A major theme of Scripture is to accent a Christian culture, and illustrate it. This is partly done in offering critique about the dangers in a wholly human (nature) culture. One of the secrets in understanding all this is to attend to the motivation factor. The balance of selfishness (self) and altruism (others) makes an interesting study. For example, the emphasis of a person may be so strong in self orientation that nearly everything is done to protect the interest of that individual. Wealth may be sought for the purpose of accumulation. The individual, or group of individuals (family or corporation), seeks wealth for the purposes identified by a closed entity for various reasons that may be identified as selfish. It may be to cultivate a materialistic life, to gain power through control of resources, to satisfy pride in accumulation, or some other self-centered drive. Another person seeks wealth in order to accomplish good for family and society. There is quite a difference from achieving wealth for personal aggrandizement. There are persons who have a gift for accumulating wealth. For some it is a gift, but for most it is the reward of work, of creativity, of accident, or some other context of experience. Motivations, attitudes, purposes of the individual or group, form interpretation for it. Scripture observes the right and wrong purposes and uses.
The stock exchange is both good and evil, depending upon what the individual makes of it. For those who look to it as a means for financing business for the benefit of society; who see it as a means for saving for the care of their retirement years and continued contribution to social good; for those who would use it as an element and means for balancing the social economy – the market becomes necessary and good so deserves to exist and be supported in ethical process. For those who use it as a means for gambling; for excess in self-centered purposes; for manipulating to private context – the market is distorted and made to appear ugly, even a violation of society. All orientations are acting together. One is blessed of God and the other is condemned. Society is clumsy in applying the good context, maintaining the benefits, and resisting the evil creating not only social pain, but a negative approach to some parts of the national context, creating odd habits and feelings like hoarding, defeatism, recession, greed, and negative interpretations of institutions.
Illustrations of the concepts above are many. History captures some of them. Violations of the good have led to odd practices including theories of governments that socialize life, in the claim, perhaps belief, that the larger group can govern the wrong intent. The problem is that clever persons who would deprave this or that institution are offered power to deprave government. That is what happened in some communist experiments. Or the resistance may show itself in communes where there is a simple lifestyle carried through with a constant doubt of the system of free society built on ethical standards of concern for all people not only for those of the commune. The answers for a modern society are not to be found in communes. The world has too large a population to make a limited application of good to a manageable commune, that to be effective, must take away some of the freedoms of its population, even when the members agree on the management of the commune. No commune can build an airplane, a skyscraper, a generator of this or that major product. It can by reverting to something of a rural society present a pleasant life and offer human values in a simplified context. It is stalled in a faulty world culture. A study of the life of Henry Ford provides lessons we want to find here. He was gifted to develop an automobile that would serve, not the rich, but the masses. He astounded the world in offering jobs that paid more than amounts necessary for survival – five dollars a day when the national average was roughly half that. He awakened the nation to better wages, so that the people could afford to buy his cars. The story is inspiring. Then something happened that wizened him. He turned to the personal interest, the belief that only he could decide what to do with the wealth and power he had gained. He resisted some workers he had invited openly. Some were killed when guards carried out policy. He capitulated only when his wife insisted he do so – or else. His independence engendered by the largeness of accumulation authority overcame him. Had he sustained what appears to have been original concern for others, he might now be touted the greatest industrialist. We seek models for verification. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020