By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
Many of the Christians and conservatives who are ardent believers in Americanism have no hesitation in proclaiming the economic system of the modern United States, based upon enlightened self-interest as they call it, to be the best system known to man. ‘Bishop’ E. W. Jackson was singing its praises on American Family Radio recently. Jay Davidson of the Austrian school of economics writes his own justification of it in these words:
Our Creator could certainly dominate us but chooses not to. What right does a central planner, a bureaucrat, a government, or a dictator have to control us? It is one thing to embrace a religion or philosophy of our own free will. It is quite another to be forced.
Economics studies one aspect of this interaction between the mundane and divine. The one economic system that resonates with divine free will is capitalism. It personifies enlightened self-interest. Capitalism depends on the individual to be free to choose. It is the antithesis of central planning, socialism.
For Mr Davidson and many other economic thinkers in the States (the late Michael Novak, for instance), freedom of choice is the cornerstone of the American ‘economic miracle’. To place restrictions on man’s economic activity – to force him to take days off for Christian holy days, to impose environmental regulations, safety rules, etc. – is a heinous crime that will cause poverty to befall one and all. Central to their belief system is their tenet that as the Lord does not compel us in any way to obey Him, we also ought not to be compelled in our economic choices (or religious choices, etc.).
But it is worth asking, is their central tenet valid? Does the Lord never nudge us in any way? More specifically, does He never command us to constrain the scope or direction of our economic actions?
The answer for those who have studied Christian history is that He indeed does impinge on human liberty, including mankind’s economic liberty.
Here are a few passages from the Old Testament commanding the Israelites to leave some of their crops in the field for the poor and needy:
1. Leviticus 19:9-10 : “When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.”
2. Leviticus 23:22 : “When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.”
3. Deuteronomy 24:19-21 : “When you reap the harvest in your field and forget a sheaf there, do not go back to get it. It is to be left for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. What remains will be for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.”
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And there is more – the gifts that had to be given to the Levites who were forbidden to own land, the cancelation of all debts every 50 years, and so on.
If confronted with economic ideas like these without the Bible verses attached to them, many of the MAGA faithful would yell and splutter that all of this is a bunch of rotten, stinking socialism; that people could put their property to more profitable use if they didn’t have all those restrictions on them.
But that is precisely what the Lord is trying to show us here and elsewhere in the Holy Scriptures – that profitability isn’t everything. That is why the Lord Jesus chided His disciples when they grumbled over the woman anointing Jesus’s feet with the costly oil: He wanted them to see that there are more valuable things in the world than ‘enlightened self-interest’, that even the logic of the Law itself must sometimes be transcended:
Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at table with him. Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it. Jesus said, “Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (St John’s Gospel 12:1-8).
We find similar teachings elsewhere in the New Testament:
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves (Romans 15:1).
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others (Philippians 2:4).
Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor (I Corinthians 10:24).
The ethos of the Orthodox Church is radically different from that of MAGA Americanism. It reveals to mankind that there is no enlightened selfishness that magically transforms people into an humane, moral, prosperous, peaceful society. It is rather the selflessness and generosity and love and purity that flow out of people who have put on Christ in Holy Baptism that create communities that are a joy for people to live in. It is that spirit of kindness that we see in older, pre-modern societies that we inwardly long for in our day of dog-eat-dog economic competition. It is the kind of thing one experienced, for example, in the Old South, when neighbors would help one another build a house for someone without asking for any remuneration for the work:
“When the logs for a house were cut and put on the ground near where the house was to be built the neighbors were invited to come to the house raising on a specified day. . . . A constant run of social chat, hunting feats, stirring incidents, interesting exploits, or political matters made the time pass pleasantly, and more like a good natured social gathering than the hard work it was” (Frank Owsley, Plain Folk of the South, LSU Press, Baton Rouge, La., 1982, pgs. 106, 107).
One of Romania’s newest saints, the renowned 20th-century theologian Fr Dumitru Staniloae, takes us even further, showing how human labor (i.e., economic actions) should be undertaken for the sake of solidarity and cooperation amongst people rather than for individuals to pursue their own designs with no thought for their neighbors:
Through work, moreover, every person obtains the means necessary not only for himself, but also for his neighbors. Humans must work and think in solidarity with regard to the transformation of the gifts of nature. Thus, it is through the mediation of nature that solidarity is created among humans, and work, guided by thought, is a principal virtue creative of communion among humans. Human subjects become transparent to one another through nature in this way, that is, through their thought and work applied to nature in solidarity, as mutual help. Furthermore, inasmuch as the communion between human subjects is maintained by responsibility toward the supreme subject, God becomes, in His turn, transparent through the nature He has given, so that men might grow in communion through their work.
Work thus bears the sign of love among men, while in virtue of its tiring and ascetical character, work makes men spiritual just as it spiritualizes the fruits that nature gives them (The Experience of God, Vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification, trans. and ed. Ionita and Barringer, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline, Mass., 2000, pgs. 4-5).
This kind of attitude toward work is anathema to Americanism, but it nevertheless is the death knell for that cult and for its adjuncts like enlightened self-interest. Just as the brutal pagan Roman system that abused women and slaves and left unwanted babies to die on the side of the road was rejected over time in favor of the love and generosity that the Roman people saw and experienced in the Orthodox Church, so also will the system of enlightened self-interest that leads to gargantuan wealth disparities and lack of care for the poor be rejected by folks in the States if the Orthodox Christians living within them will live their Tradition faithfully.
It is the ‘unenlightened’ lack of economic cunning that many people yearn for today, the radical generosity that Christ the Lord embodies, the very thing that one finds throughout the history of the Orthodox Church in the lives of her saints – St John the Merciful of Alexandria (+7th century), for example:
He considered his chief task to be charitable and to give help all those in need. At the beginning of his patriarchal service he ordered his stewards to compile a list of all the poor and downtrodden in Alexandria, which turned out to be over seven thousand men. The saint ordered that all of these unfortunates be provided for each day out of the church’s treasury.
Twice during the week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, he emerged from the doors of the patriarchal cathedral, and sitting on the church portico, he received everyone in need. He settled quarrels, helped the wronged, and distributed alms. Three times a week he visited the sick-houses, and rendered assistance to the suffering. . . .
The saint never refused suppliants. One day, when the saint was visiting the sick, he met a beggar and commanded that he be given six silver coins. The beggar changed his clothes, ran on ahead of the Patriarch, and again asked for alms. Saint John gave him six more silver coins. When, however, the beggar sought charity a third time, and the servants began to chase the fellow away, the Patriarch ordered that he be given twelve pieces of silver, saying, “Perhaps he is Christ putting me to the test.”
Generosity of this kind isn’t exclusive to the Orthodox Church, but it will be found there more consistently than anywhere else, as the Holy Trinity Himself is within her, is united to her.
Neither the uber-capitalists like Musk and Trump nor the socialist/communist opposition of Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani have much to offer the struggling middle and lower classes in the US. Both of those economic systems tend to empower and enrich a small clique of men and women while driving the rest of the population into perpetual debt and servitude. It is especially disappointing to hear the MAGA Evangelical Protestants proclaim that enlightened self-interest is consistent with Christian morality. It clearly is not. Their refusal to repent of that error is not going to serve anyone well. We are more than happy to work with the Trumpian Protestants on other issues – promoting a pro-life culture, protection of families and children against the LGBT onslaught, reducing divorces and gambling, etc. But on economics, that cooperation will be questionable for now.