Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Changing Times and the Question of Relevance Written by Bart Ehrman Read by Ken Teutch.
[00:00:12] If you knew for a fact that the world was going to end on March 1, how would that affect your behavior?
[00:00:19] It's worth thinking about, not only because, well, hey, maybe it will. But also because that kind of thinking can help us decide how we should behave, even if the world takes a licking but keeps on ticking.
[00:00:34] When I had my birthday three weeks ago, I did a little thought experiment. How would I change my life, if at all, if I knew for a fact I had only one more year to live? Or 5 years? Or 10 years? Or 20?
[00:00:49] How would knowing that affect what I do with myself before then? What I prioritize, whom I see and spend time with, and what of the stuff I normally do doesn't actually matter that much.
[00:01:02] For me, it was an interesting mental exercise. The answer differed depending on the timeline. If I had one year, I would definitely make some immediate adjustments, and I realized which ones. If five, some adjustments, but not as many. If 10 or 20, maybe none at all.
[00:01:22] I wasn't expecting that conclusion, but that's what I came up with. If time is short, in my case at least it would guide a lot of my priorities and commitments.
[00:01:32] Which, oddly enough, takes me to the teachings of Jesus, specifically his teachings of wealth and giving.
[00:01:39] As I've repeatedly indicated, Jesus teachings on charity are pretty clear. No one should be attached to things in this life.
[00:01:48] It is the world to come, the kingdom soon to arrive that one should live for, not the transient things of this world or age.
[00:01:57] That means one should abandon their attachments to and longings for material things, think about what ultimately matters, and behave accordingly.
[00:02:06] For Jesus, what mattered above all else was God and doing his will. God's ultimate concern was not with the rich, famous and powerful, but with but with the poor, lowly and powerless. Since God's concerns should be ours, we should therefore devote ourselves to those in need the hungry, the destitute, the displaced, the orphans and widows, the lonely and despairing.
[00:02:30] One does not need to be rich to do so. It can involve something as simple as giving a cup of cold water to one who is thirsty, providing a bed for someone who is homeless, visiting one who is isolated and lonely.
[00:02:42] But for Jesus, those who do have financial resources should certainly provide funds to those who need them to survive and thrive. In fact, he teaches those with wealth should impoverish themselves for the sake of others, sell everything, and give to the poor. That's an extreme teaching of what we might call religious economics.
[00:03:04] It's not that Jesus argued for a new economic system. There weren't other options on offer and never really had been. Since the beginnings of civilization, virtually all human economies had been agrarian. People raised crops and tended animals to feed their families and used any excess to provide for other necessities or desires. Jesus never opposed that system or urged systemic reform. He urged individual action.
[00:03:32] Individuals should help those in need, including by sharing any wealth they had with those less fortunate.
[00:03:39] Fair enough.
[00:03:40] But why should people sell everything and leave everything, as he urged his disciples to do?
[00:03:47] And how can these radical teachings of complete divestment have any relevance for anyone today?
[00:03:53] In a very real sense, they don't. These religious economics were rooted in a time and place that, quite apart from the teachings of Jesus themselves, inherently were different from our own.
[00:04:06] The very foundations of religious and economic thought and practice today are incommensurate with those on which Jesus teachings were built.
[00:04:15] The teachings can therefore not be taken over wholesale, since they were based on views and or realities that no longer exist.
[00:04:23] It is like most any other rule, regulation, law, or advice.
[00:04:27] If the assumptions lying behind it are no longer shared. It cannot be literally fully applicable, even if the sense behind it can be transformed in a way that still makes sense.
[00:04:38] If your father firmly instructed you, as mine did, to warm up the car in wintry weather for 30 minutes before starting to drive, it made sense. Then, in the Pleistocene age when I was a teenager, when cars had carburetors, but in a day of fuel injection it no longer applies. The basic sense, though, is that you should treat your car in appropriate ways in various weather conditions that can affect the engine is still in force.
[00:05:06] The advice you give yourself if you know you have only one year to live, will be different from what you give if you know somehow that you have 20.
[00:05:15] This provides the wider context for understanding Jesus teachings delivered in a different era, for all practical purposes, in a different world.
[00:05:24] Like other ancient laws and advice, they may have some broader sense worth considering. But taking them literally may be pointless or even counterproductive.
[00:05:34] I'll explain how this applies to his religious economics over the course of two one, the next one on ancient religion and the other, more important, for reasons that will be clear on ancient economies.
