Article January 2, 2012 Issue

A spiritual, realistic view of the economy

Michael Pabst, Nathan Talbot, Margaret Rogers, Lyle Young, Mary Trammell

This past November, the Christian Science Board of Directors gathered to present some ideas about the global economy during a Time4Thinkers podcast. This excerpt has been edited for readability. To hear the whole podcast go to: time4thinkers.com/the-economy-of-gratitude.

Michael Pabst: When we talk about the economy, we think that there’s something big out there that we don’t have any control over, and we feel threatened, and helpless. But when I looked at the definition on my iPhone, I found that the word’s origin comes from the Greek, oikonomia, which means “household management.” 

That’s a lot more tangible. It made me think of the Bible story in Second Kings where a woman’s husband died and her two sons were to be taken away as bondmen to pay the family debts. Elisha, the prophet, asked her a very simple question: “What do you have in the house?” In a way, he was bringing the situation back to a more manageable question of economy. And the little pot of oil that she had turned out to be an almost inexhaustible resource that enabled her to pay the debts (see II Kings 4:1–7). 

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