The world is becoming wealthier and wealthier. Since the turn of the century, the net worth of many countries in the West and in Asia has tripled, poverty rates have fallen, and life expectancy has increased by more than six years.
At the same time, the divide between rich and poor has increased, with the richest one per cent owning almost fifty per cent of all the world’s wealth. Five to ten per cent of people still live in extreme poverty, even in the most affluent nations. Furthermore, while money can buy happiness, it can only do so up to a certain point, and wealthier people are more likely to be less generous and less kind to others.
How as Christians should we think about affluence? Is material prosperity a blessing or a curse, or both? Given the state of the world and income inequality, what are we to do with the riches God has given us? At our 2024 August event, Michael Jensen, rector of St Mark’s Anglican Darling Point, helped us to see our earthly treasure the way our heavenly Father does.
Links referred to:
- Watch: Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdom
- With All Due Respect: a podcast hosted by Michael Jensen and Megan Powell du Toit
- Our October event: Who am I? The search for identity with Rory Shiner (23 October 2024)
- Our podcast listener survey
- Support the work of the Centre
Runtime: 56:53 min.
Transcript
Please note: This transcript has been edited for readability.
Introduction
Peter Orr: The world is becoming wealthier and wealthier. Since the turn of the century, the net worth of many countries in the West and in Asia has tripled, poverty rates have fallen, and life expectancy has increased by more than six years.
At the same time, the divide between rich and poor has increased, with the richest one per cent owning almost fifty per cent of all the world’s wealth. Five to ten per cent of people still live in extreme poverty, even in the most affluent nations. Furthermore, while money can buy happiness, it can only do so up to a certain point, and wealthier people are more likely to be less generous and less kind to others.
So how as Christians should we think about affluence? Is material prosperity a blessing or a curse, or both? Given the state of the world and income inequality, what are we to do with the riches God has given us? At our 2024 August event, Michael Jensen, rector of St Mark’s Anglican Darling Point, helped us to see our earthly treasure the way our heavenly Father does.
In this episode, we bring you the audio from that event, minus the Q&A segment, which you can find on our website. We hope you find Michael’s talk helpful as you think about the blessings that God has bestowed on you.
[Music]
PO: Good evening, everyone, and welcome! A very warm welcome to Moore College and this Centre for Christian Living event. My name is Peter Orr and I’m on the faculty here at Moore College. A warm welcome to you if you’re in the room, but also a very warm welcome to you if you’re watching online.
Our topic this evening is “Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdom”. We’re very privileged that we have Michael Jensen, a good friend to many of us, coming to speak on this topic. We’ll introduce Michael in a moment.
This is the third of our live events for 2024. The Centre for Christian Living exists to bring biblical teaching—particularly biblical ethical teaching—to everyday issues. This year, our four live events have explored the idea of “Culture creep”. It’s the idea that’s expressed in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, when he warns them against being “conformed to the world”. So thinking about different areas where, as Christians, we might be tempted to conform to the world.
This year, we’ve already looked at technology, we’ve looked at sex, and tonight we’re thinking about wealth with Michael. We were meant to have another speaker—Emma Penzo—but unfortunately, a family emergency has kept her away.
I’ll introduce Michael in a moment, but I thought I’d begin by just reading those two verses from Romans and praying and committing our time to the Lord.
So this is what the Apostle Paul says:
I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom 12:1-2)
Let me pray.
Our Father,
We thank you so much for this time when we can meet together or be online, and think about this important topic. We do pray for Michael as he leads us through this teaching. Please help him as he speaks, and strengthen him.
Please help us to listen carefully, and we pray that by your Spirit, you would change our hearts for your glory.
We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Please welcome Michael as he comes up and I’ll just ask him a few questions.
[Applause]
An interview with Michael Jensen
PO: Michael, you are the rector of St Mark’s Darling Point. Is that correct?
Michael Jensen: Correct! Yeah, that’s right.
PO: Great! You also are host of a podcast with Megan Powell du Toit called With All Due Respect.
MJ: That’s correct!
PO: Could you just tell us a little bit about your podcast?
MJ: Yes! The podcast is aiming to model what we find so hard in society in general, and also within the evangelical movement, I think, and the evangelical church too. That is, conversations about serious topics with respect and curiosity, hoping to advance our understanding in that way without completely dismissing or showing contempt for the other. That takes you to some risky places, but we find we agree sometimes more than we expect to. We’re 116 episodes in and we haven’t punched each other yet.
PO: Before your time at St Mark’s, you were here at Moore College. Before that, you did a PhD at Oxford. Then before that, you also had some time at Moore College. You actually lectured me.
MJ: I did!
PO: And you actually marked one of my essays.
MJ: Oh no!
[Laughter]
PO: I just thought since I had you, I could ask you a little bit more information about some of the comments.
MJ: This is so unfair!
[Laughter]
PO: One comment you’ve said about me is, “Sometimes your criticism was more rhetorical than substantial.” [Laughter] In another place, you put, “I think you were perhaps a little too sanguine about the strength of your conclusions.” [Laughter]
Now, I do have a real reason for mentioning this. I won’t read it out, but somewhere in this essay, I made a slightly sarcastic comment about someone I was engaging with, and Michael, you wrote, “This is an inappropriate tone.”
MJ: Yeah, right. [Laughter]
PO: And in all seriousness, I have remembered that, and it sort of flows into your podcast—this idea of engaging with people who you might not agree with, but engaging them with respect. Jokes aside, I still have this, and that little comment has stuck with me.
MJ: Do you want me to upgrade it? [Laughter]
PO: Yeah, that’s right!
[Laughter]
PO: I’ve learned many things from Michael, but that’s one that has particularly stuck with me. Sorry to embarrass you—put you on the spot. I didn’t tell him I was going to do that!
You are speaking on the topic of wealth. All of Sydney in global terms is wealthy, but you minister in a particularly wealthy area of a very wealthy city. What are some of the complexities?
MJ: Yeah, I think we should be honest about it. It’s the wealthiest area in a wealthy city in a wealthy country. In world terms, it is one of the wealthiest spots. My parish includes Darling Point, Double Bay and Point Piper. You don’t want to see what the record-breaking house prices are there.
That comes with its own joys and privileges, and also difficulties, because spiritually, it’s hard not to believe you’re in heaven already. On a day like today, you go down to the harbour, things look marvellous, it’s sparkling, you have a nice lunch at Margaret Restaurant, and then you walk around and it’s fantastic. It’s hard not to believe that you’re not in heaven already.
But that wealth—that affluence—can actually conceal deeper questions. It’s interesting talking to the undertakers: [Laughter] being a minister, I do a lot of funerals, and I get to talk to funeral directors. They would say that suicide remains a very big issue, even in our area—especially among men in their 50s, which is my age. I find the existential pain is there, even though it’s concealed behind high and beautiful walls.
PO: Another reason why it’s very important for us to consider this topic. So thank you for coming. I’ll hand over to you.
MJ: Thank you!
Affluent and Christian? Material goods, the King and the kingdom
MJ: Well, thank you very much, Peter, and the Centre for Christian Living for the invitation. It’s a great delight to be here and a joy to be back at both the college I studied at and taught at for so long, and lived at as a child, because, as you some of you will know, my father was the Principal here, so I actually grew up in this area.
1. 1989: A revolution for better coffee
I want to start by talking about coffee, and about Germans and their coffee. Germans do love their coffee, and have historically. The citizens of East Germany, though, were separated politically from West Germany from 1945 to 1989, but they still shared a common love for coffee.
Katja Hoyer, a historian, wrote a recent history of East Germany called Beyond the Wall,1 which I really enjoyed listening to on Audible (so unfortunately, I couldn’t reach for a copy of it, but it’s worth getting and reading as it tells the surprising tale of East Germany). Hoyer explained in an interview that coffee is for Germans like tea is for Britons—a regular, comforting ritual, part of a civilised and stable life. It was a sign of a certain level of affluence—as it is today, a simple luxury good that depends on a global economy. You might be facing nuclear war, but at least you had coffee.
That’s why the 1970s worldwide coffee crisis (and I know the idea of a coffee crisis probably has some Moore College students gulping. [Laughter] Could that happen again?) Apparently there was a black blight in Brazil, which spoiled the coffee harvest in the mid-70s, and it really hit the Communist nation extremely hard. Coffee had to bought from other suppliers at competitive rates, and East Germany didn’t have the cash to do that to supply its population. Now, we can only imagine what it would be like for there to be a coffee shortage in Sydney.
The East German government became afraid that this shortage would lead to civil unrest. There had been a few human rights protests over the years, but nothing too alarming. You could take away someone’s freedom of speech or their right to free movement, but don’t take away their coffee!
The East German government had to think of alternatives. It came up with a sort of horrible chicory-barley mix as a sort of coffee substitute. Can you imagine it? It came in packets and it clung to the filter paper and tasted horrible. But at least it was sort of black like coffee, I suppose. It became known as “Erich’s Brew”, after the East German leader Erich Honecker. It wasn’t easy to protest in East Germany, because that was supressed. But more than 14,000 letters were written to the government, complaining about this dreadful coffee.
But why did it matter? People were used to bad services, queues, lateness and shortages of goods. They were okay with waiting a decade for a Trabant car (which is an awful car, just to give you a picture). But they had been promised their coffee as a sign that their living standards were as good as those of their West German cousins.
If you had West German relatives, you could be sent some precious coffee as a present. But then, what did you have to send them in return? The traditional return gift was stollen cake—fruit cake—but there wasn’t enough fruit, so you couldn’t even bribe your cousins in West Germany to send you proper coffee. The Easter Germans’ anger, rather than the ersatz coffee, was what was brewing.
So what was to be done? You can’t grow coffee in Germany, but you could somewhere warmer. But it had to be a place that was sympathetic to the Communist German Democratic Republic. So they went to Vietnam, newly liberated and freed of the Vietnam War in 1976. The American soldiers had left. Now it was a Communist government. They started to plant coffee plantations there.
But the first yield of Vietnamese coffee wasn’t due until the early 1990s. In 1989, as good students of history will know, the East German state collapsed, and East Germans were able to drink a good cup of coffee at last, but not the Vietnamese brew that they’d been expecting.
This is, of course, is too simplistic an explanation of a major historical event. But like saying that World War I was caused by train timetables, as a famous historian once did,2 crediting a lack of coffee for the fall of East Germany points to a deeper explanation—which in turn reveals something about the world in which we live today. For example, historian Gary Cross writes that, “In reality, the fall of communism had more to do with the appeals of capitalist consumerism than political democracy.”3
I don’t want to demean the bravery of human rights activists or the impact that they had, or to underestimate the profound impact of the famous peace prayers conducted in Liepzig’s Nikolaikirche through the 70s and 80s. In fact, you should read the story of that amazing Christian witness in the midst of East Germany in those times. But it was Levis, as much as liberty, that most moved the East German masses in 1989—or perhaps the liberty to buy Levis, instead of the government-issued alternative. Whatever its high ideas, liberal democracy turns out to be powerful, because it’s the best way for people to access the consumer economy and with it, a share of affluence.
Which, for us today as much as back then, means a good cup of coffee.
I tell this story not to judge or sneer at East Germans, but as an illustration of the meaning and the power of affluence in our world. The desire for affluence can tear down walls and silence the guns of war. It can reunite a once-divided nation. It can transcend boundaries of race, colour and creed.
So what is this magical thing called affluence? The first (and sometimes the hardest) task of Christian ethics is to describe well what we see. It’s not for us to be quick to judge, but actually to describe well—to be alert to what is going on around us, lest our judgement be askew, so we can see what’s actually before us. I have to admit when I was first asked to give this lecture, I was unsure what my particular qualification for giving it was—until I remembered that I am the rector of a church in the most affluent area in Australia, which is, as I said before, one of the most affluent nations in the world. I am surrounded by affluence, if anyone is. I am swimming in it—which means that it’s taken some conscious effort for me to think about what affluence actually is. I’m acutely conscious of my enmeshment in affluence, even as I give this talk, and the possibility that I may sound like I’m speaking from some superior moral height, whereas I am most certainly am not.
What is affluence? Affluence is not just wealth. It’s not simply dollars. Affluence properly describes more than what we have in the bank; it says something about the freedom and opportunities that wealth affords. It names access to a lifestyle way beyond the basics of survival. Indeed, we may say that an affluent person doesn’t have to think about the basics for survival: they are not naked, they are not starving, and they are not thirsty. Shelter and safety are, for them, givens. Beyond this, an affluent person can assume access to a good level of affordable health care and a decent level of education.
Although individuals are certainly affluent, “affluence” is better suited, I think, as a description of communities, societies, even nations. We could speak of very affluent people in extremely poor countries. But we can also speak of affluent societies in which even people with very different levels of income may be fairly described as affluent, because they have a share in the wealth and well-being of the society in which they live. Just in the last week, I visited someone in social housing, and the market value of their brand-new apartment in an inner-city suburb would be many times what they could literally afford. He’s quite well aware of this: he says he’s the luckiest man alive, since our wealthy society can put its poor in relatively good accommodation. Now of course, up in Redfern and Waterloo, there’s less salubrious accommodation, but that’s an example where, I think, we’ve done very well by those who don’t have much.
I’m certainly not one of the wealthiest people in my suburb; I take down the average income, that’s for sure! But I would describe myself as benefitting hugely from the collective affluence of the local community. My access to specialist health care, reliable public transport, quality educational choices for my children, cultural institutions, the media and other parts of our society too, law, politics, recreational facilities and social clubs is extraordinary. I also have access to people with hands on the levers of power: CEOs of major banks, politicians, judges and more.
The local culture is also affluent in terms of what you might call social capital: it’s easy to get a habit of healthy living in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. Levels of obesity are not large (sorry for the pun!) People eat well. That’s their habit—to eat well. They exercise frequently. They are obsessed with exercise. They hardly ever smoke: it’s really noticeable if you smell a cigarette in the Eastern Suburbs, because people know it’s bad for you. They even have great teeth! They are (at least outwardly) optimistic. Longevity seems normal: people can expect twenty or even thirty years of active life in retirement. I can easily think of eight or nine people well into their 90s who I know, and some in their hundreds.
To sum up what I’ve said thus far, “affluence” names not just wealth, but a lifestyle. It’s not just individual, but social. Affluence means access—access to desirable things—good things, like health and health care, leisure and education, and more access to the benefits of the consumer economy.
The story of East German coffee, however, shows us some other things about affluence. The first is that affluence is usually a relative term. To live in East Germany in the 50s and 60s wasn’t all bad. In fact, Katja Hoyer shows that in East Germany, they were doing better, in some respects, than they were in the UK. There were still people living in houses without their own toilet in the north of the UK. That wasn’t the case so much in East Germany in the 1950s, even after the devastation of World War II. They recovered very speedily. It was something of a miracle. It was very well-governed in that way. They were in advance of their West German cousins in the 50s and 60s in terms of access to education, the rights of women, and in several other economic markers. It was certainly better to live in East Germany at almost any time than it was in, say, Ethiopia.
However, the planned economy of the GDR could not keep up with the West, and the nation became relatively less affluent. It was more affluent than pre-war Germany, but less affluent than its contemporaries. So in relative terms, historically, it was doing quite well, but in relative terms, when you looked over at the Berlin Wall, you could see what the other half was doing—what everyone else had—and that had a marked effect.
This leads to the second observation that I think the story tells us: affluence is an enviable state for modern human beings. To be affluent is greatly to be desired. If you aren’t affluent, then you certainly want to be.
This is where we start to move from description to judgement. When I said to my Bible Study group (Hello to those watching online!) that I was giving a talk on affluence, one of their first reactions was, “Oh, you’re just going to make us feel guilty, aren’t you.” It was as if, in even addressing this topic, we were walking into a prison from which we couldn’t escape.
I think this was an instructive reaction, because it raises the thought that my affluence may be a matter for moral reflection—and even better, particular moral action. I may be affluent precisely because others are not. My affluence may have a particular moral quality to it, or make a particular moral demand on me.
So what if I am affluent? What then?
2. 1776: We never had it so affluent
We’ll return to that reaction. Again, I think one of the things Christian ethicists ought to do is to interrogate their instincts—their instinctive reactions. Those intuitions are not a nothing in the moral field; they give us some moral evidence, and we ought to interrogate those instinctive reactions.
However, we haven’t described affluence properly unless we make some historical observations first. (We’re up to point #2 and the points get shorter from here.) The Bible talks a great deal about wealth and the wealthy, and about prosperity as a blessed state, but also about the spiritual dangers of riches.
But before we apply what Scripture says, we need to know what the particular features of modern affluence are, for they are very unusual. In his book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West (it’s a magnificent book and I highly recommend it), theologian Andrew Wilson describes how massive social, cultural, technological and political changes at the end of the 18th century have made the world “WEIRDER”. That’s an acronym he’s using and it stands for: Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian and Romantic.
In his chapter entitled “Profits”, he says,
… the most significant impact of the late eighteenth century on world history will surely be the transformation in health, wealth, and prosperity that it launched. Economic historians called it ‘the great escape’, ‘the great divergence’, ‘the great enrichment’, or ‘the European miracle’. The rest of us know it as normal life.4
We take economic growth for granted. We’re shocked, surprised, disappointed and angry at governments when we don’t experience economic growth, when growth slows down, or when we have a recession.
But the truth is, economic growth as we’ve experienced it is anything but normal. We’ve experienced unparalleled period of prosperity between the 1980s and the Great Financial Crisis of the 2007-2008 era: that was an extraordinary period of upswings—upticks in global affluence. That goes back to the beginning of this period that Andrew Wilson names.
Wilson says that the reality is that for most of human history, humankind was caught in a loop. For every advance in productivity and in wealth, a rise in population would follow that would swallow up the benefit. You’d come up with some advance in agriculture, produce more food, have more babies, more babies would eat the more food, and then growth would stall. As a result, gross domestic product has barely changed between the age of King David (roughly 1000 BC) and William Shakespeare.
Today, we consume more than 70 times the goods and services than human beings two centuries ago. Even though the population of the earth has multiplied, it is dwarfed by the rise in consumption in that period.
I am not an economic historian or an economist. (I did economics for the HSC, but I can’t remember any of it.) Neither is Wilson. But it is scarcely debatable that, by no matter what standard we use, humankind is massively more prosperous than we were before the 1770s. One particular measure is fascinating: until the 19th century, life expectancy globally has been estimated (because records are sketchy) at 25 to 30 years. Today, it is more than 70. Of course, in our nation, it’s something like 84—certainly the early 80s, depending if you’re a man or a woman, as women still outlive men. Isaiah prophesied,
Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reacha hundred
will be considered accursed.
(Isa 65:20)5
We’re not there yet, but we are considerably closer to it than we were in 1776. We’re not far off.
Why has this come about? Wilson suggests that are been four broad answers to this question, namely: institutions, greed, culture and geography. With Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, Wilson shows that solid legal and governmental frameworks (i.e. institutions) promoted innovation and investment, and provided guarantees and protections for those who were willing to risk their money. Good institutions are really important if you’re going to have economic growth.
But is also true that the Great Enrichment occurred on account of the looting of Africa, Asia, South America and Australia by Europeans. As Wilson writes,
Much as we might want to, we cannot disentangle the story of modern economic growth from the guns, resource extraction, enslavement, and death that made much of it possible.6
Note that “[G]uns, resource extraction, enslavement, and death” spells “GREED”.
You can tell the story without that aspect of it. But it’s not sufficient on its own. For European culture had also experienced a number of changes that had made it more open to the new, rather than mired in tradition. It was already possessed of a middle class that was literate, ambitious and curious. That’s culture. We have institutions, we have GREED and we have culture.
Lastly, we have geography. Wilson, along with others, reflects that Europe has benefitted from being both divided and united all at once. Since the 17th century, it had been divided into small, competitive states, rather than one clumsy, slow-moving empire. Though there were violent flare-ups, between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and 1914, the Western European powers enjoyed an unprecedented period of peace between them. At the same time, Christianity provided something of a common currency between them that enabled and facilitated both competition, but also elements of trust.
So we’ve got institutions, GREED, culture and geography explaining this great expansion in prosperity and affluence in the last couple of centuries. But I want to say that I’m not going to pretend that this cursory overview that I’ve given in just a few minutes is sufficient to explain the causes of contemporary affluence, and perhaps we could do some more reflecting on that a bit later. But I think we should note with Wilson the moral ambiguity of the Great Enrichment. The Great Enrichment has been the cause of hugely increased living standards across the globe. It has heralded huge improvements in the lots of billions of people. People are alive today who would not have been alive in the past because of the Great Enrichment.
I had appendicitis when I was 17. In a previous era before the rise of antibiotics, it is likely that I would be dead. Yet now, you’d never think of anyone dying of appendicitis. You’d be utterly shocked if someone died of that.
I once heard of a man in the 1930s who was a relative of D Broughton Knox, a former Principal of Moore College, who died from an infected pimple. The infection spread and there were no antibiotics.
Again, that is an astonishing thing to think of in our world. We should not be naïve about this, or forget, just what benefits the Great Enrichment has brought to our world. Even if there is inequality, because the base standard of living is so much higher, the worst impacts of unequal wealth distribution are somewhat mitigated.
However, the affluence we enjoy was built on the seizure of land and resources, the enslavement of peoples, and, we should add, very often at the expense of the earth itself.
It’s vital to note that moral ambiguity, because so many contemporary culture war accounts tend to be so lopsided. They are either defenders of colonialism and capitalism, or they’re its greatest critics and they’ve got nothing good to say about it. Either capitalism and colonialism are demonic, or they are instruments of divine blessing. I think both of these takes are the result of ideology more than anything else.
That brings us back to our feelings of unease. I think that we ought to both recognise the benefits we have from the Great Enrichment, but can’t possibly reckon with the moral cost of the past either. Furthermore, through the spread of information technology, we are perhaps more aware of the inequality of people’s experience of the Great Enrichment—but feel helpless to do anything about it. Think about our unease: why do we feel uneasy?
3. 369: Basil of Caesarea preaches to the affluent
Well, what are affluent Christians to do? For help, I would like to enlist the work of a great theologian and pastor of the church, Basil of Caesarea, known as Basil the Great. (He wasn’t christened “Basil the Great”, of course; it’s a title bestowed on him by history.) Basil was born around 330 AD in the region of Cappadocia in what is now central Türkiye. He came from a wealthy and prominent noble family, who were also well known as Christians. It’s quite an extraordinary tale: his grandmother, father and mother were all made saints, he had nine brothers and sisters, and Basil and three of his brothers and sisters were made saints as well. That’s quite a family!
His spiritual teacher was perhaps the most saintly of all: St Macrina the Younger, who founded monasteries, who lived an exemplary life and who was his tutor for much of his life.7 He records that, as did his brother Gregory of Nyssa. As a young man from a wealthy family, he had the privilege of an education, in which he excelled. He also had all the pleasures and recreation available to wealthy people in that era.
However, Basil was deeply impacted by the parable of the rich young ruler who was told by Jesus to “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt 19:21). This is what he read when he opened the Gospels. This what Basil himself did—especially during the time of great famine that visited Caesarea in the 360s, by which time he had become a parish priest. It was there he also became known as a preacher and a kind of founder of Christian communities.
It’s from several of his sermons that we can hear the pastor-theologian Basil speaking to the rich about their affluence. I think if I preached these sermons at St Mark’s, I’d be turned out; they’re pretty strong stuff! With the help of his modern translator Paul Schroeder, we can highlight three major theological themes that he outlines in his preaching on wealth.
a) The limited resource paradigm
Firstly, there’s what Schroeder calls the “limited resource paradigm”. For Basil, the problem with the rich young ruler was not that he was too attached to worldly things, but that he was failing to love his neighbour as himself. It was a failure of love; it was not the worldly things in and of themselves; it was that the possession of those things limited or not displayed his neighbour love. In his sermon called “To the rich”,8 he says,
… if what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth?
So what should those with wealth do? Basil believed that God had provided enough in the creation to meet the needs of everyone. If there is a lack of necessary things, he says, it is because there has not been an equitable distribution of the things that God has given. The problem is not with God’s provision of things, but with our clinging to them. In preaching on the parable of the rich fool, who intends to build bigger barns for his hoard, he says,
If we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, and no one would be in need.
Love of neighbour, he says, requires that we adopt a way of life that ensures that everyone has enough. So he urges us to a simplicity of lifestyle, rather than to lavishness—not because good things aren’t good, but to ensure there is enough available for all. He tears strips from conspicuous consumers: it’s remarkable how contemporary he sounds here. He says,
You gorgeously array your walls, but do not clothe your fellow human being …
I met a guy whose job it is in the Eastern Suburbs to go around and hang people’s paintings. That’s his whole life: he goes and hangs your paintings on your wall for you, so you know where you put your Brett Whitely. It’s a whole job!
… you adore horses, but turn away from the shameful plight of your brother or sister; you allow grain to rot in your barns, but you do not feed those who are starving; you hide gold in the earth, but ignore the oppressed.
God has not limited the resources, but we do.
b) The distributive mandate
The second theme is what Schroeder calls “the distributive mandate”: Basil calls upon those of us who have a surplus to our actual needs to redistribute it to those who have less.
We might say at this point, “Yes, but what is my actual need? How do I know?” It is easy for this to become a sliding definition. This is where Basil’s sermon on the foolish rich man calls us out, for he notes how often we redefine our needs to account for our surpluses. That is, we commit our extras to our needs, and then find ourselves with nothing to share. Like the rich fool, we tear our barns down to build bigger ones—or in Eastern Suburbs terms, we renovate the renovations we’ve just renovated. [Laughter]
Basil anticipates the way in which we convince ourselves that wealth is necessary for rearing children by calling this a “specious excuse for greed”. He really skewers this and you hear this all the time—that I excuse my accumulation of affluence, because I’m looking after my children, or the number of children I’m having is limited by the lifestyle I want to have for myself and give to my children. It turns out, we excuse everything in our society because of the children.
Our problem is that often, because of our own spending decisions, we don’t feel affluent, even though we are, because we’ve redefined “need”. Because we’re committed to private schooling for our children, quality holidays, and to owning our own home (and I’m going to put my hand up to all of those), the average Australian family is under enormous financial pressure. That both parents work in a family with children is no longer a sign of freedom, but a necessity for economic survival in our city. We have actually limited the freedom of choice for members of a family to work or not, rather than expanded it.
c) The conversion to sociability
So what does Basil suggest? This brings us to the third of his themes: “the conversion to sociality”. What does that mean? For Basil, God made the world and its benefits in order to be shared. Human selfishness is a mark of the fallenness of the world—not that he says everyone should have exactly the same, or that there is something wrong with private property per se. Rather, human beings are given private property to use in God’s service and in the service of others. Basil asks us, “Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it?”
This changes our approach to what we have marvellously, since we cannot see it as a right, but as a blessing. We receive it not begrudgingly, but with thanksgiving—which means we may use what we have to be a blessing to others. Having received it joyfully, we may give it away joyfully. We may deploy it joyfully.
God distributes things unequally. Basil’s not embarrassed about that, by the way. God has done this not so that we would keep those things, but so that we might receive the reward and enjoy the benefit of sharing them around. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
This is “treasure in heaven”, as Jesus puts it (Matt 6:20). Earthly treasure has its use, but chiefly in order to gain stocks of the heavenly treasure—so that as we die, we are decked out, not like the Pharaohs with their possessions, but garlanded with our generous deeds. In Christ, God is calling everyone to become truly social human beings, formed not to accumulate possessions and experiences, but to use them to care for others—to build relationships, rather than to destroy them—to break down divisions, rather than to build them up.
This is where we might bring out the gospel of God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ, which is rather more implicit in Basil’s sermons than explicitly stated. The gospel is premised on God’s prior ownership of all things, including us—his total affluence, we might say. God is a God of abundance, but exceedingly rich in mercy, as Ephesians 2:4 says.
In the famous passage from 2 Corinthians 8:9 (this passage is beloved of rectors who preach it every year when we’re trying to raise money for the following year), we hear how the gospel of Christ’s sacrificial love is an example for us in loving use of our affluence:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
It takes a prosperity doctrine preacher to twist that thought, by the way, to understand the last use of the word “rich”—“that we might become rich”—in a non-spiritual way, but instead a quite literal way. Of course, it doesn’t mean that; it means rich in the spiritual sense through Christ’s poverty.
Like Paul, Basil saw the generosity of God as the constitutional basis for a new community, marked not by competition and acquisitiveness—not by the building of high walls to keep envious neighbours from looking and, perhaps, stealing—but by the sharing of burdens and of caring for one another’s needs.
4. 2024: Transformed non-conformity?
So what, then? In Romans 12:2, Paul calls us to “not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. In terms of our affluence, what might transformed non-conformity look like?
a) Being shaped by the sovereign mercy of God
Firstly, it will be mean being shaped by the sovereign mercy of God. We do need to return to that guilty feeling we experience at being prosperous and the perception that follows it that we cannot possibly untangle the web of wealth and the inequality of its distribution that we see on the face of the earth. What can one say when confronted by the vast scale of child poverty on the planet, just to name one form of it? When we see the disparity of wealth, we must reckon with that. “Yes, yes, in general,” we might say, “affluence around the globe has been lifted for most people, and yet some people still live as if it is before 1776, and they are at the bottom of the pile.” Or even when you hear the statistics regarding the gap in our society between the experience of Indigenous peoples and everyone else, everything I’ve said about longevity is not true for indigenous people, even living our cities.
I think one of the problems is the contemporary way of speaking about global problems. It resorts to ascribing guilt without giving us a way out of that feeling. It’s a politically motivated blame game, easily weaponised for ideological purposes, but ultimately futile to change anything. This is because it is not guilt that ultimately motivates, but grace. The blame game leads either to denial or to despair. How else can we cope with it existentially? How can we bear with the problems of the world if we examine them too closely? Better, we might say, to hide in our affluent cul-de-sacs and not encounter a lack of affluence or the disparity of affluence, because that’s just too hard.
But the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ liberates us from this. We need not deny that we’ve benefitted from and even contributed to the dark side of affluence. Indeed, we must not do that.
But neither are we the saviours of the world. Only one human being is qualified for that role. Our task is obedience to his call, but only within the scope of our creaturely limitations. When we recall again and again the grace of God, we will find the freedom and joy in sharing of our abundance with those who don’t have.
I don’t want to be misheard here as arguing for a kind of quietism or a giving up, or just giving up on the world’s problems and not acting—not doing what actually is demanded of us here. I’m not counselling a shrug of our shoulders. We must develop God’s heart for the poor. We can’t read the Scriptures and hear the teaching of Jesus Christ, and be deaf to that. Basil would harangue us about us, and rightly so.
But precisely because we’re not God, we’re free to anticipate the final coming of the kingdom without having to die for the sins of the world. Indeed, history tells us that alternative would-be saviours leave the world awash with blood not their own. We should be shaped by the sovereign mercy of God—liberated, indeed, by it.
b) The danger of our affluence
But secondly, we should consider the danger of our affluence, and consider it very seriously. We need to be alert to the spiritual dangers of what we own. To be affluent is undoubtedly a blessing. We are showered in good things, and we shouldn’t ever say it’s not good. It is good! Good is good.
One of the difficulties I have in an affluent congregation and area is people thinking I’m going to say that good things are bad, or that having a good experiences are not good. I need to name them for the good that they are.
But they’re only reflections of the ultimate good. Our affluence, in its goodness, can offer us a seductive illusion. I know that it does this. In exceeding our needs in some areas, affluence obscures our true need, which is for reconciliation with our creator. It offers us a kingdom of heaven no more real than East German coffee mix. Our desire for affluence and its trappings enslaves us to patterns of life that ultimately mean that others have less than they need, and it makes us miserable. It especially makes young people glued to Instagram utterly miserable: all the mental health professionals are saying this. At one level, being affluent means access to a whole raft of mental health problems that are unknown where we don’t have so much—which is curious. I think this is increasingly becoming the situation: we desire to consume but find out that we are consumed.
Basil would have us take a careful inventory of our actual needs. What have I redefined as a need that is actually surplus? He would have us live more simply so that we can afford the luxury and find the joy in being generous, and see being generous as our luxury—as our joy, our hobby, our recreation.
We need to get out of our bubbles of affluence. This came up again my Bible Study group as we considered affluence last week. Affluent communities can seduce us into thinking that a level of affluence is normal. It’s only what everyone else has. A friend of mine’s daughter came back from school utterly gutted that she wasn’t going on a destination holiday. They weren’t going skiing in Aspen, Colorado; they were only going to New Zealand [Laughter]. I don’t feel extravagant if everyone in my world has the same things as me. But when I genuinely encounter those who have less, I am given the chance to see that life exists without all the things I have perfectly well—perhaps even more happily.
This is more than simply popping your head through the curtain to see what it’s like to sit in economy class for a few minutes. Being part of the church of Jesus Christ should give us unique opportunities for this experience. Finding real relationships across levels of affluence is a deep spiritual challenge, but a real expression of the transformative power of the gospel and a counter to the pattern of the world, which likes to segment us off, divide us and keep us all in gated (whether literally or metaphorically) communities.
My encouragement to us as Christian communities is to ask, “Do we actually encounter through our church experience people of different levels of affluence?” Of course, it’s more difficult, perhaps, where we live in the Eastern Suburbs. However, just a minute’s walking distance away is Darlinghurst and St John’s Darlinghurst, and some of the people who are doing it the absolute toughest in Sydney. To us at St Mark’s, St John’s Darlinghurst has a really important ministry as our partner parish to keep us spiritually real and aware of the quality and volume of what we actually have, seeing those who have much less than us. I wonder what partnerships your church community could foster that might help you as a community foster, as I say, real relationships—real connections—with people who have less.
c) The purpose of our affluence
That’s the danger of our affluence. (“Affluence”, not effluence, though we do have a better quality of effluence over where we’re affluent. It has more cocaine in it, apparently. [Laughter] Why did I say that?)
Thirdly, we need to consider the purpose of our affluence. Basil has helped to remind us that we’ve been made affluent for a purpose. Our affluence should cause us to praise and give thanks God, since it’s a blessing that comes from him. The pattern of the world is to say that we are affluent, because we deserve to be or are entitled to be. This is easy to say; a lot of what I’m saying, you could have said yourself, but actually doing this is the challenge. I find this the case. Of course I don’t deserve to have what I have, and yet I deep down do believe that this is the case. I educate my children to believe that hard work is rewarded. Those who work hardest are richest. It feels really hard not to pass that on. With it comes the almost karmic belief that those who have less are what they are, because they are morally of less worth than me. That’s an instinctive, deeply rooted thought that we have, and that’s the pattern of the world.
That is not a Christian take on affluence by any stretch. Rather, our affluence is given to us as a gift, which affords us particular opportunities for serving God in the fallen world. This is not with just our dollars—and I really hope it’s come across that affluence is not just our dollars but our access—our whole quality of life—our privilege—our access to things. We are given these so that they might be a blessing to all, not so we might bury them.
This is not simply about the distribution of funds, but about the extension of the love of Christ that comes to us in the gospel and that we are to radiate. We’re given the church as the new community, within which we are to practice koinonia, the fellowship of sharing our blessings with one another, as the early church did. As Jesus said to his disciples, “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matt 10:8). That is a sign that the kingdom of heaven is near.
Thank you very much!
[Applause]
PO: Thank you very much, Michael! I’m going to pray and then we’ll conclude.
Our Father,
We thank you for challenging us tonight. We thank you for the teaching of your word, which does confront our world and its priorities, and which searches our own hearts.
Father, as we consider our own lives, we do pray that we would yield to the prompting of your Holy Spirit as he has opened your word tonight. We pray that each of us, as we are able, would be marked by generosity that loves our neighbour more than ourselves, and loves you and honours you.
We ask you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
[Music]
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October event
PO: Our culture is obsessed with identity: we’re often told, “You do you” and encouraged to live according to our “true and authentic self”, expressing publicly how we feel about ourselves internally.
However, the very idea of personal identity is inherently slippery. It encompasses things like ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, religion, belief, educational background, profession and personality, but it’s not fixed: our identity can change through time, circumstance and even self-invention.
How as Christians should we regard identity? God created us as unique individuals; how does our creatureliness affect who we are? Furthermore, as sinners who have been redeemed and sanctified by the Lord Jesus and adopted into the family of God, how does Christ’s work change the way we view ourselves? How does the encouragement to “find your identity in Christ” actually play out in the complexities of competing sources of identity?
Join us for our next and final event in our series on “Culture creep” on Wednesday 23 October, when Rory Shiner, Senior Pastor of Providence City Church in Perth, will show us how losing ourselves for the sake of the kingdom will help us find ourselves once and for all (Matt 10:39). Register and find out more on our website: ccl.moore.edu.au.
Podcast survey
Karen Beilharz: Podcast producer Karen Beilharz here. For the first time ever, we are conducting a listener survey to help us get to know you and how you interact with the CCL podcast.
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It should take around 5-10 minutes to complete, and your responses will really help us as we consider how to improve the podcast, moving forward.
You can find the survey link in the episode description or the show notes, or visit ccl.moore.edu.au/podcastsurvey/.
Thank you again for your support!
Conclusion
[Music]
PO: To benefit from more resources from the Centre for Christian Living, please visit ccl.moore.edu.au, where you’ll find a host of resources, including past podcast episodes, videos from our live events and articles published through the Centre. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast and for you to leave us a review so more people can discover our resources.
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We always benefit from receiving questions and feedback from our listeners, so if you’d like to get in touch, you can email us at ccl@moore.edu.au.
As always, I would like to thank Moore College for its support of the Centre for Christian Living, and to thank to my assistant, Karen Beilharz, for her work in editing and transcribing the episodes. The music for our podcast was generously provided by James West.
[Music]
Bible quotations are also from THE HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society, www.ibs.org. All rights reserved worldwide.
Endnotes
1 Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany (London: Allen Lane, 2023).
2 See AJP Taylor, War by Timetable: How the First World War Began (Michigan: Macdonald & Company, 1969).
3 Gary S Cross, An All-consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000) 8.
4 Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023) 214.
5 Michael mistakenly says “Isaiah 66” in the recording.
6 Wilson, 229.
7 She was also his older sister.
8 Saint Basil the Great, On Social Justice, trans and ed by Paul Schroeder (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009) 49ff; trans of Ὁμιλία πρὸς τοὺς πλουτούντας (c. 368).
