Page 16 - Cedarville Magazine Spring 2013 Volume 1 Issue 1

16 | Cedarville Magazine
GOD’S’
When some people think of
“capitalism,” they think of
robber barons in waistcoats and
top hats smoking cigars and standing on
the masses of poor whom they exploited
to make their millions. But we could
reasonably substitute the more accurate
and less loaded term “economic liberty,”
the economic system whereby people seek
provision for themselves and for those in
their care under laws that govern their free
exchange of labor and goods and in the
legal security of the gain they accrue.
There are twoways of seeking prosperity:
plunder and production. Plunder (theft,
freebooty) is obviously wrong, though it’s
not obvious to everyone. Plunder, by its
nature, is competitive. One person’s gain is
another’s loss. You have an iPod, I don’t. I
take your iPod. I have an iPod, and now you
don’t! But when people seek their prosperity
through production and exchange, there is
a harmony of gain.
To be sure, producers are self-seeking,
but they seek their gain only by paying
sympathetic attention to their neighbor’s
needs. For example, Ray Kroc saw that with
the wider use of the automobile, Americans
needed to get their food faster and simpler. He got rich, and we got
yummy fast food. Sam Walton got rich providing low-cost goods
under a big roof to ordinary people in small towns.
It is true that production can at times also resort to plunder,
such as when it markets adulterated food and unsafe products and
when it subjects employees to unsafe working conditions to increase
profits by reducing costs. For this reason, government regulation
is necessary. It’s a form of policing the economic streets to prevent
commercial mugging.
Production creates wealth, and that makes it profoundly
Christian. When God created man, He charged him with the
creation mandate: “take dominion over the earth.” God created
man from the dust of the ground. (Notice that the ground was
dusty and useless). Then He placed man in the garden. Adam thus
knew the dusty wilderness as well as the fruitful garden. And God
told him both to cultivate the garden and to rule the earth. That is,
Adamwas to bring out the wealth potential of the garden and to do
the same with the wilderness of the world so that the rich and godly
garden would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14).
Everyone who works and who makes work — entrepreneurs,
producers, laborers — is engaged in that enterprise of unfolding
the latent wealth in God’s creation, and as such they are a blessing
to their neighbors and their descendants, whether rich or poor.
Henry Ford’s assembly line systemmade cars available to ordinary
people and provided (through related companies and industries)
good jobs for countless people worldwide. When people do this
worshipfully, out of love for God (which Henry Ford did not), they
by D.C. Innes
Prosperity by Production (or Plunder)
D.C. Innes and Lisa Sharon Harper hold both similar and different perspectives on the economy and the government’s role.
They were co-presenters at last fall’s American Dream Conference, and they co-authored Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical
Faith in Politics. Their 2011 book explores their philosophical differences through the shared lens of their faith.
continued on page 18