Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove - Gods Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel

This book is full of piercing questions that every serious follower of Jesus must ask. And its answers ref lect a breathtaking vision and radical call to action.

RON SIDER, president, Evangelicals for Social Action

All of us who are citizens of the richest nation in the history of the human race would be wise to think long and hard about what we have been given, and what is expected of us in return. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgroves new book, Gods Economy, is a gentle yet challenging guide in that vital process.

BRIAN MCLAREN, author/activist (brianmclaren.net)

Most of the compelling books I know of in current Christian literature are so because they dare to deal simply and directly with radical concepts that have become immobilized by shrewdly nuanced ideas and rampant cultural theology. Wilson-Hartgrove is a master of the art of that kind of truth-telling, and there can be no doubt but that Gods Economy is a compelling book.

PHYLLIS TICKLE, author, The Great Emergence

Through an examination of money-changing activities ranging from panhandlers to war, Gods Economy challenges the reader to confront Christs For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. A must read for individuals and groups looking to invest time wisely.

MATTHEW SLEETH, author of Serve God, Save The Planet, and executive director, Blessed Earth

This is how the Gospel must hit the ground running! Gods Economy is very brilliant, very timely, and very readable at the same time. This is practical theology and spirituality at its best!

RICHARD ROHR, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This is not the book to read unless youre looking to change your life in subtle ways and maybe great ones.

BILL MCKIBBEN, author, Deep Economy

Also by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Mirror to the Church
(with Emmanuel Katongole)

Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers
(with Shane Claiborne)

New Monasticism:
What It Has to Say to Todays Church

Free to Be Bound:
Church beyond the Color Line

ZONDERVAN

Gods Economy
Copyright 2009 by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

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ePub Edition August 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-56208-5

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson-Hartgrove, Jonathan, 1980

Gods economy : redefining the health and wealth gospel / Jonathan

Wilson-Hartgrove.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-310-29337-8

1. Contentment Religious aspects Christianity. 2. Wealth Religious

aspects Christianity. 3. Christian life. I. Title.

BV4647.C7W55 2009

261.08'5 dc22 2009018609

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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Interior design by Beth Shagene

For Grandma Ann

Contents

O ne of the supreme ironies of American life is that the society that has talked and written most about the fulfillment of the self shows the least evidence of it. People obsessed with the cultivation of the self, the good life, the abundant life, have little to show for it but a cult of selfishness. The highest standard of living in the world has produced a bumper crop of obesity, anxiety, boredom, and meanness. Happily, there are numerous exceptions; still, the generalization is plausible. Our world is splendidly filled with glorious things and a glorious gospel but is appallingly lacking persons who celebrate these glories with passion and share them with compassion. We are not the first to live like this. Augustine looked at the world around him and acerbically observed that his parishioners were more pained if their villa is poor than if their life is bad.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove has something to say about this. He writes out of the context of actual American communities that deliberately set themselves against a society that is impoverished by money rich and poor alike and discerningly observes what takes place, and has been taking place all over the world, among people who live on Gods economy, the abundant life that Jesus promised, an economy of prosperity.

His way of writing is through storytelling. He tells stories. And he is a magnificent storyteller. We are not handed statistics to evaluate or ideas to ponder or goals to pursue, but actual persons who embrace true prosperity, the abundant economy. The stories carry the good news. Woven into the stories are strands of theological discernment, trenchant Scriptural exegesis, and cultural analysis. He writes engagingly about extending the beloved community that God invites us into and remembering whats at its heart the radical abundance of a Father who loves without limit and gives without calculating the cost.

The compelling element in these pages is the authors detailed immersion in the generosity of a way of life that develops when money is dethroned from the controlling center of our lives, and the community is taken seriously as the place of abundance, the good life, a life of hospitality. There are no angry denunciations of the rich or the powerful or of government corruption. He works from the ground up, inviting our participation in the thousands of small acts on the margins that add up to a life of prosperity. This is no prophetic jeremiad. Nor is it a romantic-spiritual fantasy of an economic utopia. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is bearing witness; he has been living for years what he now writes. Trust him. I trust him.

The Christian community so needs this witness, for we are all in perpetual danger of money. The American church seems to be particularly at risk as a secularized consumer mentality conditions us to evaluate our Christian life in terms of what we get out of it and as celebrity preachers vaunt money, money, and more money as Gods will for our lives. Not that money is immoral or evil in itself, but the words of Jesus and the experience of Christians everywhere leave no room for doubt that money is the most powerful and destructive idol around. More often than not it is an idol that doesnt look like an idol. The demons seem to take particular delight in using money to create believable illusions of good things, truly godly ambitions, and yes, even the favor of God.