Elliot Ritzema

Category: Economics

  • June 2010: Books Read

    1. Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I’d had this book on my shelf for a while, and after reading Eric Metaxas’ excellent biography last month, I decided to stay in the mental world of Bonhoeffer for a little longer by reading this book. As the title indicates, this is a collection of letters and papers that Bonhoeffer wrote beginning in the spring of 1943, when he was arrested and held in Tegel Prison in Berlin. He was a prisoner until his death two years later.

    For the first several months, he was only allowed to write to his family members, and each letter was read by a censor. In the fall of 1943, however, he was able to write smuggled letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, who was with the German army in Italy for much of this time. It is his letters to Bethge that really make this book a worthwhile read. In them, we find Bonhoeffer’s speculations on what “religionless Christianity” would look like, as well as his poems, the most famous being “Who am I?”

    I found this book particularly interesting after having the background filled in by the Metaxas biography. I was already familiar with most of the names mentioned in the letters. If anything, the tragic end of Bonhoeffer’s life was made even more poignant in this book than in the biography. In the biography, how Bonhoeffer’s death came about was reconstructed. This book, however, ends with three letters from Bonhoeffer’s parents which were never answered. In fact, they did not find out that he had been killed until three months afterward.

    2. Just How Married Do You Want to Be? by Jim and Sarah Sumner. This is a marriage book that I read out loud to my wife over several months. It is unique among marriage books mostly because of the couple who wrote it: she has a PhD in theology from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and he is a former stripper who was only a Christian for a few years when they met. They have had a lot of struggles in learning how to relate to one another, and they share what they have learned in this book. It is well worth reading because of her insights into biblical passages that deal with marriage, as well as their honesty about their struggles and the wisdom they have gleaned from working out their differences in community with others.

    3. Mind Your Own Mortgage by Robert Bernabe. Reviewed earlier here.

    4. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. I’d been hearing good things about this novel for a long time, and I finally picked it up for $1 at a library book sale this spring. I usually don’t read many recently published novels, but the buzz about this one was so consistent that I decided to give it a read.

    I was not disappointed. It is told from the perspective of an 11-year-old boy who lives in rural Minnesota with his father, an older brother and a younger sister. The father is a devout Christian man who works miracles at times, the older brother (Davy) is a 16-year-old who is strikingly independent and behaves like an adult, the narrator struggles with asthma, and the younger sister is a poet with an active imagination and an obsession with the Old West. The story is set in the early ’60s.

    It is a literary novel, with rich (but not too florid) prose – and a plot(!) which mainly involves revenge (on the part of Davy) and love and forgiveness (exhibited by the father, and learned throughout the book by the narrator). Because of the miraculous elements, some might be tempted to label this a magic realist novel. However, in Christianity (and in the book), miracles are not magical, nor can they be manipulated. They are sheer gift, and part of the narrator’s journey is learning how to notice and accept them.

  • Book Review: Mind Your Own Mortgage

    Mind Your Own Mortgage is a tract for the times. It was written in light of the recent financial meltdown, and seeks to get the U.S. economy in better shape by encouraging people to get their home economies in better shape.

    The book comes in three main sections: Get a Grip on It (your mortgage), Shop for It and Manage It. The first section gives the lay of the land, talking about how the mortgage market works and how so many people have managed to ruin their finances. The second section is all about the mortgage shopping process, and encourages you to select a mortgage using the Mind Your Own Mortgage shopping system which uses forms from an accompanying Web site (be warned: full access to the Web site requires a paid membership). The third section talks about how to pay down a mortgage efficiently and when to refinance.

    I am relatively young and have never owned a home, so this book was eye-opening for me. It taught me more about the mortgage business than I had ever known before. My head was spinning at points because of all the new information, especially while reading the second section. At the end of the book, I took away a few main principles, which Bernabe mentioned so frequently that I wasn’t allowed to forget: get a fixed-rate mortgage, not an adjustable-rate one. Shopping for a mortgage is about price (rate, points and fees), not about monthly payment. Don’t give in to the culture of consumption, but prioritize your spending so as to leave room for what’s important: relationships.

    Some of the details discussed in this book may well be out of date in a few years, but it seems to me that the principles Bernabe emphasizes will stand the test of time. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to buy a home, especially if they feel intimidated by the mortgage business or that they are living beyond their means.

  • March 2010: Books Read

    1. Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain. I’m a big fan of Mark Twain. As a fan of Twain’s, I have already read his most well-known works, like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I have also read Roughing It, Life on the MIssissippi and an awful lot of his essays. It was about time, then, that I got around to reading Puddn’head Wilson.

    It was not bad, but clearly there is a reason why this is not among his most-read stuff. It is about two children who were switched as infants, with one being raised as the scion of a wealthy family and the other being raised as a slave. The plot was interesting enough, but for a “mystery,” the ending was not at all surprising. The characters were not as compelling as in some of his better work. And this book was written in the 1890s, when Twain was becoming more and more of a cynic – as can easily be seen in the epigraphs at the beginning of every chapter. Though he was still talented, his later work is, with some exceptions, just not as entertaining to read.

    2. Jane Austen (Christian Encounters Series) by Peter Leithart. Reviewed earlier here.

    3. Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire by William T. Cavanaugh. This is an excellent, short work on the interaction between Christianity and economics. It is made up of four essays, and is only 103 pages long. Cavanaugh is Catholic, and draws mainly on Catholic theologians, but his theology is not so distinctly Catholic that other Christians can’t benefit from his insights.

    Cavanaugh critiques the definition of economic freedom as only “freedom from” and proposes instead that economic freedom ought to be “freedom for” participation in community and realizing our humanity more fully. He also critiques consumerism, globalization and the economics of scarcity. It is simultaneously a quick read and a dense read, and unfortunately I read it over a month ago and can’t describe its arguments with the nuance they deserve. It is a book well worth picking up, though.

    4. The Glory of Preaching: Participating in God’s Transformation of the World by Darrell W. Johnson. I studied preaching under Johnson at Regent College, so it was no surprise that I found much to agree with in this book. He honed the material for this book in his preaching classes, so a lot of it was not new.

    What is unusual about this book, as over against most other books about preaching, is Johnson’s confidence in the biblical text. That is not to say that other books on preaching are not confident in the Bible to change people’s lives. It is unusual, though, for a writer to say, as Johnson does, that when the living God speaks, something ALWAYS happens. Another unique thing about this book is that Johnson thinks preachers are not responsible for applying the text to people’s lives. I remember, when I was in preaching class, that some students pushed back on this. Johnson was adamant, though. Preachers can imply what the text means – they can state the truth that the text leads us to. But applying – that is, telling people what particular things they ought to do – is the job of the Holy Spirit.

    This is a wonderful book, and one that I will return to over the years.

    5. The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott. I decided that during Lent this year, in addition to fasting from something, I would read something that led me to focus on Jesus. I’ve had this book on my shelf since my time at Regent, and it is as good a book as any to accomplish that goal.

    There isn’t a lot that I could say about this book, aside from saying that it is a classic work on what Jesus’ death meant and means. If you are interested in learning more about what Jesus’ death accomplished, this is the first place to turn.

  • August 2009: Books Read

    1. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving From Affluence to Generosity by Ronald J. Sider. This book came out in 1977, and is regarded by many as a “classic.” The version I read was the fifth edition, updated in (I think) 2004.

    The book comes in four parts: the first part depicts the state of the world today, in which there are billions of poor people and millions of affluent people who could help. The second part shares a biblical perspective on poverty and possessions. The third attempts to answer the question, “What causes poverty?” And the fourth shares practical steps that Christians in rich countries can follow to both simplify their own lives and make wise contributions to making the world a more just and fair place.

    This was a challenging book for me. Although I don’t think of myself as affluent, I certainly live in an affluent part of the world and enjoy many more conveniences than those people who have to live on a few dollars a day. The main things that I got out of this book were 1) practical tips on living more simply, while simultaneously fostering community, and 2) a greater understanding of the economics of poverty. Lack of understanding the latter, I think, is a major obstacle that keeps Christians from helping the poor. We think that the foreign aid rich countries give to poor countries is a lot, but most actually give less than 1 percent of their GNP in foreign aid – and much of this aid is tied to their own foreign policy interests. We think that this aid is more than enough to make up for inequalities caused by things like tariffs and the abusive practices of some multi-national corporations, but it is not. This is definitely a book that all Christians in wealthy nations should read. Even if not everyone agrees with Sider’s practical proposals, the problem of poverty is something that all Christians – if they are reading their Bibles and are genuinely seeking to be more like Jesus – are called to address.

    2. Praying With the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today by Scot McKnight. McKnight was raised in a Christian tradition that had no use for daily set prayers, but as an adult he has come to appreciate and even love them. Like McKnight, I was raised in a Christian tradition that did not have set prayers (though we did recite the Lord’s Prayer and the “Gloria Patri” every week in church). As an adult, I have been more and more interested in the practice of daily prayer times as I have come to understand how deep they go in the Christian tradition.

    McKnight’s book is a quick read and it comes in two parts: the first deals with Jesus’ own use of set prayers (Jews of his time recited prayers daily, and what we call the “Lord’s Prayer” is Jesus teaching his disciples something to pray every day). The second part serves as an introduction to four prayer books: the Orthodox Manual of Eastern Orthodox Prayers, the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and Phyllis Tickle’s modern ecumenical Divine Hours. I would recommend this book to anyone who, like me, wants to have a richer prayer life and who is less familiar with the tradition of set prayers and how to use a prayer book.

    3. The Ascent of a Leader: How Ordinary Relationships Develop Extraordinary Character and Influence by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNichol and Ken McElrath. Throughout my time in graduate school, I felt that it was more important to spend my time reading deep theology books than leadership books. But as I grow closer to (hopefully) taking on more leadership in a church setting, and as I become more aware that it is rarely bad theology that gets pastors kicked out of churches, I’ve become more interested in leadership literature. Earlier this year I read Now, Discover Your Strengths, and I’ve just recently completed The Ascent of a Leader.

    The “ascent” the authors talk about is climbing the “character ladder” rather than the “capacity ladder.” The capacity ladder is what leaders are able to do on their own, and it comes with four rungs: discover what I can do, develop my capacities, acquire a title or position and attain individual potential. Climbing up just this kind of ladder can lead to loneliness and failure. Rather, spurred on by environments and relationships of grace, leaders should climb the character ladder: trust God and others, choose vulnerability, align with truth, pay the price and discover destiny. Once you start to climb the character ladder, you can integrate it with the capacity ladder, “leveraging our capacities far beyond what we could have accomplished without character” (143). I found this book to be a good reminder of how important character is in everyday life.

    4. The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight. I’d heard a lot about this little book in recent months, and when I was at the Covenant’s annual meeting in Portland this summer, I was able to pick it up. The title comes from a time when McKnight was sitting in his backyard and saw a strange blue bird that he had never seen before. Turns out it was a parakeet that had escaped from someone’s cage. The “blue parakeets” of the title are “oddities in the Bible that we prefer to cage and silence rather than to permit into our sacred mental gardens” (208). Issues like Sabbath, foot washing, tithing and women in ministry are blue parakeets that many of us don’t quite know what to do with: do we try to retrieve all practices from biblical times? Do we try to retrieve only what we can salvage for our day and our culture? Do we read through tradition? Or do we read in dialogue with tradition? McKnight counsels us to read the Bible as a Story. We should read this Story in order to get to know the God behind it. And we should discern through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community how to continue living that Story in our own day. McKnight provides an example of discernment in the issue of women in ministry.

    This is a wonderful book, and I hope it finds its way into the hands of lots of people. All Christians interpret the Bible in some way, but there are so few books for a popular audience on how to best interpret it. As a result, many are left thinking that the way their pastor or their immediate community interprets the Bible is self-evidently the only way. This is unfortunate.

    This isn’t a perfect book, by any means. Since it is short, and meant for a popular audience, McKnight ends up dealing with some complicated issues very briefly. As a result, I doubt whether he will convince many people who, for example, are thoroughly antagonistic to women’s ordination. But since the book is for a popular audience, and no popular book can deal with these issues in great detail, I still highly recommend it.

    5. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I have never seen the movie version of this book, and I was surprised on reading it to find that Scarlett O’Hara is one of the more malevolent and despicable literary protagonists I have ever read about – and I have read Anna Karenina. Like Anna Karenina, the real hero of this book is someone besides the main character: in Anna Karenina it is Levin (who, I’ve heard, Tolstoy modeled after himself), and in Gone With the Wind, it seems to me that the heroine is really Melanie Wilkes. But in both books, the intended hero is far overshadowed by protagonists who are such finely written, true-to-life characters that, despite their badness, they steal the show. It’s a great credit to Margaret Mitchell that she could create such a believable character as Scarlett – even if she is so believable that I genuinely didn’t like her.

    6. The Theology of the Book of Revelation by Richard Bauckham. We have been reading through the book of Revelation in our Bible study, and I have taken it on myself to do background reading and lead the discussion. Part of that background reading has been this fantastic little book (it’s only 169 pages). Bauckham, who retired a couple of years ago from being Professor of New Testament at St. Andrews, digs into the theological content of Revelation and finds that it has perhaps the most developed trinitarian theology in the New Testament. He doesn’t spend a lot of time criticizing various interpretations of the book, but it’s clear that he doesn’t think futurist or historicist interpretations do a very good job of making sense of the imagery in the book. This is a dense little book, and it doesn’t move chronologically through the text. For those who want to read it, I’d recommend reading Revelation first to get a sense of it, then read this book, and then go back and read Revelation again with new eyes.

  • Truth Project 11: Labor (Created to Create)

    My group finished the Truth Project two weeks ago, but I’ve still got a couple of tours to review. This one is on Labor, and the last one is on Community.

    Del begins this penultimate tour by asking what the fourth commandment is. Anyone who knows the Ten Commandments would probably call it the Sabbath command, but Del calls attention to the fact that it begins with a command to work for six days (Exodus 20:9-11). He calls it instead the “labor command.” He goes on to say that the reason why God gave this command is because of his own nature: he rested on the seventh day and made it holy.

    The world’s view of work, according to Del, is that it is a “four-letter word.” It’s just something people do because they need the money. He says that “we’re seeing an increase in a negative view of work, corporations and this whole sphere.”

    Del then asks if God is concerned with economics, and whether he has spoken in this area. He refers us to James 5:4, which says, “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.” He also refers us to Proverbs 22:29, which says, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings…”

    Next Del turns to the historical example of Johannes Gutenberg and his invention of the printing press – arguably the most significant event of the last thousand years. Gutenberg worked, and his work changed the world. The world has certainly used the printing press and other inventions for evil, but the kingdom has been advanced by this and other inventions as well.

    Then Del returns to the Bible. In the early chapters of Genesis, God is depicted as the original worker, who placed Adam in the garden and told him to work it. This, says Del, shows that work was not originally a negative thing. Now it is often seen that way. What happened? Del’s answer is the curse of the Fall. His image of work before the Fall is of us in a canoe, paddling downstream. Now we are asked to paddle upstream. Work is still a good thing, but it is harder.

    Del stresses the importance of this sphere, but says that we (as Christians) don’t talk about it much. He gives us a general economic model in the style that he introduced to us in Tour 7: a circle with three actors in it. In the economic model, God is at the top, below and to the right is the steward, and at the bottom are material things. The important thing to remember in the general economic model is that God owns everything, and people are asked to take care of material things for him.

    After introducing us to the general economic model, Del lays out seven economic principles:

    1: All things belong to God (Ps. 50:7-12)

    2: God appointed man to be a creative steward of his goods with “ownership” rights. (Gen. 1:28) Under this principle Del defines economics as “management of the property that ultimately belongs to God over which He has placed a steward and over which that steward will be held accountable.” He also gives us a picture of the labor sphere: the Owner at the top, the worker below and to the right, and material things at the bottom. He refers to Ephesians 6:5-8 (“Slaves. obey your earthly masters…”) in this connection.

    3. Theft of another’s goods is wrong, (Ex. 20:15) and coveting another’s goods (like class envy and demand for redistribution) is wrong (Ex. 20:17).

    4. Skills and abilities to work come from God (Ex. 35:30-33)

    5. Work is profitable, good, and to be pursued; laziness is not (Prov. 14:23, 2 Thess. 3:10).

    6. Love God and not your goods (Matt. 6:19-20).

    7. Be compassionate and generous with your goods to those in need (Lev. 19:10). Del says that one of our responsibilities is to the poor: not to give them a handout, but to employ them. After quoting the verse in Leviticus, he says, “We need to ask ourselves, ‘What are the gleanings of our work?’” He says that the poor need a job. Where do those jobs come from? Not from the state, but from the sphere of labor.

    Del then shifts gears and starts talking about the arts and media. The presence and power of the arts and media are overwhelming, and Del quotes Francis Schaeffer as saying, “Whoever controls the media controls the culture.” Del asks whether truth applies to this area, and answers with an emphatic “yes.” If it doesn’t, he says, we will continually find ourselves persuaded by what is vile. He shows an interview with Gordon Pennington of Burning Media Group, who says that we ought to pursue truth in the area of the arts and media. We ought to approach work the way J.S. Bach approached his: at the end of most of his manuscripts, even his “secular” work, he wrote the initials SDG – Soli Deo Gloria, “For God’s Glory Alone.”

    Finally, Del shows an interview with Makoto Fujimura, an artist who argues that all art forms belong to God and urges Christians to leave behind their suspicion of the arts and pursue creative fields.

    I found this tour a welcome change from the previous tour, on the United States, in which I thought Del made some major errors. I think Del is correct in thinking that many Christians do not think about their work as Christians, and instead see it as just a way to earn money. Del’s call for Christians to devote more attention to the sphere of labor, and to think about work in terms of calling, is something that the church needs to hear.

    I also liked it that Del stressed Christians’ responsibility to the poor, not just to give them a handout, but to give them meaningful work. I was challenged by his question, “What are the gleanings of our work?” That is, what are the areas in which we can refrain from maximum wealth production for ourselves and instead provide the poor with work?

    I didn’t like Del’s implication that the relationships within this sphere are Trinitarian – but then, I expressed that objection during his tour on Sociology, so I don’t need to repeat it here.

    I also didn’t like it that Del laid the problems of this “sphere” at the feet of the world. Non-Christians are not the only ones who make work into a four-letter word. In fact, there are many non-Christians who love their work so much that it becomes an idol. I thought that Del was making a vast oversimplification here in saying that the “culture” thinks work is a bad thing. Some do. Some don’t. Del doesn’t help us relate to our neighbors when he paints with such a broad brush. Instead, he encourages us to think in caricatures.

  • Economic Meltdown Song

    Apparently, humor can be found in just about anything.

    (Thanks to Ryan H. for telling me about these guys. Oddly enough, I had never heard about them until a month ago, even though they grew up in Buies Creek and now live in Lillington, which are both very close to Fayetteville, where I grew up.)