Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators
David Chilton
(Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1981) pp. 87-95; 306-307
About 25 years ago the term “Third World” came into prominence. It is a concept of primary importance for socialists, a fraud which can be used for many purposes. . . . here the world had been “divided” into capitalist and communist factions, the Third World concept is supposed to refer to nonaligned, less-developed countries — although exactly which countries are included depends entirely on who is currently using the term, and what ax he is grinding. “Nonalignment” in Third World nations serves the purposes of revolutionary socialism as well. Now the world is divided between the industrialized,
Western exploiters and the non-industrialized, exploited nations of the Third World.
Western businessmen who invest in less-developed countries are, it is said, neo-colonial powers, obscenely profiting from their economic control over the poor nations. Of course, now that some of the Third World countries are making money, anew division is required, and a “Fourth World” has emerged. The culprits absconding with “the best of both Worlds” are, naturally, the industrial concerns of the West. There is a great political advantage brought about by making use of this concept, particularly for the leaders of
Third and Fourth World nations. All their woes have been visited upon them by outsiders.
As Carson describes it: “Not only did communists subscribe to the notion that Western imperialism had been a system of exploitation of subject peoples but so did most Western intellectuals.
This gave Third World politicians ready-made enemies -“Western imperialists”- something most useful to politicians, especially when the enemies are not constituents.
They could appeal for the unity of their peoples against these outsiders. It also provided an explanation and an excuse for their economic backwardness. They were not to blame for their conditions; they had been overcome by superior technology and exploited by
Westerners. . . .
One example of such “exploitation” given by Sider [Ronald Sider, author of
Rich
Christians in an Age of Hunger, 1977] is that of the infamous Banana Caper, in which three large Western fruit companies used economic leverage in order to keep from paying a new dollar-per-case tax on the bananas they exported from countries in Central
America. Sider explains how the tax was reduced in one country: “In order to increase profits for a U. S. company and to lower banana prices for you and me, the Honduran government agreed, for a bribe, to cut drastically the export tax, even though the money was desperately needed in Honduras.” Sider gives the impression that somehow this tax would have helped relieve poverty; it was “desperately needed.” Yet, a page later, Sider
(trying to increase our guilt) charges: “Dictators representing a tiny, wealthy elite that works closely with American business interests rule Honduras;” thus the poor are helpless. If the dictators do nothing for the poor, and if they represent a “tiny, wealthy elite, ” just what was the money desperately needed for?

The truth is this. This “tax” was set by the Central American dictators in order to raise reserves for themselves. In other words, it was a bribe. The fruit companies made a very logical decision, in terms of a complex economic theory that goes something like this: A
Higher Price Costs More Money Than A Lower Price Does. The “bribe” they paid was simply the result of economic bargaining with unjust dictators who were seeking to line their own pockets — and who, by the way, were charging a tax which they had no biblical right to charge. The fruit companies saw an opportunity to reduce the ransom for their products. The guilt lies not with them but with the dictators who demanded the bribe in the first place. Sider’s attempt to make you feel guilty for eating bananas is a hoax. In his twisted system, it is perfectly all right for a poor, oppressed (wealthy, elitist) dictator to force you to pay a bribe -- but it is a sin for you to try to lower the price. . . .
The Third World concept implies (and often states) that the economics of underdeveloped countries is somehow different from traditional economics — that the Third World operates by different economic laws. . . . Economic laws do not change from country to country, or from age to age. “Underdeveloped” countries can progress only in thesame ways that developed countries have grown — through capital investment . . . .
There is no doubt, however, that hunger and starvation exist in many “Third World” countries, and we need to have a biblical understanding of this. Before man fell in the
Garden, his labor was not spent in scrounging for find; it was abundant and cheap.
Instead, labor was expended in scientific, aesthetic, and productive activity (Genesis
1:26-29; 2:15, 19-20). Man was able to turn his energy toward investigating, beautifying, and developing the environment. But when man rebelled and attempted to steal God’s throne, he was expelled from the Garden, and forced to spend much more of his time and energy obtaining food — and food became much harder to get (Genesis 3: 18-19). This is
God’s curse on men whenever they rebel: the land itself spews them out (Leviticus 18:24-
28; Isaiah 24). The curse devours productivity in every area, and the ungodly culture perishes (Deuteronomy 28: 15-26). They suffer terrible disease (Deuteronomy 28:27), and are politically oppressed (Deuteronomy 28:28-34).
This is how God controls heathen cultures: they must spend so much time sur viving that they are unable to exercise ungodly dominion over the earth. In the long run, this is the history of every culture that departs from God’s word. While a culture may seem, in the short run, to prosper, it is headed for annihilation if it is unfaithful to the standards of biblical law. A heroin addict who has just gotten a fix undoubtedly feels better than you and I do at this moment; but misery and suffering will eventually catch up with him. In terms of biblical law, a culture that engages in long-term rebellion against God’s law will sink to the level of abject poverty and deprivation. The law promises that. Conversely, if a culture has suffered long-term misery, we can make a judgment about its history – which is not to say that we may automatically assume anything about its present inhabitants. They may indeed be very godly. If so - if a cultural transformation has taken place spiritually– they are already on their way toward godly dominion, although the process may take a generation or more to become materially evident. But if God is on His throne, His people will be blessed. He controls the environmental conditions, and He can

cause the desert to blossom (Isaiah 35; 43:19-21). But He will not do it without the Spirit being poured forth in regeneration and sanctification; physical, material, economic blessings flow from cultural obedience (Isaiah 32: 15-16).1s
As the gospel progresses throughout a society, food becomes easier to obtain, and attention turns again to the original tasks of godly dominion which were mandated in the
Garden. No Protestant culture has — yet -been plagued by famine (but we should expect famine and more if our national apostasy remains unchecked). Godly cultures have the
“Puritan work ethic” deeply ingrained into their natures, and thk has notable effects in economics: rising productivity, rising real wage rates, and accelerating dominion over every area of life.
But ungodly men, as we have seen, are slaves by nature. Their sin drives them to lord it over others in ways that are forbidden and economically unproductive, and they are driven to relinquish their proper responsibilities (which are productive), to seek present benefits rather than to sacrifice in the present for future rewards, and to be enslaved by others. The unbelieving culture thus gravitates toward statism and socialism. We can see this in the story of how the disobedient Israelites became enslaved to the state (I Samuel
8). The king became, in effect, a substitute god, and they desired that he should save them; they therefore forfeited their cattle, their land, and their produce to him.
Eventually, they were forced to surrender their own children into bondage to the state’s war machine. The principle here is that your Savior will be your Lord as well, and that when you are saved you are also embed.
Ungodly cultures invariably become enslaved to the state. The economic problem is that a socialist society has no means of economic calculation, as Ludwig von
Mises constantly pointed out: “Where there is no market there is no price system, and where there is no price system there can be no economic calculation.” Thus, without the market mechanism of profit and loss, the socialist Planner has no way to tell where energy and capital should be directed. Surpluses and shortages become the norm, and unanticipated (and thus unplanned-for) events — unusual weather, for instance — produce catastrophes as a matter of course. Famine is a commonplace of socialist states.
The “controlled” economy is in fact controlled not by the planners, but by vicissitude. It is at the mercy of its environment — which is to say God, our ultimate Environment, at whose hands a self-deified state may expect little mercy.
In a truly Christian culture, the market is free from state control . . .
This is where history is going. The future belongs to the people of God, who obey His laws. “The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous” (Proverbs 13:22), and “to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that He may give to one who is good in God’s sight” (Ecclesiastes 2:26). This is what God did with Israel. They inherited already settled lands, while God smashed the heathen, having allowed them to buildup capital while incurring increasing judgment because of their sins (Genesis 15: 13-
16; Joshua 11: 19-20). The seventeenth-century Puritan Thomas Watson understood this

well: “The meek Christian is said to inherit the earth, because he inherits the blessing of the earth. The wicked man has the earth, but not as a fruit of God’s favour. He has it as a dog has poisoned bread. It does him more hurt than good. A wicked man lives in the earth as one that lives in an infectious air. He is infected by his mercies. The fat of the earth will but make him fry and blaze the more in hell.” . . . .
How did liberation theology arise in Latin America? It is often represented by its spokesmen as a home-grown movement, born out of the suffering, the struggles, and the innovative reflection and deliberation of the liberation theologians. In actual fact, liberation theology was a foreign import. Edward Norman writes that “it is the foreign clergy who are everywhere noted for their radical politics and who are most forthright in expressing them. Indeed, much of what is taken by Western Christians as characteristically ‘Latin American’ Catholic thought turns out to be the influence of
European and North American mission and staff priests. . .
As we have seen, the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua was often hailed and promoted by Christian organizations as a model of what liberation theology could produce at its best. With its terrorists supported by tithes and offerings from American Christians concerned for the poor, the Sandinista regime set about to control the Church and direct its policies. The result has been the confiscation of churches and the vicious persecution, torture, and murder of faithful Christians who will not worship Caesar. Liberation theology is a Western, white, bourgeois ideology which certain Latin American demagogues have found useful for their envy-manipulating purposes. As Norman concludes: “Western Christians who listen into the Latin American church, in the belief that this is the authentic voice of the Third World, hear only the echoes of their own voice.’’ A central error of the liberationist ideologues is their cavalier disregard of the very real differences in economic, performance among various ethnic and cultural groups in the Third World. According to them, the only differences that exist are differences of result, stemming from the “fact” that the wealthy have gotten their “unearned” riches at the expense of the poor. Of course, there are indeed some outstanding instances of unearned income, but the socialists don’t usually talk about them: the “incomes derived predominantly from government-conferred privileges. Such privileges are especially significant and widespread in the extremely politicized societies of the Third World.
Their many forms include state subsidies, restrictions on competition, allocations of licenses and privileged forms of employment.’’ . . . Why do the socialists place so much emphasis on income differences? It is because their purpose is to arouse envy and resentment . . . Bauer says, echoing Solomon’s warning that envy is “the rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30). Bauer has also noted the guilt-manipulation which pervades the literature of liberation theology: “Exponents of collective guilt rarely examine either the ground for their allegations or the results of the policies they propose. . . The exponents of guilt routinely exempt themselves from their accusations; they do not speak of mea culpa but of nostra culpa, or rather vestra culpa. This is not accidental; allegations of collective guilt go hand in hand with a decline in personal responsibility and a sense of personal sin.”