Economic Recovery According to 3 John 1

In 3 John 1:2, the "Beloved Disciple" writes:

"Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers."

It seems to me these tender words sum up what other parts of the bible say, that our physical prosperity and health are interdependent with our spiritual prosperity and health.

Right now we have millions of people arguing, with good reason, about the economy: what and who broke it, how to fix it, etc. Still in my opinion something important is being overlooked, a spiritual reality many have neglected to include in the debate on the economy. As I see it, what is being overlooked is the "leanness of soul" we have been experiencing as a nation for many years. (Ps. 106:15 And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul ).

We have prospered greatly as a nation over the centuries, leading the world for decades in nearly all economic, technological and quality of life indicators. Despite a darker side of our growth as a nation (slavery, abuse of Native Americans, colonialism abroad) for the most part the people embraced solid values of compassion, altruism, generosity and benevolence. Somewhere along the way, we lost track of these virtues as being vital to our spiritual, and therefore physical, prosperity and health.

Sadly, this started with the Church, when we began to focus too much on using our resources and our politics to try to make life more comfortable for ourselves instead of reaching out properly to the world. Instead of offering the Light of Christ for people to embrace as a walk of faith, we resorted to using political tactics to try to get people to behave in ways we found acceptable. We forgot that achieving Christ's stated goals for his followers, to nurture and bring up disciples from out off all nations-meaning all cultures, ethnic groups and world views.Instead, we tried to convert them to our own world view as American Christians.

This is something Jesus never intended when he mandated the “Great Commission”. He constantly pointed out that the ways of thinking of the world were at odds with the Great Commandments of loving the Father with all our being, and loving others as we love ourselves. Yet now, if we look at what is being expressed by Conservative, Republican Christians, we see a frightening example of modern Pharasaism.

We have entire political parties, and millions of people who support those parties, preaching that the poor are to blame for their plight and must be forced to find jobs by cutting off benefits. In doing so, we demonstrate the "leanness of soul" through our lack of compassion for the poor, and our stiff-necked unwillingness to obey one of the primary mandates given us as part of spreading the Gospel.

We have allowed our health care system to be reduced to a pure profit-oriented, corporation controlled industry that literally holds the health of the entire nation hostage in order to increase profits. We are commanded to heal the sick, as a gift. Yet, again we speak and act in direct contradiction of Christ when we favor corporatist health care that favors those with the means to pay, and disenfranchises the poor to the point of allowing them to die for lack of adequate care.

We view the earth as an exploitable source of profit, mistakenly thinking Creator God has handed it over to us to use as we want. We think the earth is meant to serve us, when not only the Bible, but common sense makes it clear that we must live in harmony with the earth and understand that, as with all creatures, we serve each other by being integral parts of a global ecosystem that humans have, tragically, thrown far out of balance. We are supposed to be stewards who care for Creator's earth to His glory, not disreputable servants who misuse what is not ours for our own satisfaction.

We resort to violence as a solution for far too many things. We have a military far larger and more powerful than we need. We spend more money on going to war than the next 10 nations combined. How can we reconcile with Jesus expecting us to spread peace to the corners of the earth in His Name. We are told “blessed are the peacemakers” and we toss that aside to favor violence as our way of ensuring we can get what we want from the rest of the world.

We treat our most precious gift, our children, as though they are property that we can use and manipulate to continue the consumerist, violently competitive and destructive System which leads to the behaviors described above. As Jesus said of the Pharisees, we are making our children twice as fit for damnation as we are.

We have even abandoned the honest, humble and critical use of the gift of Intellect. We are blessed with a capacity for critical, abstract thought and reasoning that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence can barely mimic. The one thing that proves we are created in God's image is our ability to reason, as Homo Sapiens in ways far beyond that of any other creature. Creator says “come let us reason together”, yet we do the opposite, surrendering our God-given ability, right, and privilege to use our reason in favor of letting others tell us how to think, act, speak. What we like, even what we believe, is handed to us in ways that discourage thinking for ourselves. We accept this willingly, because it's easier to let others tell us how to think than to develop our own opinions and world view.

So, we have “leanness of soul”: lack of compassion, lack of humility, we're violent and competitive, we lust for material things, disobedient to the very God we claim to honor, lacking in common sense and sensibility, having become hard-hearted to the point that we think the things we do which are the opposite of Christ's teaching and example are acceptable. Spiritually we are living a delusion of righteousness where none really exists. We twist His Word to prove our self-delusion, and those who don't buy it are dismissed as being lost sinners, enemies of God who are not worth consideration.

Our delusion has reached that point that when those outside our Churches and/or our Nation tell us they see the truth of who we are and are not willing to participate in our delusion, we declare they are saying so simply because they are jealous of what we have. Then we pat ourselves on our collective religious, nationalist backs for being something and someone other nations reject, despise and in some cases pity.

If we want to fix the economy, we need to start with the source of our poverty: our own spiritual lives, both individually and collectively. We do have many people in the various walks of faith who are abundantly rich spiritually. Sadly, they are often rejected by the mainstream. They're called names such as “hippy” or “socialist” or “bleeding heart liberal”, as though actively encouraging people to follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ (or others who have taught love, harmony and respect for all creation) is a bad thing.

Instead of dismissing them we should be electing them to office.

One last thing about “leanness of soul”: it's related directly to living in fear. The reason the Israelites demanded so much from YHWH that he gave it to them, but also allowed the leanness of their souls to come into being, was because they were afraid of not being like other nations. They were afraid they would not get what they truly wanted, that they would be taken advantage of by others. They were afraid that living life as Creator intended them to live wasn't good enough. They were ungrateful for what YHWH had given them.

Therein lies the secret of a prosperous soul (and therefore physical prosperity). It is understanding that spiritual, and physical, prosperity are not a matter of getting what we want. Rather, it's a matter of recognizing that what Creator gives us is always the best thing for us in the long run. It's called “contentment” and “gratefulness”, and we are told that godliness (right living) with contentment is great gain, or true wealth.

When we, as the Church and as a Nation, reacquaint ourselves with lives of contentment and gratefulness, we will find we naturally want to help the poor, heal the sick, make peace, reject greed and consumerism, respect the earth and bring up children who are likewise content and grateful. Until that happens, no politically based solutions will rescue our economy.