Turn a leaf

We have been seduced into a communistic perspective on human existence; that is that we are merely consumers...yes that is how Marx perceived the human to be, not capitalism...yet the market as we now know it, i.e. capitalism, has embraced the same ideology.

Karl Marx saw human beings as nothing more than consumers of resources. And he saw human history as nothing more than the struggle over those resources between the haves and the have nots

But that’s not true, and while Americans don’t think of themselves as communists, our free market system has been corrupted by the same flawed fundamental premise. (Chuck Colson)

I believe that a primary flaw in our understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview on which Western societies have been constructed, is that we have lost sight of the original Biblical injunction...the Cultural mandate of Genesis.

But really from the biblical standpoint, these are just stepping-stones to the real culture. To put it biblically, culture is the fulfillment of the mandate given in the Garden of Eden to man. What did God say to man there? He said, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over it. The cultural mandate is the accomplishment of that great command that God gave to man. It is the execution of man’s divinely given stewardship over the creation, for we are the kings of the creation under God. It includes the development and the improvement of the creation that is about us. And then ideally, when this improvement and development takes place and is accomplished by the enabling power of God, man lays the whole thing down before the feet of him who is king of man and of nature and in whose image and for whom man and all things are created. So wrote one of the great thinkers about culture.

Now this completely contradicts the new 'Green consciousness' which claims that the world is perfect without mankind,  that in fact humans are a destructive force. Whilst there is indeed some truth to this position it is not the whole truth and is in fact the truth only of fallen humanity. Unfortunately too many modern Christians have forgotten the teachings of the cultural mandate (or have never heard it!) and continue to treat this world as if they were still fallen. We are earth-builders.

A Biblical worldview begins with a different and better assumption about human beings. That we were designed in God’s image, the Imago Dei, and tasked to care for, steward and cultivate the created order.

We certainly consume to survive. But, bearing His image, we were created to produce, to innovate and invest, to pour into others, to seek to improve things. That’s the free market at its best, but it requires that we form the character to desire creating above consuming, that we delay gratification and think of the welfare of future generations. And that character is in short supply these days.

Let us take a leaf out of JFK's book and ask not; what can we consume, but what can we create!