The eCrozier

The economy seems to be on everyone’s mind this fall as the election season burns on and candidates on all levels tell us what’s wrong with the economy and how, if we elect them, they will fix it to make us individually better off. This promise they make, that is, to make me as an individual “better off,” is, of course, an appeal to my self-interest, and to some extent, my selfishness. Because in the reptilian part of my brain, the lizard inside is telling me to protect what is mine and get just a bit more if I can. The candidates really do want me to ask: Am I “better off” now than I was four years ago?”

I noticed this in the recent town hall presidential debate. Both candidates addressed each questioner as if the candidate was a personal problem solver, and if elected, he would put in place such policies that would make them personally better off financially. I know the candidates have been advised by the legion who direct their every move to do this. These advisors have done the research and crunched the numbers. They know that candidates need to make such appeals to self-interest, maybe even selfishness, or the candidate in question won’t get elected. They are thus counting on us to selfishly vote our self-interest as if self-interest were not only primary, but also something simply deduced as what is economically best for me right now.

But, we must know, what is best for us cannot be reduced to such facile, empirical measurements as what puts more money in our pockets today. For example, what if there were a free market for human kidneys and applying the standard of what would make a person “better off” financially were applied? If a buyer and a seller could come to agreement on a price for the kidney, the deal clearly, under this rubric, makes both parties “better off.” The buyer gets a life-saving new organ and the seller gets enough money to make the sacrifice worthwhile. Both are “better off.” We must ask though: do we really want to live in a world where such an economic deal can be done?

Financial reasoning and moral reasoning are not the same. Pure financial self-interest cannot and must not be the plumb line for moral reasoning. In fact, I would say, as Christians, if our economic self-interest is the prime driver of our behavior and choices, then we need to do some serious soul-searching. Yet, as I observe many people who seek to follow Jesus as his disciples, they have cordoned off his teaching from their own economic understanding and practices. We all need to reconnect the Gospel of Jesus to how we think and act around what we understand to be our economic self-interest.

In this Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 10:35-45) Jesus teaches his disciples about how they need to be different from the standards of the world. His teaching there is principally about desiring power over other people and how it should not be so among those who follow him; they should seek to be servants. But his teaching has broader implications and is therefore related to issues of economic self-interest. James and John in the story wanted what they considered their due. In a sense, they wanted to be personally “better off.” But Jesus calls them out of their myopic self-interest to see their lives and their purpose in life quite differently. I pray we can do the same.

+Scott