When Zaccheus meets the Lord, his response is recorded:

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord,”Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much. Then Jesus said to him,”Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. (Luke 19:8-9)

The parable of the workers in the vineyard challenges conventional notions of reward for effort (Mat 20)

The parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) has something to say about investment strategies

The parable of the rich young ruler says something about the relationship between serving God and mammon.

And the hardest one of all comes in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God and let him look after the economic side.

Soren Kierkegaard said:

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

I would be the first to admit that it is a struggle to find the right balance. I often wonder whether I am more informed by the prevailing culture than the gospel imperatives. But on a global scale, there is no doubt that current economic philosophy, with its manic commitment to growth at all costs, is costing us all dearly.

[From a thoughtful friend]