and stimulating I thought they were too long and drawn out and I am not convinced that one really need to go to high-profile French postmodern philosophers to get this insight.

There is a detailed critique of positive theology of capitalism promoted by Michael Novak and others: they have the strange idea that somehow the Kingdom of God is to equated with doing business and making money. The hermeneutical gymnastics and distorted theology are a bit like that associated with American exceptionalism. I felt this was a bit of a "straw man" to knock down.

Possibly the best part of the book is the exposition of Kingdom values that go against the grain of a culture saturated by capitalism: generosity, service, mercy, community over individualism, ...
The church is to be “an economy of desire—an ensemble of disciplines and practices that (re)shapes desire to flow in particular ways.” The church is to embody  “the divine gift economy,” flowing from  “God’s ceaseless generosity, of God’s graceful prodigality.”

The conclusion is particularly strong and challenging engaging with the parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16. The punchline is "you cannot serve God and money."

Are you in the top 1 per cent?

The Occupy Wall Street movement promoted the slogan "We are the 99%" to highlight economic, political, and social inequality in the USA.

It is interesting to consider what it takes to be in the top 1% or 10% globally.

According to The Economist 

Wealth is so unevenly distributed, that you need just $3,650 (less debts) to count yourself among the richest half of the world’s population. A mere $77,000 brings you among the wealthiest 10%. And just $798,000 puts you into the ranks of the 1%—within the reach of many white-collar urban professionals in the West. Hence, more than 35m people carry such a plump purse. Among the three billion adults at the bottom with less than $10,000 in wealth, 90% reside in developing countries. Yet 15% of millionaires live in developing countries too.

Note that this wealth is not necessarily cash in a bank account but includes home equity and investments in superannuation (retirement) funds.



I recently encountered this video when it was shown by Cathy Delaney during a talk she gave at Theology on Tap.

Troubled by inequality

My wife and I finally watched the documentary Inequality for all, featuring Berkeley economist Robert Reich. I highly recommend it. It is a bit depressing but the issue is not one that can be ignored.  The movie does a nice job presenting the issue in an engaging and at times humorous manner. Although it focuses solely on the case of the USA, the issues are increasingly relevant in the rest of the world.

Why does economic inequality matter? After all don't those CEOs deserve their high salaries and tax breaks because they do such a good job creating wealth and jobs for others? Isn't inequality a necessary and even good consequence of capitalism?
Well no, it is all a matter of degree.
Furthermore, CEOs pay themselves more and more regardless of their companies performance. Jobs are not created by billionaires but rather by middle class consumers.
During the Eisenhower (Republican and former WWII general) Presidency the top marginal tax rate was 91% !! Now it is like 35%.

But, the biggest problem with extreme inequality is the negative implications for democracy and for political and social instability (Remember the French revolution).
The top 1% increasingly use their wealth to influence the political process to preserve their vested interests and undermine democracy.

The movie focusses solely on the stagnating middle class. They increasingly struggle to just make ends meet: two incomes, longer hours, second jobs, and increasing debt...
Yet, my biggest concern is actually the bottom 25%.
They are voiceless and their prospects for the future are even bleaker.
Someone needs to make an engaging documentary highlighting their plight.

Greed begets stupidity

Why do smart people do dumb things?

Long-Term Capital Management was a hedge fund that went bust in dramatic style in 1998, losing $4.6 billion in less than 4 months. One thing that distinguished it was the knowledge and experience of its 16 principals.

Here is what the legendary investor Warren Buffett [who led the company bail out] said about the 16 people involved:

they probably have the highest average IQ of any 16 people working together in one business in the country, .... those 16 have had extensive experience in the field in which they operate. ... probably 350 or 400 years of experience doing exactly what they were doing. ....  most of them had virtually all of their very substantial net worth in the business. They have their own money tied up, hundreds of hundred of millions of dollars of their own money tied up, a super high intellect, they were working in a field they knew, and they went broke. And that to me is absolutely fascinating. If I write a book, it’s going to be called “Why do smart people do dumb things?"  

To make the money they didn’t have and they didn’t need, they risked what they did have and did need–that’s foolish, that’s just plain foolish.

This reminds me of 1 Timothy 6 

 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.