GOD’S BAILOUT PLAN
Rev. Dr. Kathy Fuson Hurt
FBC, October 12, 2008
Scripture: Exodus 32:1-14
There was a time when even the late great comedian George Carlin could make financial matters funny. With such jokes as, “Why is the man or woman who invests all your money called a broker?”, or “It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it,” Carlin once could elicit laughter.
But these days, not even George Carlin money jokes are funny. When the stock market is in free fall, when the credit system freezes up, when home foreclosures become commonplace and the unemployment index rises alongside as our national trade deficit, when even a bailout totaling $700 billion is not enough to help—then finance is no longer gist for joking around. Who can laugh while watching life savings disappear and a bill mount that will fall on the shoulders of our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren to pay?
In such financially anxious times, it can be hard not to get pulled into the arguments of unhealthy religion, arguments that we usually dismiss with little effort. Money is the root of all evil: hard, isn’t it, not to believe that an excess love of money prompted the run of greed that resulted in much of our current fiscal mess. The prosperity gospel, which claims that God blesses good people with success and punishes sinners with failure: hard, isn’t it, not to be haunted by the feeling that some sort of divine judgment may be at work when day after day brings ever more devastating news and nothing we do seems capable of fixing things. Jesus told his wealthy listeners to sell all they owned and give the proceeds to the poor: hard, isn’t it, not to wonder whether we should have heeded his advice instead of hoarding money and possessions that are now losing value daily. And maybe somewhere, in the midst of this turmoil, you hear yourself resorting to that old spiritual standby of bargaining with God: keep me from losing everything, God, and I promise I’ll make a bigger pledge to the church, give more money to charities, simplify my life. How scared are you right now? How bad has our financial situation become? And how much worse can it get?
While the specific concerns of the Israelite people may not have been so fiscally focused as ours, the underlying issue they faced in today’s scripture reading was very much like the underlying issue we wrestle with now, an issue of which the current financial upheaval is a symptom, the same issue that is wending its way through our church these days, the same issue that repeatedly threatens any one of us when the way forward becomes unclear, when vision fails, when our sense of security is undermined, when emptiness opens up around and within us. At all such moments, the same fear rises and we ask the same question: who can we trust—to support us, to guide us, to keep us from falling, to save us? Who can we trust?
Like all people everywhere, in every time, the Israelites made their unhappiness known by complaining to the person in charge. For Americans these days, that means complaining to pollsters and politicians; for church members, that means complaining to the Board and the pastor; for the Israelites, it meant complaining to Aaron, who was running things while Moses was on the mountaintop hanging out with God. And like all people everywhere, in every time, the complaint took the same form: we are afraid, we don’t know what is happening, do something to ease our anxiety. And for the Israelites, as for unhappy Americans and concerned church members, the “something” that is to be done involves a return to the way life used to be. Take us back to the life we had in Egypt, certain of our daily routines as slaves; take us back to the days of astronomical home prices and easy credit; take us back to the days of activism and operating by the seat of our pants. Take us back, out of this all now too much for us, take us back to that golden time when we knew who we were and what lay ahead and how to proceed. Take us back, take us back. Faced with unhappy people, Aaron responded in much the same way leaders usually do in the face of unhappiness: he gave the people what they asked for. He took them back—not literally back to Egypt, but symbolically back by providing a familiar god and familiar rituals and wonderfully clear and simple answers, everything that any of us desires when we cannot see who to trust, when anxiety is high and the way is hard. Aaron brought out an idol, a golden calf, the magic bull market that solves all our dilemmas by opening up access to money, the familiar ways of doing church, the way things used to be, the idol that represents all we want without hardship or sacrifice, without change or ambiguity.
Whenever I hear this story, I invariably find myself sympathetic with Aaron, even though he carries much of the blame for the Israelites’ transgression at this point. Perhaps you, too, have found yourself in Aaron’s shoes, facing unhappy family members, unhappy students, unhappy coworkers, unhappy voters, unhappy investors, unhappy neighbors, an unhappy congregation, and unable to withstand the unhappiness, yielded to the demands for an idol, an easy way out, a return to the way things used to be—even when you knew that doing so was unwise. Making people happy becomes all that matters.
And just what is it about an idol, a golden calf, a bull market, the way church used to be, the way this country used to be, that calls to us so, that draws us irresistibly, often against our better judgment? It must be something basic to human nature, a tendency always present, especially under stress, for scripture is full of warnings and punishments and commands that repeatedly insist on the need to avoid idols and idol worship at all costs. What we most want under stress, I believe, is a restoration of control—ideally our own control, but if not that then a reassurance that someone is in control. And an idol is a wonderful symbol of control: it remains fixed in place, never changes, we can put it anywhere we want, make of it anything we want, it tells us exactly what we want to hear, never challenges us with a reminder of our own limits, stays safely within its limits as an idol, a thing we create ourselves. One of the best idols we have ever discovered, an idol we return to again and again, the best reassurance of security, the best infusion of power and control we know, an idol worshipped by religious people and skeptics, by believers and atheists, by churches of all kinds including our own, is the idol of finance. Like many churches, we make decisions here based not so much on whether a goal is worthy, or whether a program will enhance spiritual growth, or whether we sense a call from God to follow a particular path or serve a particular need or implement a particular mission: we first, first ask whether we have the money to do it. If the budget seems to bless our plans, then we go forward; if the budget tells us the money is not there, then we decline. Every church I have known, when a deficit seems imminent, looks first to cut funds for mission and outreach—the one church expenditure that has no direct benefit for the institution itself. Far more time is spent in our annual meetings discussing the proposed budget than any other item—and I have yet to see or hear of a church that spends even half as much time in prayer as it does pondering a balance sheet. Money, power, control: the perfect idol, unsurpassed even by God Almighty.
In a discussion of religious finance, or fiscal religion, Catholic theologian Tom Beaudoin argues that we serve and worship within a system of theocapitalism, which he defines as “a system of seeking prosperity that functions like a religion, or perhaps a religious cult” (McLaren, p. 190). Like any good religion, Beaudoin says theocapitalism gives us identity (through the purchase of the right products), a sense of community (everyone is buying this, wearing this, driving this), promises conversion (when we switch to the new brand), provides experiences of ecstasy and transcendence (as we finally reach a long-sought status, buy a new home, drive a new car, accumulate a large stock portfolio), and—most important for us these days—it grows our trust “by making and keeping advertising promises, thus reduc[ing] the anxiety of making choices” as we see our joy and anticipation of good deals and profits and reliable consumer products come true. (pp. 190-91).
When Aaron had finished making the golden calf from the people’s jewelry, he invited everyone to enjoy a festival day. The passage says the people did just that: “they rose early the next day, and brought burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel” (Exodus 32:6). In much the same manner, the priests of finance invited us to eat and drink and revel, to sign up for subprime mortgages, to extend our credit endlessly, to buy now with no interest or payments until next year, to expect no end in sight for a rise in income and prosperity and stock prices and home prices and cheap gas. The idol always preaches the same message to us: you have no limits, you need never sacrifice your comfort and security and well-being, you deserve to be happy always, someone else can bear the responsibility. And somehow we keep believing it, until something happens, as is happening now, to betray our trust in this bogus message. We are not gods; we do have limits; consequences come when we act otherwise.
While I have no particular gift for economic insight, and while I cannot claim to have read carefully through the entire bailout plan recently signed into law, what I have seen of the plan thus far concerns me both financially and spiritually. Financially, it seems to have little incentive for us to change the worship of theocapitalism that helped create this crisis; spiritually, it seems to encourage our continued reliance on idols and their oh-so-pleasing, so destructive, message to live as though we have no limits, no responsibilities to those who come after us. So I wonder what might happen if we, as people of faith who have always felt called to bring a countercultural message of justice to the world, offered a spiritual bailout plan to complement—or contradict—the government’s bailout plan.
The bailout plan seeks to help out the housing market by covering defaulted mortgages or renegotiating them. A worthy goal, it seems, to keep people in their homes; but a more spiritual version of these terms would have included a community vision alongside this individualized vision, with new possibilities for housing that no longer heightens the gap between rich and poor, that no longer pursues development without concern for sustainability. God’s economy places a premium on the common good.
The bailout plan seeks to address the credit crisis by assisting banks and businesses with insufficient funds due to bad loans. Again, a worthy goal; we need access to credit for economic growth to occur. A more spiritual version of this goal would have challenged the nation of growth being an unmitigated good, and instead sought to realize the scriptural goal of fruitfulness that comes from patience and care, not from competition and speed.
And the bailout plan includes measures intended to turn the stock market around so that trading and profits rise. All well and good for business and for the economy—but not necessarily good for us spiritually, as it assumes we need to be encouraged to consume more, to want more, to spend more, to covet more. A spiritual bailout plan would instead focus on teaching us to want less, to consume less, to spend less, to be satisfied with what we already have, maybe even to make sacrifices on behalf of the common good. In God’s economy, the goal is not more, not a lot, but simply enough. For most of us here, middle class white Americans, the shift from having more and a lot to enough would be an extremely difficult transition, sure to produce feelings of resentment. Learning to need not more, but just enough, could be our hardest economic lesson—and it is not a lesson our culture or our political system is eager to have us learn.
George Carlin included in his financial humor the observation that he “put a dollar into a change machine. Nothing changed.” His comment points to the challenge of escaping the church of theocapitalism, when all about us are golden calves and other idols that encourage us to keep believing. Perhaps our current economic crisis will also prove to be a spiritual crisis for us, shattering our faith in competition and progress through rapid growth, undermining our trust in wanting and getting more, turning us into fiscal atheists. Like any loss of faith, such a transformation would be painful, not something we would choose to undergo. But since the crisis is already upon us, may God enable us to move into it and through it with real faith, not a faith in idols but a faith in the God who is beyond all we can imagine, who promises to feed and guide us in the wilderness times of our lives such as we are in now, the God who keeps us from falling along with the stock market, the God who extends to us a credit line of everlasting love that can never max out, never lose value, never be withdrawn, no matter what.
