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So capitalism is God's economy of choice?
Free-market economies are more compatible with human freedom and dignity and are more efficient in the production of wealth. One of the exciting changes in the last 20 years is that the percentage of chronically malnourished people in developing nations now is lower—35 percent in 1970 compared to 20 percent today. And much of the credit goes to the success of market economies in Asia. In contrast, wherever you have centralized power, as in Marxist economies, you get unfair use of it.

Still, there are fundamental problems with today's market economy. The Old Testament principle of Jubilee tells us, in effect, that property is so good that everybody ought to have some. In our day, that means everybody ought to have the economic and educational resources they need to earn their own way. Unfortunately, the capital is divided so that roughly half of the world's people have virtually none and therefore cannot earn a decent living.

Today's market economy also exacerbates environmental pollution and consumerism by operating from a sort of centralization of economic power—large corporations merge and buy the media outlets and, indirectly, the politicians. They use their media to do their advertising, telling us the big lie that we get fulfillment through more and more things. This is in some ways analogous—although not yet nearly as serious—to what we saw in the communist system where power was centralized.

Do you believe Christians should live at a subsistence level?
I don't believe we should live in poverty. But in a context where over a billion people are in near absolute poverty and probably a couple billion people have never once heard the name of Jesus, for the sake of evangelism and for the sake of empowering the poor, we ought to spend less on ourselves and give more to others.

Let me add, however, that one area in which I've changed significantly since the first edition of my book is that I am no longer as concerned as I was earlier with the ratio of money between the rich and poor. The biblical understanding of equity (which might loosely be defined as economic fairness) requires you to take human freedom seriously. If some people are poor because they're lazy, that's not unfair. So equity would not only permit but in fact require that kind of inequality.

Do you think evangelical Christians are more concerned for the poor today than they were several decades ago?
At the leadership level we have come to understand clearly that we've got to do evangelism and social action. That's a phenomenally important development. But if you ask, Are American evangelicals more, or less, caught in consumerism now than when I wrote the book? I'm almost certain the answer is far more.

What practical steps can individuals and families take to act more biblically with their resources?
I would say to each person what I want to say to myself: I don't think God wants me to feel guilty every time I enjoy a Christmas feast or buy something for my wife. But I think God does want me to regularly—once a year is a good time—look at my income and to consider again what the Bible says about the need for evangelism and empowering the poor. If we as Christians would do that, we would move in the direction of spending less and sharing more.

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April 28 1997, Vol. 41, No. 5