Book Review - The Maker Versus the Takers by Jerry Bowyer

What if Jesus wanted to teach us as much about economics as he did the human soul? That's the premise of The Maker vs. The Takers. In order to build this point, Bower is going to lead us into the realm of biblical history and archaeology. Both prove to be highly insightful in helping us understand the world Jesus was speaking to. And in so doing, helps make his words even more insightful to the economics of our world today. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if Jesus came to say as much about economics as he did the human soul? That's what we'll be talking about today on Connecting the Dots. I'm your host, Jason Lanker, and we'll be talking about the book The Maker versus The Takers by Jerry Bauer. Jerry Bauer is an American investment manager, author, and columnist. He's also a staunch free market economist. I mention that because that is at the heart of his book, The Maker and the Takers. His argument is that Jesus' teachings aren't about telling us that money is all wrong, or that we should get rid of everything so that we could live in the poorhouse. Or it's not supposed to be freely distributed in order to bring social justice. What Bauer argues is that money is good and in a balanced manner with a free market to be able to encourage industry that God's use of money is most fulfilled. To do this, he's going to look back at the ancient world of Jesus. He's going to bring in a lot of background information that isn't in the text. He does a great job of being able to go to other sources to be able to find out what's going on in the first century world. And he takes that and he applies it to his understanding of Jesus' teachings. The problem that he runs into pretty quickly is that his viewpoint ends up dominating his interpretation. We call this in the theological world isegesis as opposed to exegesis. It's interesting that at the very end of his book, that's exactly what he critiques. He says that the people who are talking about money from a perspective that doesn't fit a free market economy are the ones that are making their viewpoints be read into the text. He does essentially the same thing. And that critique will find its way throughout what I have to say here. The question, though, is even when somebody ends up putting their opinions and their viewpoints into the biblical text, do they still raise some questions that might be helpful for us as we try to live out our business lives in ways that are a blessing to Christ and his kingdom? I'd encourage you to ask that question as we walk through this. So the first thing that Bauer wants us to consider is that Jesus actually had an economic biography. I think this is a really important and interesting point that he makes. That Jesus just wasn't born anywhere at any time. He was born in first century Israel. He grew up in Nazareth, so he has a background from Galilee. And what we know from the ancient records is that Galilee and Judea had a little bit of tension, a little bit of difference between them. The Galileans were almost considered country folk, and the Judeans were considered city folk. But the city folk extended even beyond Jerusalem to all of Judea. And that's one of the things that Bauer doesn't really get into. He conflates Judea primarily with Jerusalem. And even in talking about Jerusalem, he conflates Jerusalem, the city, with Jerusalem, the temple. And when he does that, it allows him to be able to say that all of Judea was this and all of Galilee was this. It's just too big of a stroke to take, and it's going to come into a lot of the discussion that we have about Jesus' life. What Bauer wants us to know, though, is that Jesus coming from Nazareth was God's plan. In fact, he's going to argue that it was part of God's economic plan for him to grow up around hardworking business people and entrepreneurs. He learned industry. He was a home builder within his society. He knew what it meant to work hard and to work for his money, in essence. What he's going to set in contrast is that the Judeans, by and large, the religious elite who control the temple, don't. They steal from the poor to give to the rich. They are going to fleece the poor masses in order to line their pockets and to make their lives even easier. And so Jesus in his background ends up speaking very directly to them and coming after their system. That's what Bauer's primary argument is that Jesus shows up to critique the centralized, politicized, crony economy system that these religious leaders have created for themselves instead of encouraging industry. The problem with that viewpoint is that Jerusalem wasn't just about the temple. It was the economic hub of Israel at that time. Much of the industry and the creation of product was done in Galilee, but it was also done in the Shephalah, which he never mentions, and it was done in Bethlehem in the hill country of Judea, where there was lots of grain, lots of ranching, lots of product that was being produced, and that they would bring into Jerusalem, and that they would sell as a central hub, especially during the feast times, which would happen four times a year. In fact, the valley that lies between the city of David and Mount Zion is called the Tropian Valley, which was the cheesemaker's valley. We still, in our archaeological digs, find stall after stall of vendors who were selling their wares there. It's the same in Jerusalem to this day. It's an economic hub. It's where people do industry. It's as valuable as the farmer that's out in the middle of Nebraska to be able to bring those products and find a place of selling. And for him to paint the large picture of Jerusalem just being this corrupt system that only takes through taxes misses the point of what's going on in the larger picture of the Jewish economy during Jesus' day. The other point that Bauer is going to make quite frequently that Jesus' teachings about money were only for and about those that were at the top that were attempting to use the system for their own benefit. He makes the claim over and over that all of his teachings were about that, and never was it for anyone in Galilee. The problem with all statements is that all you have to do is find one example to the contrary, and the argument is dismissed. So, for example, in Matthew chapter 8, Jesus has two people come to him wanting to be his disciples. He talks to them after he's landed on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, that if they want to follow him, the one is going to have to give up his luxury. The Son of Man doesn't have a place to lay his head. If you're okay with that and you want to rough it with us, I have more to provide you than what you would have of a nice pillow. The other wants to make sure that if he follows Jesus, he doesn't lose out on his inheritance because he wasn't there when his father died to be able to receive what was rightfully his. Jesus goes after him and says, I have more to offer you than your family could ever offer you. Leave it behind. Come follow me. Those are both economic statements, one about luxury, the other about inheritance or wills. And Jesus speaks these things around the Sea of Galilee to a bunch of other people that are trying to understand what it means to follow him. When we end up dichotomizing Jesus' economic teachings and make it only about those political leaders who use taxation and the system in order to gain their resources instead of producing something like the rest of us and making it that he doesn't have anything to say about our use of money and the ways and the times that we might purposefully give up the family business. We miss the point that Jesus wants to speak to all people at all times about their economic choices. We all mess it up. And this is something that is central to the entire book that needs to be addressed and needs to be thought through more deeply. That Jesus has more to say to all of us about how we use the resources we provide. To get those insights, Bauer says that his mother ended up passing on a lot of what Jesus had to teach. What he does to make that point is he goes to Mary's Magnificat. It's when she hears from the angel Gabriel, you're going to have the Messiah as your son. She belts out this beautiful prayer of thankfulness that talks about God restoring the poor, of setting things right, of freeing the oppressed. And then he goes to Jesus' Sermon on the Plain and he shows that some of the things that Jesus talks about are the exact topics and sentiments that are expressed in his mother's prayer. The problem that he has in tying this economic viewpoint only to his mother is that Bauer misses the larger picture of the economic concern that has been part of the Hebrew people for centuries. Mary's Magnificat is not just Mary's Magnificant, it's a restatement of Hannah's prayer all the way back in 1 Samuel when she dedicates him to the temple. She expresses the exact same sentiments and the exact same flow. And so what Mary is simply doing is she's taking what has been part of Hebrew culture for thousands of years and what they've been chewing on, praying over, and waiting for, that God would send redemption, that he would free the oppressed, that he would bring up the poor, and that he would set them on a level plane with all the rest. When Jesus speaks in the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, He has equal concern for those who are at the bottom of the heap. Not because his mother told him this is what we need to be about, but this is what our Hebrew people have been praying for and understanding for centuries. I think that's actually a deeper and more filling argument, that this wasn't something that Mary just came up with on her own, but something that had been a cry for the people of Israel for centuries, something they had been unable to address. And it also speaks to the need for a messiah, for the king of all creation to set economic principles right. We're not going to set economics right simply on our own agendas by taking control and now having our own system. It comes when God is in control. That's why our daily prayer should be: may your kingdom come and your will be done. May we see snapshots of what your rule would look like and do it by us being under your control. When Jesus came to establish his kingdom and to bring his goodness with him, he set a course for all humanity that would not only impact how we lived in our families or what happened to our eternal soul, he also came, as Isaiah prophesied, to free the captives and to help the oppressed be set free from their burdens and from their debts. And all of us are in debt to sin and the curse that has come because of our rebellion against Christ and his system. In order to explain more deeply how much Jesus was against the system in Jerusalem, Bauer takes the the bulk of his work to unpack the historical background around his life and some economic principles that he sees at work. The first is Herod's reaction to hearing that there was a king born in Bethlehem. We most likely know the story that he finds out that the Messiah has been prophesied to be born in Bethlehem, so he goes and kills all the babies that could possibly have been that promised Messiah. What Bower says is the reason why he does this is because he, along with all Jerusalem, it says that Jerusalem was all stirred up along with Herod, were afraid of losing their free passive income by this threat of a new king. The problem with that is that Herod has is going to kill two of his own sons because he's afraid of losing control. They weren't there to take his finances, they were there to take his power, and he was not going to lose power and control over his people. He liked the position. Yes, finances come with it. But cronyism is not just something that is in Jerusalem, it was also in Galilee. His son, Herod Antipos, doesn't get the name Fox for nothing. He was known for his trickery. He was known for gaming the system so that he could have as much money and resources and palaces as he possibly could have. To claim that Jerusalem was sustained by the economic exploitation of the rest of Israel misses the point. All of the leaders in the different regions of Israel at that time, Galilee, Perea, Judea, the the Decapolis, they were all led by corrupt rulers. And that is something that's going to be the case in every culture. But power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's a truism. But to to put that on to Herod and to the other leaders and to say this is the only reason why they were doing what they were doing, and it was for economic reasons so that they could have all of the resources at hand that touches part of it but does not touch all of it. And it also makes it that people in certain places, Jerusalem, Washington, DC, those are the real evil people. Instead of those who are in rulership in all sorts of places, we have mayors, we have governors, we have people in politics throughout our country, and if we went to other countries, we'd have the same thing. We all struggle with using our power to create financial gain for ourselves. And I think Jesus does have something to say about that. But that something is also as valuable for those of us who are running businesses and making economic decisions for our employees and then and the communities in which we live. The next point that he makes is that there's this thousand-year economic grudge between northern Israel and southern Israel. He goes all the way back to the break between Judea and Israel, and he says that at its core it was economic. I think he has a point there. When Solomon has been taxing the people very highly in order to make the temple, and his son Rehoboam takes over, the the people come to him and say, Hey, lighten this burden, take away these taxes, take away all the work that we're required to do to pay for our supper as being part of this country. And Rehoboam responds to them and says, No, I've gotten used to this. I'm gonna keep taxing as high as what my father did, even though we're finished building the temple. I like the life that we have. And the ten tribes of northern Israel revolt and they are gone. What Bauer takes from that is that northern Israel, the place, now has this tension between Judea, and that tension is that the Judeans are going to take by taxation what is not rightfully theirs, and that is going to be the case for anyone who lives in northern Israel. That's a far jump because one, after that, the the nations continue to live by side side by side for about 300 years. After the revolt of the northern tribes, there's no taxation of them. They don't stay in revolt because they're going to be taxed. They end up being taxed by their own rulers who end up coming into power. And they end up being abused by their rulers that come into power is the story throughout scripture. To to make it something about the northern Israelites and those who eventually repopulate Galilee after they come back from captivity is jumping too far to say that those Jews who after the Hasmonean revolt end up moving to northern Israel, and now they've just stepped right back into that same world where the Judeans are jealous of them and they're going to take their taxes. It just misses the point. And it extends something farther than what it really actually is. The the religious elite devoured widows' houses, and those religious elite weren't just the people in Jerusalem. The people that Jesus goes after more than anyone else are the Pharisees. And the Pharisees primarily are not set up in Jerusalem. They're set up in the countryside, they're set up around all of Israel. Why? Because when they came back from captivity, they set up synagogues, and the rulers of the synagogues, the rulers of the everyday people, were the Pharisees. And these are the ones that Jesus is going to say, All you really care about is money. And that's what Jesus wants to go after. He wants to ask the question of how do we serve rather than be served? How do we lift up those who are oppressed? How do we set the captives free? And that question is something that needs to be answered by all of us. Bauer has a lot to say about how the elite use their power in order to inline their pockets. And if any of us have lived with any eyes open as to how the world works, that wasn't just the case for the Jews during Jesus' day. It's the case for all governmental systems. But just because those governmental systems struggle does not mean that we need to get rid of them, that we need to just throw off the shackles of our governmental oppressors, and we need to just have a free market where everybody will do what needs to be done, and in the end God will orchestrate and watch over that. Why do we know that? Well, because Paul, the one who lives under Roman authority, says in his letter to the Romans you need to submit yourselves to the governmental authorities. You need to pay your taxes to them. Why? Because they are ministers of God. And the word he uses there for ministers is the same one that you use for the pastor at your church. They are seen as God's instrument to be able to take care of his world. And he uses governments, he uses taxes, he uses oversight. In order to accomplish his purposes, Paul is the primary expositor of Jesus' teachings. And when he tells us that that's the point of government, it really stands in opposition to much of what Bauer has put out there. He concludes, and this is one of his big quotes in his conclusion, you can either have a big state and a small God, or have a big God and a small state. That may be true, but what's the story? That does not appear to be true. Why? Because God's end goal is that we all would rule and reign with him for an eternity. That sounds like a pretty big government to me if all of us are going to be ruling and reigning with him. So God's ultimate solution is to be a big God with a big state, with lots of people having power, having opportunity to rule and to make decisions. And in fact, that may be one of the best economic principles that I've come to in working through Bauer's work, is that often our companies have one, two, three people at the top that make all the decisions. And yet, God, the ruler of all creation, with all divine authority, and the one who can make all the decisions by himself, he does not need our help, regularly entrusts us with leadership, and in fact, will hand over his kingdom to his son, who will work with us to rule and reign over his entire creation. As we share authority, as we build government in a sense, as we build this governing structure within our businesses, it gives people more of a chance to find out how their management, how their use of resources either helps or hurts, how their decisions bless and build up, or how they tear down. So one of the things we might be thinking about in our business structures is how do we give people more of a chance to be able to hold on to the government of our businesses? How do we help them see that their financial packages are directly tied to what they're putting into it? Not something determined by just the boss, but something that they can have kind of a rule and reign and say in in this process. In the end, Bauer's argument ends up being painted with too broad of a stroke. It ends up being something that just makes it into the political elite being bad and the entrepreneur being just God's chosen blessed child. No. It's not that easy, it's not that black and white. We're all broken in this process. And all of us, no matter how long we've held power or how new we are to it, will make choices that are not in the interest of the most people. They're in our self-interest. And we need to be called out on that by Jesus' words that ask us to consider how we use our positions, our resources to do his kind of work that sets the captive free, that brings salvation to the oppressed, that takes care of the widow and the orphan. And that brings healing to all people. I hope this overview gives you some insights into how you might engage with Jesus' teachings on economics and the use of money. I also hope that it leads you to read through some of the parables and see how he talks about our use of money. Specifically, also how he talks to his disciples about money and its use within the everyday world and its use within God's kingdom purposes. And I would also encourage you, like Bauer, to look at the historical insights that surround the biblical text to help you understand God's word in a more holistic way that really does help you to live and work your business on principles that are more kingdom focused.