Economic Crises and the Bible
By Martin G. Selbrede The Covenant News ~ November 26, 2008
Original thoughts, with some material adapted from other Chalcedon authors, Matthew Henry, and G. Campbell Morgan
A Nation’s Money: God’s Test for Justice
The Bible ties a nation’s monetary policy to the concept of
justice. To God, the two are inseparable. You see how just a
society is by examining the foundational nature of its money.
Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in
weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just
ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have. (Lev. 19:35-36)
Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a
small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a
great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just
weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have…. For all
that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an
abomination unto the Lord thy God. (Deut. 25:13-16)
Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath.
(Ezek. 45:10)
People were forbidden to possess false weights on their
person or in their home. Every measure of value (particularly
monetary value) was to be just and perfect. They were either a
delight or an abomination to God (Prov. 11:1, Prov. 16:11).
We live in an age where “the law is slacked” (Hab. 1:4).
We are “partial in the Law” (Mal. 2:9), victims of the great
American Christian coma, and so we tolerate the monetary
abominations God condemns. America uses fiat money, unbacked
by gold or silver, which constitutes the “divers weight
and measure” God hates. Measures of value that delight God
were criminalized when FDR signed Presidential Executive
Order 6102 on April 5, 1933: “All persons are hereby required
to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal
Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member
bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold
bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming
into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933.” Punishment:
up to 10 years of imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Von
Mises wrote that “in the absence of the gold standard, there is
no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.
There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government
would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the
case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all
his bank deposits to silver or copper, and thereafter declined
to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would
lose their purchasing power and government-created bank
credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial
policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for
the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby
secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. If one
grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’
antagonism toward the gold standard.”
A surprise discovery in Micah
The prophet Micah defines money held in unjust forms (fiat
paper money like the U.S. dollar) as “the treasures of wickedness.”
“False measures are called the treasures of wickedness,
the essential means of falsifying the life of a society” (Rushdoony).
Micah’s claim occurs in a highly quoted Old Testament
verse, Micah 6:8: “He has shown thee, O man, what is
good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, to do justly,
love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.” Pastors routinely
sever this verse from its context (justice and money). It’s
universally quoted yet universally misunderstood.
“He has shown thee, o man, what is good…” God has
shown us: we don’t have to create new policies. What is good
and just has been spelled out. Micah speaks to all men (“O
man”) – not just to Jews, but to Gentiles and to us today.
“…and what doth the Lord require of thee…” What is
good is what the Lord requires of us. What God requires is
for our good and achieves good personally and culturally.
What is required has been shown to us: it is not up in the air;
it is not in the New Testament (or the verse would have used
the future tense, “He will show thee, o man, what is good…”).
God has shown, past tense, in the Old Testament.
“… to do justly…” Here is the crux of the entire matter.
The Lord requires us to do justly. And He has already shown
what this means – in His Law. Pastors too often amputate this
verse from its context, but Micah is simply reasserting Deut.
16:20, which literally reads, “Justice, justice, shalt thou do!”
“… to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
Because pastors seem to nail “mercy” and “walking humbly
with God” in sermons, giving them “a strong finish,” the flock
rarely detects the weak exposition that “to do justly” receives.
The forgotten context of that Micah passage
Micah 6:9 reads “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city, and
the man of wisdom shall see Thy Name: hear ye the rod, and
who hath appointed it.” It’s a serious situation: God is already
crying out to the city, voicing a warning, and men of wisdom
hear it and discern God’s name in it: “Hear ye the rod, and
Who hath appointed it.” A few men of wisdom foresaw the
Lord’s Name in America’s looming financial judgments
decades in advance, hearing the rod while it was yet afar off.
“Hear ye the rod” means every rod has a voice – God never
executes judgment without giving the reason for it (Ps.
119:67, 71). Why should a rod be appointed for us? The next
verses explain why America has earned its appointment.
Micah 6:10-11: “Are there yet the treasures of wickedness
in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is
abominable? Shall I count them pure with the wicked
balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights?” These four
concepts explain one another. Deceitful weights involve
wicked balances resulting in the scant measure which
constitute treasures of wickedness. Fiat currencies are not
only abominable and unjust, they are also treasures of wickedness.
The bag equates to today’s wallets, bank accounts,
savings accounts, and treasuries. What is in our bags today?
Deceitful weights! No wonder Noah Webster described legal
tender laws (which force people to accept fiat paper
currencies in lieu of gold or silver) as “the devil in the flesh.”
Micah informs the people who use fiat money that “Thou
shalt eat but not be satisfied: and thy casting down shall be in
the midst of thee…” (v. 14). The origin of the destruction of a
nation is in the midst of thee: the nation will be broken and
ruined by internal crises. God can cast down a nation from the
inside. National defense can protect a country’s borders from
external invasion, but it cannot protect from destruction from
within, the form that this particular rod of God will take.
A long-standing, multi-generational problem
The cause of a nation’s judgment is revealed in Micah 6:16:
“For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the
house of Ahab….” The word For at the beginning is
equivalent to Because. The laws and policies of previous
administrations in Israel’s past were a primary cause of the
threatened internal ruin. Omri and Ahab, kings long gone, still
worked their political poison, having established wickedness
by law (the statutes of Omri). “The wicked frame mischief
using law” (Ps. 94:20).
God’s Law has no statute of limitations. It was irrelevant
that Israeli practices seemed to stand the test of time, for God
had not waived the land Sabbath law (which He enforced after
490 years of Israel violating it). God is longsuffering but
won’t ignore long-standing defiance of His Law.
Ahab mixed Baal worship with Jehovah worship. Today’s
politicians are expected to follow Baal on the job and the
Lord in private. But as Elijah said, if Jehovah be God, follow
Him! To do so, we must abandon our love for the treasures of
wickedness that unjust weights give us. This means working
to restore honest currency tied to specie metals, and no longer
transmitting the corrupt statutes of our past onto our posterity.
Where have all the shepherds gone?
“Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a
perpetual backsliding? They hold fast deceit, they refuse to
return” (Jer. 8:5). We Americans are similarly deceived.
Jeremiah faced antinomianism (rejection of God’s laws)
disguised as a respect for God’s Law! “How do ye say, We
are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in
vain made He it: the pen of the scribes is in vain. The wise
men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have
rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?”
(Jer. 8:8-9). Literally: “Behold, the false pen of the scribes
hath wrought falsely.” Antinomianism was cloaked in feigned
respect for God’s Law, as today. (See paper on Theology.)
“For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my
people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace”
(Jer. 8:11). Today’s pulpits have largely been silent about the
treasures of wickedness. “For the pastors have become
brutish, and have not sought the Lord: therefore they shall not
prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered” (Jer. 10:22).
National sins are individual sins writ large
Jeremiah 9 speaks to the nation. But the prophet switches
focus to the individuals comprising the nation. “Let not the
wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man
glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches...”
(Jer. 9:23). Though Israel had kings and governors, responsibility
is laid on her citizens. National sins fall back on us.
The loss and recovery of God’s message in lawless times
Note the peculiar wording in Jer. 22:13: “Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work…” One would have expected laborer, not neighbor! It is the neighbor’s services that are being extracted without wages being involved, with the ruler not giving his neighbors anything for the work he receives.
This mirrors our modern tax code and the hidden taxes
that monetary inflation inflicts. Monetary inflation (the
devaluing of currency through fractional reserve banking and
other means) perpetuates unjust weights in a culture.
“I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will
not hear” (Jer. 22:21). Nations are warned in the midst of
prosperity, but refuse to hear. Jeremiah, seeking anyone who
might listen, cries to the earth itself: “O earth, earth, earth,
hear the word of the Lord!” (Jer. 22:29). None listened while
the rod was distant. The punishments came after seven years.
“For both prophet and priest are profane; yeah, in my
house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord” (Jer.
23:11). These pastors refused to address the issue of justice
biblically, using the language of orthodoxy yet rejecting His
Law. They “have rejected the word of the Lord; and what
wisdom is in them?” (Jer. 8:9b). Unanchored by God’s Law,
the personal opinions of pastors are worthless and dangerous.
In Jer. 23:16, Jeremiah warns that the nation’s teachers
“make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and
not out of the mouth of the Lord.” They leaned on their own
thinking, and thus they lowered the nation’s moral standards.
Many got their message by observing the times. But no godly
teacher ever finds his message by observing the times he lives
in. He declares God’s word to the times for their correction.
Jer. 23:30: “Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets,
saith the Lord, that steal my words every one from his
neighbour.” The prophets that steal my words from their
neighbors are those who refuse to apply God’s Law, God’s
justice, to their situation. Antinomianism, the “slacking of the
Law” (Hab. 1:4), is stealing God’s words from our neighbors.
A truly Levitical ministry delivers radically different
results: “[various leaders] and the Levites, caused the people
to understand the law: and the people stood in their place. So
they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave
the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Neh.
8:7-8). “And all the people went their way to eat, and to drink,
and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they
had understood the words that were declared unto them.” The
people rejoice at having had God’s words not stolen from
them, but read to them distinctly, with their leaders giving the
sense, so the people are caused to understand the reading.
The litmus test
“I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran…. But if they
had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear
my words, then they should have turned them from their evil
way, and from the evil of their doings” (Jer. 23:21-22).
Jeremiah is saying that the proof of the leaders’ faithfulness
to God’s word is measured by God’s people repenting
and changing their course. All the leaders had to do was to
stand in God’s counsel (accept God’s Word as authoritative
and act accordingly) and to cause God’s people to hear God’s
words (following the pattern of Nehemiah 8). The failure of
American Christians to even lift a finger to address the
treasures of wickedness (spawned by our fiat monetary policy
and lodging unchallenged in our shrinking bank accounts) is
strong proof that our pastors do not stand in God’s counsel,
nor do they cause God’s words to be heard by the people.
Faithful preaching causes a turnaround in the peoples’ lives. The people of God then work to be part of the long-term effort to overhaul their nation’s monetary system, working for just weights and measures that delight the Lord, not money that repels Him. (Just putting the words In God We Trust on coins that God regards as abominations is a brazen provocation against Him; it is to spit in His eye – see Taxation paper.) Even the first step down this road toward justice receives the blessing of God (Hag. 1:12-13).