{"id":1004,"date":"2011-06-26T05:53:46","date_gmt":"2011-06-26T09:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godonomics\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2011-06-26T19:04:32","modified_gmt":"2011-06-26T23:04:32","slug":"bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html","title":{"rendered":"Bible and Money: Why God Supports Free Market Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible supports free market capitalism for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1)<\/strong> Free market capitalism requires the voluntary exchange of goods and services. Therefore, Freedom is the fuel for the system.\u00a0 Someone must freely choose to buy your product forcing you to put their needs ahead of your own by setting a price and quality that THEY will want to buy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>2 Cor 3:17\u00a0 and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">From the theology of the Garden of Eden to the Exodus from Egypt, freedom is the\u00a0recurring\u00a0theme of the Bible. \u00a0Wherever\u00a0true followers of Christ have taken\u00a0seriously\u00a0the message of the Scripture, they have pushed for more freedom for everyone.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>2)<\/strong> The free market system is built on Biblical ideals:\u00a0 property rights, reward and incentive that are scattered throughout the Biblical narratives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>1 Timothy 5:8\u00a0 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house,he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">The early church reformers and followers of Christ wanted to design a system where everyone provided for his own. \u00a0This bedrock ideal was part of the framework for the their understanding of the free market system.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Here is a clip between Glenn Beck and I about the Biblical foundations for free market capitalism:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eazRzUl__q4\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eazRzUl__q4<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><strong>3)<\/strong> The free market always produces more prosperity throughout history. Socialism, communism, and increasing degrees of government interventionism always lead to poverty and loss of liberty.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Take this example from <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">The Mature Man<\/span> by David Dewitt<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">&#8220;One of the false values of the Soviet Communists was peace at all costs. There were signs in Romania that equated peace with their communist dictator Niklai Ceausescu. Signs such as &#8220;Ceausescu Is Peace.&#8221; He kept that peace alright. His secret police terrorized the country. Everybody was under surveillance. People were starved until they had to steal to survive. They stole corn from large government owned farms. They planted and raised the corn, but they couldn&#8217;t have any of it. The government sold the corn, probably to Russia, and Ceausescu would pocket the money. They had to steal the corn or else they would starve to death. The government knows they are stealing it, but won&#8217;t do anything about it unless they want to compromise someone. For example, they might want to know if a person is speaking against Ceausescu, so they would take his neighbor to jail. They tell the person they know he has been stealing, and won&#8217;t be released unless they inform on his neighbor. The stores in Romania were empty. There were lines to buy bread, meat, and gas. Bread was rationed. Meat was rationed to one chicken per family member per month. Meanwhile, Ceausescu was padding his already fat Swiss bank account with the money made selling Romania&#8217;s products to foreign markets. BUT HEY, AT LEAST THEY HAD PEACE.<\/p>\n<p>Finally in December of 1989 the Romanians had all the &#8220;peace&#8221; they could stand. The army refused orders to fire on their fellow citizens. That was followed by a few weeks of war between the regular army and Ceausescu&#8217;s secret police and foreign mercenaries. On Christmas Day in 1989, Nikolai Ceausescu was shot by a firing squad. Before his death he told his executioners they should restore power to him so that he could end all the violence they had caused and once again establish &#8220;PEACE.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Throughout history, every time socialism is tried. Everytime. The result is a loss of liberty. A loss of prosperity for the masses as the government confiscates property, rights, and incentive. \u00a0A loss of generosity is the net result of government interventionism.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, check out the two DVD series Godonomics at<span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\" target=\"_blank\"> <\/a><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.godonomics.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">[bcvideo vid=&#8221;812584802001&#8243; pid=&#8221;96582452001&#8243; height=&#8221;410&#8243; width=&#8221;480&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bible supports free market capitalism for a variety of reasons. 1) Free market capitalism requires the voluntary exchange of goods and services. Therefore, Freedom is the fuel for the system.\u00a0 Someone must freely choose to buy your product forcing you to put their needs ahead of your own by setting a price and quality&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[262,263,261,264],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalismsocialism","tag-gods-financial-wisdom","tag-gods-principles-for-finances","tag-the-bible-and-money","tag-why-socialism-is-evil"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bible and Money: Why God Supports Free Market Capitalism - Godonomics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bible and Money: Why God Supports Free Market Capitalism - Godonomics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Bible supports free market capitalism for a variety of reasons. 1) Free market capitalism requires the voluntary exchange of goods and services. 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Therefore, Freedom is the fuel for the system.\u00a0 Someone must freely choose to buy your product forcing you to put their needs ahead of your own by setting a price and quality&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html","og_site_name":"Godonomics","article_published_time":"2011-06-26T09:53:46+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-06-26T23:04:32+00:00","author":"chadhovind","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html","name":"Bible and Money: Why God Supports Free Market Capitalism - Godonomics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-06-26T09:53:46+00:00","dateModified":"2011-06-26T23:04:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/#\/schema\/person\/b94809cbc6e13eafdb08a63d1825e37a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/bible-and-money-why-god-supports-free-market-capitalism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bible and Money: Why God Supports Free Market Capitalism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/","name":"Godonomics","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Chad Hovind","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/#\/schema\/person\/b94809cbc6e13eafdb08a63d1825e37a","name":"chadhovind","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5ce\/5ce450f147d7562d63fa6a7f70df8143x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/5ce\/5ce450f147d7562d63fa6a7f70df8143x96.jpg","caption":"chadhovind"},"description":"Chad Hovind is Senior Pastor of Horizon Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Moody Bible College in Chicago, majoring in pastoral ministry and communication. His love for ministry and creativity can be seen in many forms: leading teams, expository teaching, acting, and video production. He has served as pastor at two high-impact churches in Georgia: Cumberland Community Church and New Community Church. Chad received an M.A. in Ministry from Moody Graduate School in 2008. He loves volleyball, movies, and hanging out with his wife Beth and their three children.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/author\/chadhovind"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1006,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions\/1006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}