“Many persons, having never viewed the subject (of liberty) in this light, charge us with excessive zeal, when they see us so warmly and earnestly contending for freedom of faith as to outward matters, in opposition to the tyranny of the Pope.” – John Calvin
Most Americans these days are more worried about the tyranny of civil government than of the Pope. Yet many of them, including some Christians, are squeamish about or opposed to applying biblical teachings to the public square in order to address the problem of tyranny. Some conservative Christians are hesitant about this because they believe it will lead to conflating Christian liberty and civil liberty and undermining the message of the freedom from sin we have in Jesus Christ.
While these two terms should not be conflated, neither should they be put asunder. John Calvin, in his commentary on Galatians 5:1, wrote that liberty is “an invaluable blessing, in defense of which it is our duty to fight, even to death; since not only the highest temporal considerations, but our eternal interests also, animate us to the contest.”
These temporal considerations of liberty extend into our social and economic lives. The Eighth Commandment, “You shall not steal,” confers an obligation on citizens and rulers not to take property from others. This obligation includes allowing the application of our labor and creativity to God’s creation so that we may use, buy, and sell the property we can make from it, and keep the profits from doing so. “Free market” or “capitalism” are the terms generally used to describe this state of affairs.
Unfortunately, the free market is waning in today’s uber-regulatory world. The government tells us what we must inject into our bodies to keep our jobs, what products we can–or must–sell, what people we must serve–or reject, the wages we must pay–and receive, the price at which we can buy and sell products, and more.
Capitalism, which as the replacement for feudalism allowed people from all classes, for the first time in history, to freely use their land, labor, and capital to their own benefit, is rapidly being replaced by a modern-day feudalism in which the wealthy and politically connected are once again becoming our lords.
Many Christians, perhaps out of concern about maintaining a “separation of church and state,” appear to be oblivious to these problems. While they are quick to point to harmful actions by individuals or businesses in the marketplace, they often ignore worse injustices committed by our rulers.
This is not to say there have not been challenges with capitalism over the centuries since it sprung out of 14th-century Renaissance Europe—poor working conditions, fraud, and strained relationships between owners and workers among them. Even so, the benefits of capitalism indisputably outweigh its human faults in terms of human prosperity and health.
Also indisputable is the history of failure by government officials who attempt to override the decisions of market participants—and their God-given rights—by intervening in markets. Yet the interventions—and failures—continue.
A long line of philosophers, theologians, and political thinkers have understood that humanity’s “Unalienable rights” are not supplied by government but instead are “endowed by their Creator.” This dependence on God rather than the state was expressed by Abraham Kuyper when he wrote that the dominating principle of Calvinism “was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but, in the widest sense cosmologically, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible.”
We express the sovereignty of God over us and the state as our God-given rights and obligations of charity, stewardship, and dominion are freely exercised individually and collectively by people. Outside the family and church, the primary way we do this is through markets.
Though some justify civil government intervention in the name of ‘rights’ such as affordable health care, living wages, etc., most market interventions do not improve human rights but degrade them. This is because the hundreds of thousands of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations governing our lives stand in stark contrast to the liberty expressed through voluntary transactions between market participants and to the purposes for which governments are formed: “That to secure these rights (life, liberty, and property), Governments are instituted among Men.”
Interventions in market activities are also justified because they “improve market information” that both regulators and consumers can use to monitor and improve the efficiency of business activity. However, as with rights, intervention tends to degrade, not improve, market efficiency and consumer welfare.
The reason for this is simple; market prices of goods and services transmit important information through the marketplace to market participants, i.e., producers and consumers. As Gary North explains:
Prices are crucial for setting priorities. Without prices, we fly blind. We do not know what things cost. We do not know what people have recently bid in order to buy or rent scarce resources. In a world governed by scarcity, prices are tools of understanding and therefore tools of action. Prices are the most important sources of information that lead to the coordination of competing economic plans of action.
Market intervention, by design, also changes or prohibits the market outcomes that would have resulted through the voluntary actions of buyers and sellers exercising liberty in the market. The result is that intervention replaces consumer preferences (to a greater or lesser extent) with those of the regulators and other parties who are seeking profit for themselves through regulations.
The harm to human health and prosperity caused by the substitution of the preferences of monarchs, politicians, and bureaucrats for those of their subjects, citizens, and consumers is incalculable. Even a cursory review of economies where substantial restrictions on rights and markets are endemic establishes that the harm is real and continues to this day.
This harm continues because many politicians, regulators and groups believe they can perfect that which cannot be perfected—at least by us. Despite our being made in the image of God with His creativity and other abilities that allow us to some extent to carry out His command to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it …” (Genesis 1:28), we are limited by our finite and sinful nature. We don’t know everything about the present, much less the future. We are going to make mistakes, often bad ones, in the market. And because we are fallen, we are going to compound our mistakes by making decisions that intentionally harm others and ourselves.
Most of our rulers believe they are immune to or can overcome our fallen human nature and fix our problems at minimal cost. But the world does not work this way.
Gary North explains: “One of the fundamental principles of all systems of economic theory is this: ‘You can’t get something for nothing.’ Christianity teaches that God offers saving grace to some people without cost to them. But this grace is based on the high price that Jesus Christ paid at Calvary.”
The high price of increased prosperity and advances in human health throughout history has been the messy business of people exercising their God-given rights through markets. This enables them to absorb information and convert it to useful means to satisfy their needs and wants. Though costly, this is how mankind has been able to build up enough capital to enjoy the widespread economic, environmental, and health care advances we are experiencing today.
For millennia, rulers and experts have instead attempted to clean up the mess of humanity by substituting their judgments for those of the people. But these efforts are destined to fail and leave us in a worse state. Rather, faithfully contending for the “invaluable blessing” of liberty through the exercise of our “unalienable rights” in free markets is a significant portion of God’s design for cleaning up our mess and improving the condition of mankind and our planet.
This article was first published on Kuyperian Commentary.
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