Faith-Based Funding, Booze, and Greed
By John Young, Editorial Writer
By Permission of the Waco Tribune Herald
Sometimes, Red Tape Can Be A Good Thing
The Big Deal About Booze
Some have been convinced they are what they drink.
All is calm on the streets of McGregor this morning, which should be a relief.
That`s very much the norm on the streets of McGregor, but a few days ago it faced a tempest in a plastic cup.
Preparations for Founders Day, the annual celebration of the city`s birth, were ensnarled in controversy when the city council lifted a ban on the open consumption of alcohol during the event.
You can`t buy alcohol in McGregor, but apparently the Founders Day practice of good ol` boys was to imbibe discreetly in the alleyways or shadows. This year the city council made the practice legal. This resulted in a packed council chambers as people protested the change.
Apparently Founders Day last weekend went off without incident. No harm, no foul, right? Well, not this time. Cross-fingers for next time.
Most of us would admit to ambivalence about a controversy like this. I don`t drink. I don`t berate those who do and I don`t take offense when they do it responsibly. What I do find useful, occasionally, is to ask people to explain why booze is such a big deal to people.
I`m not talking here about the Lady`s Temperance League. The ladies` concern is understandable. They`re caring about our afterlives.
What is harder to understand is the other people who make a big deal about booze-they who personalize their poison, who firmly believe that you can`t have celebration, relaxation or recreation without inebriation.
Fortunate in My Influences
Growing up, I was fortunate to have parents who didn`t drink, doubly fortunate to have teen peers who didn`t, either. When we got together for fun, even after we reached the "legal" age, we didn`t have a "party." That had a connotation we didn`t wish to convey. We had a "get-together."
I often wondered, how did the word "party" get hijacked?
Simple: Most Americans pledge to the flag, think of the cross as sacred and honor a badge as the law. But by far the most prevalent symbol in our land is intoxicating fluid.
Beer. An amber liquid. Sort of dull on the tongue. You have to acquire the taste.
Just an amber liquid. Yet to so many young people it is King Arthur`s sword-the symbol of maturity, the symbol of conquest, the only way to have fun, the way to legitimize one`s self. It`s such a symbol that to reach the drinking age and not drink is social heresy.
Some people will say that certain evangelicals, like tee-totaling Baptists, make too big of a deal about beer. I tend to agree. Beer consumed in moderation at a proper place and proper age shouldn`t concern anyone. But the Baptists aren`t the ones who make the biggest deal about booze. It`s the adherents of "can`t have fun without it." And a large portion of them are age 15 to 18.
Can`t have fun without it? That sounds like an alcoholic`s line. Are we an alcoholic society?
Consider, for instance, the question of whether or not to serve beer at football games. Judgmental opponents may overstate their case, but the better question is why at a football game?
Do we need people who are already emotionally charged to further alter their brain waves? As for Baylor University, we`d better be glad it doesn`t sell beer at Floyd Casey Stadium. The last thing Baylor fans need at those games is a legal depressant.
No, a depressant is the last thing needed by a lot of people who turn to booze under the pretext of "having a good time."
While it`s true that booze likely would be replaced by another crutch, and that Prohibition was one of the dumbest things America ever did, it is instructive to imagine what the world would be like if booze and bars never existed. We`d need half the prisons and one-third of the divorce attorneys.
It would be safer to drive and safer to grow up. Instead, too many young people come to think that "grown up" means: "bottoms up."
The Goodness in Greed
When Jesus gave exceedingly long odds to a rich man`s inheriting the kingdom, he wasn`t talking about the "death tax." Was he?
When he talked of "faith, hope and charity," was he speaking of the 1040 long form?
Last week at BaylorUniversity an army of academics discussed dual faiths-in the Lord and in capitalism.
The event was "Christianity and Economics," a research conference under the Pruit Memorial Symposium.
Some will ask, "Say what?" The object of capitalism isn`t to make people godly. It`s to make them wealthy. The point at Baylor, and a signature of President Robert Sloan`s administration, is to align faith and learning at every turn.
Baylor has had other such conferences-faith and ecology; faith and science; faith and the science of life`s origins, or so-called intelligent design. Sloan`s signature has been the central debate on campus; next to how many miracles it would take to keep the University of Texas football Longhorns from scoring on their first possession.
Some faculty members, particularly in the sciences, object to the mandate to bring religion to bear on every discipline on campus. Science is science. Study it, understand it and live your life as your conscience dictates, they say.
It takes some stretching to bring a Christian perspective to a science that basically is about supply and demand, and the science of sating demand, also known as consumerism.
Conference participants heard such assertions from clergy on the agenda, and also heard discussions of Christian business ethics and environmental concerns. But the underlying theme was how or if the Xs and Os of economics track God`s game plan.
In the session "Moral Foundations of Capitalism," three economists discussed how free markets fit into God`s plan of providing for all.
Edd Noel of Westmont College sought to demonstrate how market forces might have shaped Jesus` world-view, saying that the carpenter "likely earned an income well above subsistence level" and that Galilee was a regional trade center.
Hope College economists Robin Klay and John Lunn presented a paper called "The Providence of God in Relationship to Market Economies and Economic Theory," in which ingenuity is treated as a godly virtue.
"As God hovered over the waters at the time of creation, perhaps God`s spirit also hovers over markets and their participants," they wrote.
Seattle Pacific`s Douglas Downing spoke of the life-affirming freedom built into capitalism.
Not that these economists ignored that bad things can come from markets-say, opium cartels or monopolies. But seemingly understated was the fact that free markets disproportionately benefit people depending on their access to them.
In the book Development as Freedom, Nobel Prizewinner Amartya Sen asserts a truth well evident in America`s inner cities. One may be "free" to drink from capitalism`s bounty. But if one is afraid to leave one`s home in a neighborhood where gunplay is recreation, where the nearest grocery store is six miles away, freedom is just a word on a paper.
That lends itself to political decisions. To what extent should government act to address inequities? Or, like Providence, shall we trust the free market to provide?
As effective as capitalist theory has been in providing for general welfare, putting evangelical faith in the free markets is like trusting a level playing field to bring 340-pound Longhorn linemen down to size.
