Rocky Cape Christian Community

Driving the heavy team on my uncle Dan Bauman's farm in southern Ontario, Canada, 1972. (We did not have cameras then, but the man from England that took this picture gave me a copy to keep.)

 
Not long ago I picked up a book at the City Mission in Launceston, Tasmania. "Compassionate Capitalism," its remarkable title caught my eye. Written by one of the world's richest men, a leading Christian economist from America, Rich de Vos, I found it the most logical and convincing apology for the Protestant Work Ethic I have ever seen.
 
Beginning with Adam Smith, the first English Christian to teach that it is good to get rich (and that by accumulating wealth one benefits the whole world) Rich de Vos laid out what he calls the American Way. Get rich by involving as many as possible in your schemes for financial gain. Save your money and get ahead -- only remember to help others save money and get ahead as well. It will help you as well as them. Support others, not by showering them with handouts that corrupt, but by showing them how to make money and all the world will be the happier for it.  
 
In such "compassionate capitalism" Rich de Vos sees the world's only remaining hope. It is, for him, the light of developing nations, the future of our race. For the world will not be truly happy, he believes, until everyone has plenty of money, lots of things, and the ability to get more.
 
Brilliantly written. As logical as it comes (with lots of real-life illustrations and common-sense advice), nearly every Christian reading this book would have to agree with virtually everything it says.
 
Only one hitch.
 
The book is neither Christian nor true. Its "wisdom" is not from God, and the compassion it promotes is a cruel hoax. From Satan.
 
Rich de Vos's capitalism, for all the sense it makes, for as Christian as he gets it to sound, has proven itself through several hundred years. We already know how it works. We have a whole world filled with evidence of what it produces, for it shaped the world we live in today.
 
Capitalism produced the Industrial Revolution (the desire to be rich and get ahead, to compete with others, spurring industry to produce more things in less time).
 
The Industrial Revolution got people off the land and into the cities. It gave them jobs and money to spend. The end result of capitalism was (and could be nothing but) consumerism -- everyone making more money to buy more stuff. Selling and selling and selling to buy and buy and buy. The rat race. Rich de Vos's Amway (American Way) Corporation being perhaps the mightiest case in point.
 
The principle of capitalism (do good by getting rich) stands in blatant frontal opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet even now, with the whole world strangling in its terrible grip, most Christians are not fleeing to Christ for help and salvation. Instead, they look back, they reach out to the exact source of all their evils for more of the same!
 
It never fails to astonish me how Christians discuss "the good old days" and wish things could only return to the 1950s, the Victorian age, or earlier, where everyone spent their money wisely, worked hard, held good values of independence and self-support, and the whole world operated like it should.   
 
Are they dreaming? Have they really forgotten their own history?
 
We already had the Victorian age, and what did it produce? The rape of Australia and Canada and India and Africa and who knows what all besides. Global imperialism and two cataclysmic world wars. We already had the 1950s and what did they produce? The 60s and 70s. And what did the 60s and 70s produce? The 80's and 90's, that produced the 21'st Century and the godless mess we are in today.
 
Who wants to repeat all that?
 
Only a fool or an absolute pervert could look to the capitalist system of a century ago as the solution to the world's problems today. The mess we have now (the end product of the love of money that, like the Bible says, is the root of all evil) comes from nothing other than the race to get lands and resources, the plunder and corruption of the earth (most of it done in the name of "God-fearing governments" and missionaries during the 1800s) and the distorted values of a Christianity that had already sold out to the Antichrist in Laura Ingalls Wilder's and Queen Victoria's day.
 
Nothing more absurd, more diabolical, has ever been promoted than the idea that human beings are helped, or happier, or "do good" by stock-piling money or stuff. By having more than they need.
 
Who said the following?
 
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth."
 
"Take no thought for the morrow."
 
"Unless you give up everything you have, you cannot be my disciple."
 
"It is easier for a camel to slip through a needle's eye than for a rich man to get into the Kingdom of God."
 
"WOE to you who are rich! BLESSED are you who are poor for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven!"  
 
If you know the answer and if you follow the radical who said it, you will immediately identify Rich de Vos's message of compassionate capitalism for the flagrant heresy, the violation of truth and common sense it actually is.
 
Mohatma Gandhi, although not a Christian, was closer to the Truth when he said, "Renounce and enjoy!"
 
The Tasmanian Aborigines with no concept of private ownership were more enlightened, closer to God, than Queen Victoria's subjects who brought them the Bible, grabbed all their land, and annihilated them.
 
Forget about the "good old days."
 
The earth we live on will never be truly happy again until we proceed to a one-party, one-world government (the government of Jesus Christ), a cashless economy (all monetary exchange abolished -- gold of no more value than dirt), the final dissolution of "private property" in absolute all-involving communism in new heavens and a new earth where justice dwells. But this cannot come about until another invasion. The final world war. The bombing, not just of Pearl Harbour and the twin towers, but the total blitz of every town and city and dairy farm and coffee shop in America and Europe and Asia and Africa and Australia at once. The whole world in flames. The elements dissolved. The earth's crust opening up and every continent with all its people (except for those that wear the mark of Christ) consumed.
 
Have you been thinking of that taking place? Or do you also believe people could be happy if only they knew how to make money and spend it wisely?
 
Maybe, along with being a Christian, you ought to aquaint yourself with Christ and his "absurd" Gospel, and get ready to meet him.
 
While your stuff and your money burns.
 
Peter
 
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au