Heavenly Returns…Even on Earth!
By Yaqub Mirza and Gary Moore
Reviewed and introduced by David Miller
A close acquaintance of my good friend, Gary Moore, has often said Gary “connects dots that aren’t on the same page,” meaning he makes the usually unseen connections among faith, politics, economics and our personal finances.
He has made such connections pretty well over the years. The newsletter of a major ministry has even called him “a prophet,” which is still surely a classic case of religious exaggeration! Gary readily confesses the many mistakes he made during his career, mistakes that render him unqualified for prophethood! Still, when recommending this very unusual but fascinating and most timely new book to your attention, it would be difficult to elaborate more clearly than these words from the opening of Gary’s most recent previous book:
During the early 1980's, Gary Moore wrote an article for the New York Times newspaper group about why the Dow might triple from the 1000 level to the 3000 level despite the predictions of best-selling doom-and-gloom authors. During the late 1980's, he wrote what Christianity Today called "the first book outlining a comprehensive scriptural basis for an evangelical embrace of ethical investing." During the early 1990's, he wrote a book about why the federal debt was political illusion rather than a major economic concern. [Unfortunately, he now believes the debt will likely become a major concern during the coming decade to end in 2028 due to President Trump's tax cuts and defense spending, a la the Reagan years]. At the request of the Church of England, he then taught biblical economics to the leadership of Uganda to demonstrate that Christianity can enrich this life at least as abundantly as Islamic economics. During the late 1990s, his writings explained why Y2K was media hype but stock market speculation and questionable corporate ethics [like the new age morality of the pursuit of so-called “shareholder maximization” at the imploded Enron] were the true dangers to our finances.
Gary was shunned, even disparaged, by conservative Christian financial leaders for all those views—views that would have enriched anyone both spiritually and financially who considered them. Just imagine how the lives of millions—Christian and non-Christian alike— might have been enriched, first spiritually and then financially, had they known Donald Trump would estimate in 2011 that America's net assets, meaning after all debts were retired, as being over $250 trillion—exaggerated but still astounding blessings that Gary had counted for us for decades, even though conservatively suggesting they were half that amount.
As Gary relates and, for what it’s worth, Forbes magazine has long employed the “Trump rule,” which cut in half the amount Mr. Trump’s estimate of his personal wealth. It was only as a candidate that Mr. Trump began deploring the American economy, which he again began lauding once he was president. In other words, America’s economy has long been “great,” if greatly and still increasingly unequal, as Gary has suggested. Our true discontents are moral and spiritual.
Now Gary and his friend, co-author and pioneer of Islamic investing, Dr. Yaqub Mirza suggest, the Islamophobia and prosperity theology of President Trump and his many evangelical and media supporters are the next imagined dangers that could impoverish your spiritual peace and financial prosperity. As a wise manager of God's wealth, Dr. Mirza even counsels us to stop wasting valuable resources on buildings that sit empty most of the week and invest instead in the spiritual development of tens of millions by sharing sanctuaries where Muslims can worship on Fridays, Jews can worship on Saturdays, Christians can worship on Sundays and all can get to know one another at least one day a week!
Even if you disagree with some of Gary’s and Dr. Mirza's perspectives (and it's okay if you do, as Gary readily confesses to having made many mistakes during his career—mistakes that would disqualify him for prophethood), history and the common but rare vision of these authors suggest you will do well to consider the basic premises of this book. I pray you might do so before you conclude the supposed war between true Islam and Judeo-Christianity is the next “war of the civilizations,” Armageddon or that the West is doomed to secularism and atheism. Very few will prosper, and none will find peace in the future if they continue to have such a hopeless vision of that future. Anyway, the Torah, the Bible and the Koran suggest that Adam and Eve were neither Jewish, Christian or Muslim, but simply God’s most beloved creatures, as are all the peoples of the world today.
Dr. David Miller is director of Princeton University’s Center for Faith and Culture
