Van Duzer's Ideas Under Biblical Light

Christianity and Economics: How should Christian businessmen behave if they wish the market to behave accordingly to Biblical teachings?

Jose Abraham Mena.

To reconcile science and faith is not an easy task. In the process one may find his or herself in the spot of ambiguity too often. Mankiw’s vision of economics, scrutinized under the light of the Bible, is an example of how science fails to be either completely Biblical or completely secular. This makes sense taking into account that economics depends upon man-made transactions and, as all man-made items, it is inherently imperfect and inconsistent with Biblical laws.

        Jeff Van Duzer’s analysis of the economic world has a unique point of view: the Christian individual. Compared to Mankiw’s macroeconomic views it makes sense these two disagree largely since the story is being told from the opposite sides. For Mankiw an individual, or a single firm, is only a price taker who most go along with the behemoth market which itself is guided by the invisible hand of the masses. Van Duzer disagrees and, although he does not claim that individuals can make a huge change in the market, he does imply that a firm’s individual market-parting decisions condemn it to be an outcast. How these two stand compared to Biblical teachings? They both fail.

Mankiw’s idea fails to follow the basic community encouraged by Christ in the early church where all members were equal and helped each other selflessly. Van Duzer’s idea fails in the same way. Van Duzer does very little to offer a concrete examples of how a Christian should behave in the economic realm and in those few times he does he implicitly encourages the idea of a lonely Christian warrior who goes against the set ideals in order to close the gap between money and Christian values.  Although the idea of a lonely warrior fighting the established evil order is highly admirable and highly exalted, it is largely not Biblical. If Christian individuals are to lead a change in the economic values it would be as a team building each other up while covering each other weaknesses; not each building themselves up by competing with each other covering weaknesses up with market strategies.

        A theme does run behind the ideas of both author’s and that is:  survival. For Mankiw and Van Duzer economic survival means what you need to make, in other words: fixed costs. Mankiw has many ideas on how to behave once you are making profit and a few on how to behave once you are no longer making economic profit. Van Duzer often refers to this situation and explicitly says that “Christians in business should expect that their call to a Christian ethic will at times be at odd with what it will take to remain …” Seems then that the morality question lives in the normal profit area, in other words: when times are hard. This is a reflection of how economics is completely modeled after human nature. The last time I prayed was when I had a big exam coming up and I needed a miracle. Many, not all, but many Christians may related to this. That does not inherently make inconsistent prayer bad or insincere it just makes it human. This entire physical world is human; that includes economics, religion, relationships, education, and the list goes on and on. The items in the last above do have their flaws as the designers (humans) have flaws hence the question of how economics relate to Biblical teachings should not be asked because it does naturally wants nothing to do with the Bible; instead the question should be how do we incorporate Biblical teachings into economics. Here Van Duzer does show scenarios that Christians may face and the implications it has. One such example relates to the real company TOMS.