Michael Moore, Mammon, and Me
— Monday, September 28th, 2009 —
While in Detroit this past Saturday, I saw an advertisement for the new Michael Moore movie denouncing capitalism and the free market system. It irritated me, and then, the more I thought about it, it irritated me more, in ways I didn’t expect.
Moore is, first of all, no relation, and, second, not new to iconoclastic filmmaking. His previous cinematic offerings have taken on everything from corporate greed in the car industry to gun control and school shootings to 9/11 conspiracy theories.
What amazes me is not that Michael Moore doesn’t like capitalism. It’s that he’s trying to make money off of his denunciation of capitalism, and using advertising to try to do so. It’s almost as though the filmmaker is winking at us, kind of like the Borat character, bilking us for our cash and laughing at our gullibility for giving it to him.
My first reaction to the new Moore movie was a little bit of personal outrage. Still, Moore fits the image of the cash-hungry counter-culturalist Merle Haggard sang about in the ’60s as one who “loves our milk and honey” while he “preaches about another way of living.” At first I wanted to say, like Haggard, “love it or leave it,” and I hope you’re able to make a killing selling this movie in Cuba.
My second reaction was to wonder how addled the American public is that no one seems to be recognizing this kind of hypocrisy. Why doesn’t the American left have the gumption to say, “This guy is a clown, and he’s working at cross purposes with us.”
But the more I think about it, Michael Moore isn’t all that different from me, and most of the Christians I know.
Michael Moore believes (I’ll take him at face value) that the market system is destructive and evil, and should be replaced with something else. He just doesn’t want to live in the “something else.”
I believe the market system is often destructive and evil, and everything it could be replaced with is even more dehumanizing, until it’s replaced with the kingdom of Christ. I don’t mind a limited, bounded market system (one that is people-centered, treats workers right, respects the creation, maintains local traditions and the social order).
But I also know what I’ve received from the prophets and apostles of Jesus. The issue, ultimately, isn’t the economic system itself (although that’s important). It’s the rebellion of money-worship and greed.
I know as a follower of Christ Jesus that one of the most dangerous forces in this age is the passion for money or, more often, the passion for things. I know what Jesus has taught us that Mammon is a god, and a jealous one at that.
And yet, I’m able to know this, believe this, think this, while having too many of my decisions made by “care for tomorrow,” even though I’m able to repeat back from memory what Jesus said about this.
Yes, Michael Moore is a hypocrite. But aren’t we all. And shouldn’t his hypocrisy remind us to take up the plank in our own eye, and start giving away some money, some stuff, from our homes and, more importantly, from our affections.
This is, as the Scriptures repeatedly emphasize, not a simple thing to do. And the Bible nowhere calls us to a kind of mechanistic legalism to put a hedge around the temptation of Mammonism. But it’s awfully hard to see our captivity to wealth when the poorest among us is richer, by world standards, than the rich young ruler would have been, richer than Nebuchadnezzar in all his glory.
American Christians are starting to awaken somewhat to what our fat affluence has done to our supposedly counter-cultural gospel. One can only imagine that, as we speak, some evangelical trinket-maker is designing wall decorations that say “Money is the root of all kinds of evil” to sell to us, as “reminders.”
I hope I’m able to see a love of Mammon more and more clearly in my own life, and not just in the other Moore’s situation. The issue isn’t capitalism vs. socialism, and it certainly isn’t Michael Moore’s hypocritical antics.
After all, a “serve two masters” hypocrisy is much worse when one of those masters is supposed to be Jesus.
22 Responses to “Michael Moore, Mammon, and Me”
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Dr. Moore,
Fantastic article! You nailed it.
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Awesome as usual!
Thanks Doc!
Jon
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Stanley Hauerwas said (I paraphrase) that the church shouldn’t provide an ethos for democracy or any kind of social organization, but should be an alternative to every nation…and I would add every economic system
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Dr. Moore,
You speak truth to power but for one little quibble…when you say that the market system is evil but “… everything it could be replaced with is even more dehumanizing…” you reveal just how much the western capitalistic mentality has pervaded your own thinking (and mine).
We have been trained, indoctrinated for lack of a better word, to believe that our market based capitalism far exceeds any other system and we rely on incomplete caricatures of other systems for proof. Thus, we never ask the big questions about what kind of system the Bible advocates, if any.
Instead, we conflate western Christianity with Judeo-Christian understandings of the market and free enterprise and tolerate the systematic dehumanization of people to “human resources” to be used up until they are exhausted and then deposited in the dustbin.
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A well-reasoned response that will, no doubt, fall on deaf ears.
The problem is the American Left is hypocrisy. All of the liberal icons are wealthy beyond belief due to capitalism.
The problem with American Christianity is that we keep forgetting how blessed we really are. We have crummy priorities. We’ll spend five bucks at McDonalds but won’t spend near that on a good book to feed our soul.
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@Mike,
Your use of the word “hypocrisy” is wrong. Let’s say you ride the train every day, and that train line kills 80% of the passengers that ride it. You are lucky and get to your destination safely everyday. Does that mean that you are required to call the train line “safe” or be guilty of hypocricy?
Thanks for this article - for some reason before I read it I expected a conservative defence of capitalism without acknowledgement of some of its more destructive consequences. What I discovered was a challenge to open my heart again to the generosity of God and respond likewise. Thanks for the encouragement.
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Great article–not blowing smoke up your skirt at all. This was great. I kept thinking to myself, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, “I hope Michael Moore gets the socialism he wants, and is then banned from by a socialist government from making any more movies.”
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“I hope I’m able to see a love of Mammon more and more clearly in my own life…”
I’ve got to give you a hard time about this because it’s the only thing in the article that struck me as funny. I know you don’t mean it this way, but it could sound as though you are looking forward to the prospect of loving money. I understand that you really mean to say that you want to be more aware of this when it springs up, so as to avoid being in denial of sin.
Great points!
You can’t say, “Mammon, he do cost” (the idea of money being costly was one irony that struck me when reading this) without saying “mans doom cometh.”
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There is one more place in this excellent blog post where our immersion in this culture, and the church that is too often formed by it, has led to a misconception. You misquoted Paul, and nobody yet has corrected it. Please allow me to offer this correction. The scripture nowhere says that money is, in itself, evil or leads to evil. What Paul wrote to Timothy was:
“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered far from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Timothy 6:10, NIV)
Money isn’t the problem. Love of money and dependence on it when our dependence ought to be on God are the problems. Just a thought.
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It’s sad that Christians don’t understand the true origins of capitalism. All they know, as represented by the author and the posts, is the socialist version. Here’s the true story:
The church has always defended the sanctity of private property as the true Biblical position. The OT law if full of “thou shalt no steal” in various forms related to many different types of property as well as severe penalties for theft, even by state officials.
Church scholars spent a millenium after Aquinas trying to determine the just price, especially for necessities like food and clothing. By the 16th century, church scholastics had concluded that the variables involved in the just price were too numerous for any man to know and the closest approximation to it could be found only in unrestricted markets, unrestricted, that is, except for the rules of law prohibiting theft and fraud.
The Dutch Republic won its independence from Spain in the late 16th century and the godly leaders determined to create a new nation based on the Bible. In the area of economics, they followed the lead of church scholars and created the first European nation that with real protection for property, especially from the state and the nobility. They implemented free markets because without free markets, property is just an idea; free markets instantiate property rights. In addition, they implemented the rule of law, which requires relatively honest police and judges. Their system of the rule of law and free markets became what Adam Smith called the system of natural liberty. It spread to England thanks to Locke, Hume and Smith, and became known as capitalism.
Capitalism is Christian economics. The philosophy behind it is purely Biblical. It is the Biblical protection of property implemented in government through the rule of law. And by rule of law, the founders of capitalism meant natural law, or God’s law, not the whims of a parliament or congress.
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@fundamentalist, any book recommendations for this material?
@fundamentalist, I wondered about origins of capitalism. You have helped my understanding. What started out so pure in form seems to have become buried in greed and selfish unrestraint….enron….murdof….trillions of $ overbudgets…and on and on.
@nate
I would recommend Ron Nash’s book Poverty and Wealth
Nate, I can’t point to a single book. On the church’s scholastic thought, see Murray Rothbard’s “New Light on the Prehistory of the Austrian School”, anything by Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, and check out the article in the Journal of Markets and Morality, “Leonard Lessius and the Prehistory of Economics” available at http://www.acton.org/publications/mandm/102editorial.php. Lessius was the Dutch scholar who brought the economic thinking of the scholastics to the Dutch Republic.
For economic thought in the Dutch Republic, see “Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume” by Stephen Buckle. A good history of the Dutch Republic that really brings out the Christian influence on the formation of the institutions of the new nation is Jonathan Israel’s “The Dutch Republic.” Another on the economics of the Dutch is “The First Modern Nation” by Jan de Vries. Also, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” is important because he gives an early modern definition of capitalism (he called it the system of natural liberty) and he holds up the Dutch Republic as the best example of its implementation many times. Finally, Philip S. Gorski’s “The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe” shows how the Dutch church influenced institutions in the new Republic.
To put it all together, though, you need sound economics, because when you dig through the vast basement of history you’ll find what you’re looking for, no matter how ridiculous. If you have the false socialist view of capitalism, you’ll find supporting evidence somewhere. For sound economics, look at the Mises.org web site. It has some good recommendations for introductions to Austrian economics. Search for articles on property rights.
Also, you need to know something about institutional economics. Anything you can find by Douglass North is good. The general idea of institutional economics is that certain institutions are required for economic development and those include the rule of law (natural law, not the whims of parliaments), equality under the law, and protection of property from theft by anyone, especially the state. Sorry I don’t have any specific references with me at this time.
And you need to know something about cultural economics. A good intro is “Culture Matters How Values Shape Human Progress” Lawrence E. Harrison, Samuel Huntington editors. The articles in that book show how culture, especially religion, determines institutions.
The general flow of thought is that culture is religion and culture determines institutions. Institutions determine economics development through the protection or lack of it of private property. Capitalism is the set of institutions that protect property and generate economic growth. Going back in time to find the source of those institutions, you get to the Dutch Republic as the first nation to do so and they did so because of their faith in God and their knowledge of church scholastic economic thought. The founders of the Dutch Republic didn’t intend to create capitalism. They really only wanted to please God by following the Bible.
I started writing a book on this several years ago and got sidetracked. I’m about half-way through, but haven’t found an interested publisher.
Fran, Yes, greed and fraud like that of Enron is a problem, but is it the fault of capitalism? Greed is the fallen human nature. No government or system of economics can prevent it. All that socialism does is inflame the passion of envy. Adam Smith argued in “Wealth of Nations” that a free market would keep criminals like Enron execs in check if allowed to work because in a free market businessmen must compete to please consumers. He also warned that businessmen are constantly trying to defraud consumers by forming cartels or using the power of the state to give them advantages over competitors. Giving the state more power over the economy only encourages that behavior. Smith didn’t believe that laws or government could change mankind’s nature; only God can do that. Therefore, free markets will limit the damage that greed can accomplish while government intervention in the market only provides more opportunities for greed to work. So in a free market, Enron’s will continue to exist, but free markets will do a better job of containing the damage. The damage done by Enron could only happen in a government controlled market like we have today.
Keep in mind that many people warned the SEC about Madoff but the SEC refused to investigate him. At the same time, the fact that the SEC never investigated him gave many people the false security that he must be legit. So in a way, the SEC aided Madoff in carrying out his scheme. Evil people will always exist. No one but God can change that. All we can do is try to limit the damage they cause. As history proves, they can do a lot more damage under socialism than under free market capitalism.
But this brings up another important point on which I think today’s Christians are confused, and that is human nature. Christianity teaches that mankind is fallen and therefore inclined to evil. Only God can change that. Socialism teaches the opposite: mankind is innocent and turns to evil only because of oppression and private property is the greatest oppressor of all. Socialism says change the system and human nature will return to innocense. That’s clearly anti-Christian.
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Thank you, Dr. Moore, for this insightful article. I don’t think the average person realizes just how much our capitalist system clashes with the church’s ideology. I have been brewing a sermon on this for some time and, one of these days, it is going to reach fruition. Your points are well-taken, though I don’t see a great deal of productivity in over-pondering the undertakings of Michael Moore! God bless all your efforts, sir, and I thank God for people at your level of scholarship and passion.
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