Is there Economic Evidence for God? w/ Chuck Bentley -Crown Financial Ministries- Podcast Episode 85

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Welcome to the God Questions Podcast, and I'd like to welcome back Chuck Bentley, the President of Crown Financial Ministries.

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We're going to be talking about his new book, Economic Evidence for God. So, Chuck, welcome back to the show.

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Thank you, Shea. It's great to be back. I so appreciate you and the work of God Questions. So, Chuck, what led you to write

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Evidence for God, Uncovering the Invisible Hand that Guides the Economy? Because we truly do receive a lot of questions that are financial -related and even a lot of questions about the economy, or for example, when bad economic times hit either our country or another country, a lot of people have questions about this.

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How do we trust God? What's the best way to manage my money in tough times? So, what led you to write this book?

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Well, the economy is looked at in two ways, the micro -economy, which is personal, and then the macro -economy, which involves the collective actions of many people on a national level or a global level.

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And I experienced a closeness to God through applying

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His principles personally. So, 22 years ago, I realized that the Bible provided a full system of principles that I could apply to my own life, which

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I did. And that not only repaired my financial mistakes, it improved my marriage, it drew me closer to the

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Lord, and it allowed me to experience His reality. His principles are trustworthy, and they're timeless.

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And then, because of that experience, God allowed me to travel the world and to teach these principles to many, many other places in the world, many people, millions of people.

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And I began to observe that the countries that followed God's principles had greater economic growth than those that didn't.

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And so, both from a micro -economic level and a macro level, I wanted to write my observations, backing it up with scripture so that other people could have the same experience.

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What I enjoyed most about the book was how easy to understand it was. I've never taken a course in economics, it's not definitely not my area of expertise, but I didn't feel lost.

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I thought you did an excellent job at explaining, sometimes, some pretty complicated concepts in a very easy -to -understand manner.

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So, thank you for that. So, how might our use of money as individuals and as nations reflect what we believe?

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Well, I think that every financial decision we make is a reflection of our either trust in God or our rejection of God.

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I start off the book with an experience I had in Taiwan. I was hosted there by some wonderful Christian business leaders.

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We went to a nice dinner, and as we were walking back from the dinner, I noticed these people stooped down by these, looked like little hibachi grills on the sidewalk.

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And I thought, maybe they're making food or something. And as I looked closer, these people were burning money.

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And I had no idea why they were doing it, so I investigated the practice.

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And it is a part of a practice, a ritual in their culture, where they burn money to send it to a dead relative.

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And they get these impressions that their relatives are in financial need, so they buy what's called JOSS paper,

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J -O -S -S. Sometimes it's called hell paper. And they burn it in the fire, and their belief is that their dead relatives are going to get it, and they're being kind to them.

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And I realized that this was evidence of their belief, that the way they were using money was a clear sign of what they actually believed.

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Otherwise, they wouldn't have burned the money. But up to $400 million a year of this paper is purchased and burned in fires every year in Taiwan.

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And so from that, I started to see that we all make financial decisions that indicates whether we really trust

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God or whether we don't believe God and reject His principles. For sure.

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And trust me, in our experience at GotQuestions, applying a Christian worldview has a positive impact on many areas of our lives.

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We just recently had a discussion on this podcast about having a biblical view of sex before marriage or sex outside of marriage.

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Just if God's instructions in this one area were followed, just imagine how much heartache, how many broken relationships, how much damage that people have done to themselves could be avoided if God's principles were followed.

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So it's not just money. It's not just sex. It's everywhere that if God's way is followed, it results in a much better outcome.

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So how does a Christian view of work impact the economy and society?

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Well, there's many different views of works around the world. I've traveled to countries where people believe that work is a curse or it's beneath them.

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It's beneath their dignity to work. And you see a lot of suffering as a result of that.

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The biblical view is that God created us to work. It's an amazing thought that the

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God of the universe said that he actually worked for six days and he rested for one.

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I don't know which one of those is more remarkable, that he actually worked in labor or that he took a break.

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But he said he did both. And he put Adam in the garden in Genesis 2 .15 to work and to manage the creation.

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And we're created in God's image to be workers. And I believe that when we see that as God intended to bring dignity and purpose to our lives, we enjoy it and we experience flourishing.

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When we work, God provides. That's how he created his system. And work is important to us.

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It's not a curse. The curse came later, but we were created in God's image to be workers just as he is.

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Yeah, that's very interesting. If you look at our culture now, you have the great resignation.

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So many people quitting their jobs or with COVID the last few years. So many people got used to working at homes.

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They don't want to go back to work. How do we combat that attitude? And I'm especially seeing it in young people, just no interest whatsoever in going out and getting a job and providing for themselves.

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It's almost not just a spiritual laziness, but like a cultural laziness that people really don't want to work.

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So beyond what you've already said, how can we combat that? How can we communicate the importance and value in work and why people should love work rather than treat it as something to be avoided?

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Well, I've always believed in the principle that I think is supported by Scripture that the man may build the house, but the house is also building the man.

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So work is a way that our character is developed and formed. The Scripture says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your mind.

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And so we have a limited time while we're here on earth to make an impact. And that impact is through what we do with most of our time.

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And if we work, we're productive and we're following the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply.

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That's not just having big families or children. It means to multiply resources because God created us to be producers.

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And when we do that with joy, we experience such satisfaction. I read a Harvard study years ago that the two things that people write as the highest, most satisfying experiences in their life.

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The first is generosity. Well, work enables you to be generous. You know, the Bible says, quit stealing, work with your hands so that you have something to share.

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And because that's good for us, we can now be generous towards others. It reduces our fear.

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It allows us to find meaning and purpose by doing something that benefits not just ourselves, but others by what we build or create.

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And then secondly, the second thing that brings happiness in our life is earned achievement.

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Now, earned achievement means that you just didn't, you know, scratch off a number and win the lottery.

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You accomplish something. You overcame obstacles. You persevered.

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And perseverance is what the Bible says in Romans 5 gives us hope for the future.

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And so there's a benefit to work that we're missing out on if we just say, well,

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I don't ever want to do that. I want somebody else to take care of me. Exactly. So thank you for that.

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And it's something I've had many opportunities to try to counsel and encourage people out of the mindset of avoiding work, but rather looking at work as something that God gave us.

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As you said, before the fall into sin, work is not the curse. Painful, difficult, horrible work is part of the curse.

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But work itself is a gift of God, not something we should seek to avoid. So in your book, you talk about how the

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Christian work ethic impacts culture and economics, how in countries where Protestantism spread quickly, economic growth followed.

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What do you see as the connection? Well, two things, Shea. First of all, you know,

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Martin Luther was a celibate monk, and he rejected the teachings that he should remain celibate and saw that the

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Scripture actually teaches that it's good to marry and that two are better than one. So denying the teachings he had been under, he actually married and then began to promote marriage.

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And what you see is a phenomenal correlation between any culture that upholds monogamous faithfulness in a covenant marriage.

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They have rapid economic growth. Any culture that denies that that's a way to form a family and they don't believe in monogamous marriages, they have very slow economic growth.

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In fact, they have rampant poverty. Now, to me, that's evidence of what God said is good.

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Family formation is a way that God prospers us. And I mean holistically.

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He prospers us in our soul, not just in our wallet, because families are where our true riches lie.

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We earn the things in a family that money can't buy, the joys of being in community and being loved.

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And so marriage is one of the evidences that God's ways are superior to man's ways.

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And they actually, you can trace an economic premium to following God's principles, starting with marriage.

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And what would be, you mentioned two. There's two main points that came to mind with how economic growth follows people, nations implementing

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God's principles. Well, when God is worship in any culture, you see that freedom persists,

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Shea. And I used a diagram in the book based on the first of the

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Ten Commandments. When the Lord said you should have no other gods before me, that only leaves you with one of four options.

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Either a culture is going to be free to practice their faith and to worship God. And that leads to freedom and flourishing in every nation where God is worshiped.

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But then the other models, you see the opposite is true. You see models where man considers himself a god.

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That's the way Pharaoh thought of himself. And when man sets himself up as a god, you experience communism.

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You experience totalitarianism. You see dictators, human oppression and suffering.

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And then if government positions itself in the place of God, making all decisions over the family, asserting authority over private property rights or production, deciding the winners and losers in an economy, you see slow economic growth and suffering as well.

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And then finally, the only model that's left is people who worship idols. And those countries promote mysticism, multiple gods.

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They build physical gods to worship and you see massive human suffering and poverty in those models.

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So one of the things I really enjoyed about the book was just the different examples you gave of things you've experienced as you've traveled.

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What are some other things that may help us understand how another culture may view money or manage money and how not following God's plan has negatively impacted either that culture, either macroeconomically or microeconomically?

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I've had the opportunity to teach in person many, many times inside China.

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That's been one of the great blessings of my life to get to know the Chinese Christians and to be a part of their culture.

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And I've never seen anything like this anywhere in my life, Shea. But I would teach what

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God's word says about greed, coveting, loving of money, idolatry, all of those principles that in the

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Western world we tend to take for granted or even ignore. And people would immediately stop me from teaching and ask me to pray with them as they would repent publicly of their love of money.

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Money had a grip over their lives. In fact, it had been the replacement for God because the worship of God had been denied them in their culture for so many years.

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Once they were given economic freedom, they began to replace God with money. And when they would repent of that,

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I would see an immediate change in their lives. People would become generous. They would become kind.

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They would some of the stress would just wash off of them. And I would see the transformation in their lives right before my very eyes.

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And so I've seen God's principles applied at that level in a very affluent culture like China.

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But on the other end of the spectrum, I've been able to teach God's principles to some of the poorest people on planet

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Earth. And I've also seen them faithfully applied the same truths that we apply anywhere in the world and experience escape from chronic generational poverty.

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And so the book is is is presenting evidence that God's principles work no matter who you are or where you are.

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So another thing in your book that I found very helpful were the connections between morality and money and how a moral culture results in a economically prosperous country.

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What are some of what are some of the key connections that you see there? Well, we tend to think that money is objective, that it's just numbers.

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It's buying and selling. It's just transactional. But the reality is it's completely influenced by morality.

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In fact, any place in the world that upholds in the culture living by the principles in the

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Ten Commandments, they experience the fastest economic growth. Any place in the world where they're ignored, then you have economic suffering.

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For instance, thou shall not murder. People don't want to live where there's a high murder rate.

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Therefore, property values go down. Therefore, businesses close and move out. Therefore, tax base erodes and the infrastructure starts to deteriorate.

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People who who lie and cheat and steal, who practice corrupt business practices, their economy suffer.

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All of the things that God said in the Ten Commandments are good for us are actually good for not only me, but for the whole society.

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They're good for the culture. They're good for the economy. And the hidden one, Shay, and I don't know if I said much about this in the book, but the

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Tenth Commandment, thou shall not covet, is a commandment that deals with the heart of man.

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We should not desire what somebody else has. And in fact, we should celebrate what somebody else has, what

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God has provided for them, and learn to be content with what he's provided for us. Because that allows a meritocracy to flourish, that God can reward those who work hard.

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And we shouldn't covet what they have. Yeah. Amen. I mean, it's the covet, do not covet, is probably the commandment that's most frequently broken.

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I don't know if that's true in every culture, but it sure seems to be the case in my experience. But people look at it as sometimes the least important one.

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And yet, if that commandment is consistently surveyed, it results in tremendous damage to both people, to societies.

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Well, the vast majority of the Got Questions audience, especially for our podcast, is here in the

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United States. So what are some of the key mistakes you see most often here in the

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United States, which is still the most prosperous economic country in the history of the world, but not as strong as it could be?

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So what are some of the mistakes you commonly see here in the United States, and what would you advise as the solutions to those mistakes?

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Shay, a lot of times in the United States, we debate over the forms of government or the forms of economic thought that we want to live under, whether it's capitalism or socialism or communism, and there's all different perspectives about that.

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I know where I stand on that. I believe in free markets, and I think the Bible supports free markets. But in the midst of that argument here in the

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United States, we miss maybe one of the bigger issues, and that is materialism. I think sometimes we've got our eyes on the wrong ism.

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Materialism is something that grips our own hearts, and it's a means to say that our identity, our purpose, our satisfaction, our joy is derived from what we have.

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And the Bible warns against that, telling us that our lives should not consist in the abundance of our possessions.

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You know, if we have to define our riches by how much we own or can purchase, we're really poor, because true riches, according to God, come from things that money can't buy, the things that He provides through His Spirit.

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And one of the ways to combat materialism is to recognize and declare and live by the fact that God owns everything.

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Psalm 24 says, and everything in it and all the people who dwell therein. And so we don't own the world and we don't buy the world.

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We temporarily manage what God has given us. And when I died to the idea that I was going to own a lot of the world, that I was not going to be the owner, that God would always own it, it broke the grip of materialism over my life.

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I stopped keeping score by how much I had. And it allowed me actually to be more generous, because I believe what our founder,

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Larry Burkett, used to teach, that most of what God gives us is not for us. And we have to think of ourselves more as a funnel instead of a bucket that we want.

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You know, if you're a bucket, we want God just to fill our bucket. But if we're a funnel, God wants that to flow through to show

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His kindness to others. And I think that's a lesson in the West that we can actually learn from the poor.

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My experience has been the poor live more generously than those who have the most resources.

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I love that illustration, the bucket versus the funnel. I think it's a powerful reminder of what

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God expects of us and why God blesses us. So we can give a blessing to others, not so we can just hoard it, so we can build bigger barns and store more and more.

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And God responds, you fool, this very day your life will be required of you. So let's put the resources

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God has blessed us with to work, to minister to other people, to expand God's kingdom, knowing that can have an eternal impact rather than focusing on the here and now and, as you said, materialism.

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So for my last question, let's get really practical. So with the evidence, economic evidence for God in mind, how should that impact how we worship and how we apply

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God's truth to our lives? Well, it boils down to me, to Hebrews 13, 5 and 6, when the

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Lord said, keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because I will never leave you or forsake you.

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And the implication in that verse, Shea, is that money will never love you back. And he told us not to love it, meaning don't put our security in it.

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Don't put our confidence in it. Don't put our identity in it. You know, so often the people who had great resources in the

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Scripture were referred to as a rich man. God didn't even call him by name.

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He just used it as a generic term to identify someone who identifies with their possessions.

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And he said, don't do that because it will leave you. You know, we do not take it with us.

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And so to get wrapped up in it and to get all of our hope in it only leads to fear and anxiety.

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And I've seen people, whether they have a little or a lot, get under the control of money.

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And to be free of that is a wonderful freedom. And you draw closer to God because even this idea of being a funnel requires faith.

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You have to live by faith that, hey, what he gave me today, maybe that flowed through. Is he going to provide tomorrow?

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And that daily walking by faith is how we experience his faithfulness.

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And when you experience his faithfulness, you grow to love him. And Shea, I'm motivated to see people love

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God more and to experience his just kindness and the way that he treats his own.

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And he wants us to grow closer to him. And I hope the book allows people to do that.

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So, again, this has been the Got Questions podcast with Chuck Bentley, the president of Crown Financial Ministries and the author of the recently released book,

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Economic Evidence for God, Uncovering the Invisible Hand that Guides the Economy. So it's an excellent book.

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It's well worth reading. And, again, what I appreciate most about how easy it was to understand. Don't think you need a degree in economics to be able to understand this book.

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It's very practical. It's very personable. Again, well worth reading. So, Chuck, thank you for being on the

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Got Questions podcast again today. I truly appreciate your willingness and the insights that God has given you.

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Shea, I always feel honored to be interviewed by you, and I really am a fan of Got Questions. I hope more and more people will utilize the resource there and tell others about it.

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Keep up the good work, my friend. All right. Thank you, brother. With God's help, I'll do my best. So this has been the

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Got Questions podcast. Got questions? Bible has answers. And we'll be fine.