FROM THE ARCHIVES: Awakening Hope – the Christian Economics of Bob Goudzwaard, PART 2

Professor Bob Goudzwaard is a Dutch Christian economist who promotes TATA. TATA stands for: ‘There Are Thousand of Alternatives (for peoples and nations who want to act responsibly)’. Professor Goudzwaard’s PhD thesis was in political economy and titled ‘Non-Priced Scarcity’. It examined the problems economists face in valuing the environment - ‘for which a neat price tag cannot be found’ as the good Professor put it. ‘The partial answer’, to his doctoral problem was (in his words), ‘that there are more and higher economic values than what can be expressed in a price’. It is this truth which we find persuasive and of particular interest to indigenous Pacific peoples whose culture and traditional worth are constantly and increasingly under challenge by the economic spirit of the age.

In this three-part interview with Fiji’s Daily Post special writer, Dr Bruce Wearne, Professor Goudzwaard gives us a glimpse of what TATA represents, and the Christian vision that motivates it.

In Part One (see elsewhere on this site), Professor Goudzwaard told us something about himself and his contribution to economics and economic thinking. In this second part of our interview we ask him to explain his views of the massive problems confronting our globe.

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· Bob, you say that being a Christian is about being together in society. This means that working in an ecumenical way is more than just a matter of churches co-operating. Being a Christian is not just living within a church sphere. You seem to be saying that people, whoever they are, should co-operate to display their talents, their God-given riches for all to see.

Yes. As the book of Revelation states: all the nations will bring their specific treasures into the Kingdom and its new capital city, the New Jerusalem. For me, these treasures should not primarily be seen as material but as spiritual, the distinct gifts of each culture .Every culture has its own dignity. Professor Onvlee, the cultural anthropologist at the Free University, reminded us that such a statement is only true if you are also willing to admit that every culture has its own lack of dignity. That’s the bible again. ‘All alike have sinned and show a diminished sense of the divine splendour.’ It is in that double awareness that we can begin to communicate with each other, whoever we are, because it creates an openness to listen, to engage in a search for correction of our faults.

· I suppose this interview could be an example. Me the interviewer in Australia, typing up this email exchange, you in Holland answering and editing the questions, and the readers in Suva reading it after the Fiji Post editor has published it? That sounds like globalization to me. What are your views?

Globalization can be seen as the highest expression of the will to modernize, as modernization going world-wide. It continues on and on in the same modern way we have come to expect. But modernity itself clearly expresses Western culture, and shows the limits and preoccupations of us in the West. Modernity assumes that human rational insight provides the best possible structures to meet our needs, for human life, for our welfare and security. Modernity says the exploitation of nature is OK because it allows this self-first-perspective to base itself in reality. Constructing things rationally, following your own designs as if the world is just empty and waiting for your efforts is the main billboard of modern Western culture.

· But then we all know that things are not as secure as we would like them to be. Why are things, all things apparently, so wobbly?

When self-realisation becomes the goal of our life then a dynamic is set up, a program which proves very difficult to stop without bringing everything crashing down. And even without any attempts to slow the process down shocks do occur. Compare the globe now to the situation within a space ship. After ‘lift off’ life inside is stabilized and the environment from which it has been launched is viewed as lagging behind. This is the ‘other world’, the world which is not so developed. As so, from within the accelerating spaceship, those in control of the machine try to reach back and drag the so-called less developed world – which in fact is often not underdeveloped at all, but has developed in a different way with a different outlook and style - into the rocket’s flight path. As so wobbles occur because the so-called less developed is still seen to be lagging behind even though they are being dragged along by the dynamic process. In this way old cultures are seen from the viewpoint of modern Western culture as less developed, because development itself has become the final yardstick.

· And some wobbles are developing within the space ship, within Western society?

Yes. Consider the way elderly persons are usually seen in the West. They are the so-called ‘in-active’ people, less in worth because they are less productive, and do not contribute anything to the growth of the GDP. Is this happening in Fiji? Then maybe this interview can help some Fjiians give thought to their life-styles and reflect upon the way elderly people are seen and treated. Maybe in Fiji you should ask whether you have a chance to keep things better because your cities are not as sprawling as say Sydney or Rotterdam or Berlin or New York and you can maintain this respect in positive ways. But that’s for you to say.

· But big cities in Europe and North America also have had to take account of the environment. The disastrous floods in New Orleans surely tell us something?

What comes out clearly in the aftermath of hurricanes like Katrina is the extent to which they not only could grow in intensity because of the gradual warming-up of the water, but also because of the elimination of protective natural and constructed barriers at the shore-line, just to cut expenses and to promote the prevalent Western materialistic consumption-styles. So you see, that in this, our created reality, not caring for creation itself can have and often has enormous ‘boomerang effects’.

· This reminds me of the Club of Rome’s ‘Limits to Growth’ study of the 1970s.

The biblical view of stewardship is no soft ‘ídealistic’ norm. It is an obligatory path for all to be able to survive. We need to develop a perspective in which ‘Limits to growth’ burns on our consciousness like the sign written on the walls in Belshazzar’s banquet hall told the King what time it was. ‘You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.’ These days nature is no longer seen as a life-giving mother, but primarily as something that constrains us and so in reaction we feel impelled to dominate it. Families and communities are often treated as hindrances for real progress. This simply illustrates that Western culture promotes a lack of dignity and stewardship. We can see that this is basic to the current dominant style of globalization.

· Are you saying that growth has become an idol?

Yes. Especially when Governments and Business and Churches and Schools demand that growth is what has to be achieved at all the costs. As a Christian I worry about the extreme goal-orientation that dominates our lives, as if our self-set goals produce ‘meaning’ for our lives. Meaning does not originate from self-chosen goals but from walking on God-given ways, like the way of Love, Peace, Justice and Stewardship.

· This sounds very important. Can you explain this further?

We Christians should remember that our first name, the first label given to us by others, was not ‘Christian’ at all. If I read the book of Acts I am told that the first label applied to followers of Jesus was ‘people of the Way’. I have come to see this as a very important teaching that might help us get out of a fix.

· How so? Please explain?

Well, all too easily we assume that self-generated growth is the way ahead. But ‘the people of the way’ se themselves as sent on their way. in our western liberal culture we are told that we need to send ourselves, to keep on extending ourselves further and further, pushing the limits of our comfort zones. Such growth has become idolatrous. ‘People of the way’ on the other hand implies a relativity of all self-set targets, and that includes the targets of growth and development. It is God who has sent us on His way.

· Tell us more about this ‘way-orientation’ as you see it?

The orientation on a Way or a Road is not blind for where you may end up. But it is nevertheless different from the usual projects to construct a better world. For it is primarily listening and considering how to be or to become more obedient in this moment in relation to what are sometimes very complex situations. The first step is crucial. It is to listen to what justice and God’s love asks from us in our current situation, also in the current global setting.

· It sounds like you are saying one step at a time rather than the ends justifies the means. Is that it?

Yes. I think so. The first step we take gives us information which adds to our stock of knowledge and thus makes the next step and maybe a few more possible. Therefore a real Way-orientation always implies going step by step. Why? Because we believe Someone is guiding us on that way. That is different from the logic of this world. The logic of the Way-orientation is: trust that if you begin in justice and love, then a follow-up will be possible as justice and love grow.

· So how can this apply to some of the really big global problems we have?

Let me give an example here. The reduction of the debt of the poorest nations is more than merely a moral obligation of the rich countries. These societies can not continue as they are. They are captive to burdens, the pressure of which seems endless and it is destructive of the life they should be living. Rich countries are therefore called to provide space for these other countries, and they can begin by just taking a step backwards, stopping their ongoing rush for more.

· Can you give us practical examples here?

The amount of international money, which, for instance, is created day after day by Western banks, is not only far beyond what is needed for the growth of the so called ‘real economy’, it is also distributed in such a way that all the benefits accrue to the western already rich societies; all other societies and nations are expected to ‘borrow’ that money, without receiving any direct share from it. This is a deep injustice that has to be stopped. The growth of world-money should be re-linked to the fulfillment of real needs instead of being generated by linking it to the unlimited desire to have more of those who are already too rich. This is not only an element of a healthy economic logic.

· Can you expand on that please?

Yes ‘the Christian way’ means living according to norms of justice and care that withhold and restrain - these were highly visible in the life and work of Jesus Christ. He was willing to give his life to us. Therefore this has also to be the style of Christian persons and nations.

[TO BE CONTINUED]