THE GOSPEL ECONOMY
A mission of Jesus was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
The entire Bible can be read this way. The question is not who is the afflicted or the comfortable. We all are both. Afflicted and comfortable. That is the contradictory truth in all human drama as well as in our own lives. The fact that I can reside in the camp of the afflicted one moment and the comfortable the other makes my own journey of sanctification challenging and messy. I wonder if this is why Jesus warns us not to judge others. Judging can easily turn into comparing my state of affliction with someone else’s comfort, which leads to condemning the other. If we acknowledge the fact that we all are both, we can develop sympathy and compassion for others as well as for our own souls.
This mission of Jesus should naturally (more precisely forcibly) spill over into human governing systems and paradigms, accepted norms of organizations, and the foundational ways of seeing reality. These systemic ways of organizing our modern lives are deeply encrusted with an often unchallenged belief, which Richard Rohr calls, “meritocratic economy” over “gift economy.”
Rohr equates meritocracy with capitalism and says,
The first economy is capitalism, which is based on quid pro quo, reward and punishment thinking, and a retributive notion of justice. This much service or this much product requires this much payment or this much reward. It soon becomes the entire (and I do mean entire!) frame for all of life, our fundamental relationships (even marriage and children), basic self-image (“I deserve; you owe me; or I will be good and generous if it helps me, too”), and a faulty foundation for our relationship with God.
Rohr goes on to describe a gift economy…
Now the only way we can do the great turnaround and understand this is if we’ve lived through at least one experience of being given to without earning. It’s called forgiveness, unconditional love, and mercy. If we’ve never experienced unearned, undeserved love, we will stay in the capitalist worldview where 2 + 2 = 4.
In Asia, we refer to this meritocratic economy as reciprocity, which sounds less harsh and wooden. But in the end, underneath the veneer of reciprocity, there is a strong quid pro quo mentality. (This is not to ignore a certain harmonious beauty within reciprocity culture as well as the fairness we all appreciate in meritocracy culture.) If there is ever the gospel economy, this is it. Jesus expects us to operate out of the gift economy. Talk about afflicting the comfortable. I must admit that gift economy still feels foreign to me. I feel like I must earn my value and worth.