Biblical Wealth Creation Strategy

It seems some believers, including prosperity preachers, were affected by the current financial crisis. But sometimes a lot of our modern wealth-creation strategies are different to the Bible's value-system, and we might not even know it. If we return to the Bible's definition of prosperity, we might remain unaffected by such crises.

For example, Moses' system of Law forbad charging interest within the economy, except to non-citizens. If we did that in our modern economies, inflation would be a thing of the past. But a lot of modern wealth-creation strategies actually depend on earning interest.

In Moses' economy without interest, it would have been unlikely to use real estate as a wealth-creation strategy - because the economy would have remained stable. In our modern economies, however, we actually hope for instability in the economy to force prices up so we can profit by selling the house to some less fortunate buyer for more than we paid for it even though we haven't made any improvements to the property.

Morally, we ought to desire stability in the economy. Ideally we ought not to seek a wealth-creation strategy that somehow disadvantages our neighbour in comparison to how much we are advantaged. We ought to seek mutual profit.

If we've made capital improvement to a property, and those improvements are reflected in the new price of our house - then that's fair enough. But to sell the same house without improvements for more than we paid for it is only possible in an unstable environment and it means the buyer is getting less house for his money than you did. Is that 'walking in love'?

I'm not saying we shouldn't be involved in such strategies while that's the way our system works. But I think the Bible's value-system is different and we can benefit by rediscovering it and returning to it.

In a future post I'll go into more detail about Biblical wealth-creation strategies.