What creation brings forth is a gift to be received, used, preserved and handed on to the coming generation

The word economy comes from the Greek oikos, which means house, household, and nomos, which means rule, law or custom. Put together into one word the meaning will be house-keeping, the way to manage or to be a steward of a house.

If economy is to be seen as a value-neutral, technical area of concern, the Christian or any other faith would have nothing to do with it. If, however, it is recognized that economy is an area of human concern, which to the same degree has to do with values and visions as with theories and facts, all is seen in a different light. If so, there is reason for a faith community to get involved in a public dialogue about economic planning. One can-not get away from the fact that economy is an area within which power is exercised, openly or covertly. The question of power is a spiritual question. It is about valuing life, the ordering of a just and human society and the use of the assets of creation.

In the collected biblical revelation – events where the divine will and expectation break through what is terrestrial and daily – there are many insights into richness and poverty. They can be summed up in a few comprehensive perspectives.

Stewards of a garden

A first point is that the position of human beings in creation is that of stewards. It all is based on the saying that "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein". What the earth can give through agriculture, fishing, mining, oil production, synthetic chemistry, electro-technique and the like, are not possessions to be claimed for oneself. They are gifts to be received, used, preserved and handed on to com-ing generations. The owner of all that can be produced out of creation is God. That is why the biblical tradition gives rules and laws to prevent the control of terrestrial posses-sions by a privileged few.

The first scene in the biblical revelation, where human beings come forward, is a garden, Eden, where the fruits of the earth are in abundance. There are possibilities for cultivation and development. There is also gold, bdellium and onyx stone with-in reach. Adam, the human being, was placed in the garden of Eden with an ex-hortation to "use and preserve it". In this there is a positive starting point for all kinds of cultivation, extraction, refinement and for all the science and tech-niques that have been developed over thousands of years to make the moment of human be-ings on earth tolerable and some times pleasant.

The conditions for the use are set by God, who is and remains the owner of the garden. Man is a tenant or a gardener, but not more. There are regulations about taking into con-sidera-tion the poor so as not to exploit and defraud them. One must not harden one's heart and close one's hand to the poor. "For the sake of a gift to the poor the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all you undertake."

There should be consideration for the stranger, the widow and the orphan. Those who harvest their fields, their olive-trees and their vineyards must have enough generosity to leave some-thing for those who have nothing and who wish to gather up what is left. The environment must be pro-tected by giving a Sabbath rest to fields and vineyards every seventh year. What still grows that year belongs to the poor.

Friends among the indebted

The prophets warn of a judgement that will come to those who "sell the innocent for money and the poor for a pair of shoes" and who twist the cause of the humble. "Woe unto you who add house to house and field to field until there is no more room and you are the only ones in the country." "Woe unto you who build your house with injustice … you who let your neighbour work for nothing and do not give him his reward." These regulations were valid for the children of Israel as part of the old covenant. The task in the new covenant with the nations in Christ's name, is to extend the principles to all in a demonstration of solidarity.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the rich man is criticized, not for his wealth but for closing his eyes to the miserable man at the gate. In another parable there is a rich man who plans to pull down his old barns in order to build bigger ones after a record harvest. He is called a fool, not for having got a record harvest and having become a wealthy person, but because his main thought was to keep all that had been gathered in for himself.

A steward who has been accused of misappropriation, in the end, is praised for having acted cleverly. According to the con-tracts with various borrowers he was to have, when the harvest was taken in, hundred barrels of oil in return for the fifty he had lent. And he was to have a hundred barrels of wheat in return for the eighty he had put at their disposal for food and sowing until the harvest. Now, he was clever enough to write off his profit – the interest, as it were, or the risk capital, and get back only what he in reality had lent. With rumours of that plan for write-offs, the other debtors would quickly come forward. His own gain cer-tain-ly came to nothing, but he would be able to give account to his lord. Over and above that, he had got himself friends among those who were earlier indebted to him.