“All systems are just built by other men.” I remember the time I first heard, and truly grasped, the meaning of these words. For me, questioning the rules and systems under which I lived did not come naturally. Sure, I might dislike particular laws, and that certain structures ought to be questioned and changed, but I still assumed the foundation of our society—our economics and politics—were ultimately the correct. Well, not even correct, just the way things are. The Market simply is. We can follow its rules and generate wealth, or ignore them and live in poverty. Modern democracy simply is. It is the system of freedom and is either functioning as it was designed, or damaged but in need of repair. The stage was set; I was already a player. All I needed was to know how the rules worked in order to help the whole thing keep working, or at least, work well enough for me.
Unlike Pope Leo XIII, I was born into a world wherein certain, once revolutionary, ideas had become fully integrated into everyday common sense. So, perhaps my initial uncritical evaluation of “the way things are” can be excused.
Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s great social encyclical, opens with a powerful portrayal of the general consternation felt in 1891. While the document is firmly situated in the modern era, the subjects it grapples with—like urbanization, the ubiquity of liberal philosophy on economics and religion, the advent of capitalism—were all relatively new, and their practical consequences were still being discovered. The first paragraph is worth quoting in full, even if just to appreciate the elegant and authoritative prose:
It is precisely because of this revolutionary moment in history that Pope Leo XIII is able to offer us fresh insight where our own has grown dull, particularly because as many of the warnings he issued in the letter (and others) were ignored, and the opposite course embraced. Therefore, I think it important to pay close attention to all those things the Pope criticizes, and then to ask: “Why?”
One example of this is Rerum Novarum’s scathing condemnation of “rapacious usury”—a point often overlooked and written off by Catholics (myself included). He writes:
The word usury has fallen so out of fashion today that, only until a few years ago, I could not have even told you what it was without looking up a definition. And when I did, I was deeply confused: it means charging interest on loans? How is that a sin? I thought of my ROTH IRA account, 401k’s, modern banking… usury can’t possibly be a sin, because this is simply the way things are today. Charging interest on loans is so reasonable because it makes sure people don’t lose money to their debtors, and isn’t it amazing that things like compound interest can make someone incredibly wealthy by retirement? It is mystifying, then, that Pope Leo reminds us that usury is an age-old sin and constantly condemned by the Church—only now, he claims, it is making a new entrance but in a modern guise, hiding what would otherwise appear as an obvious corruption. Why?
Of course, I never considered how odd (or recent) of a phenomenon the investment system was (money can just… make more money from itself? Reproduce, like plants?), and I certainly never considered how widespread usury might impact our economy and social structures on a macroscale. Now, I may not be an expert on the subject, but I have spent a lot of time around people who think deeply about these things—and I think I’m convinced by Pope Leo XIII’s skepticism. Now, when I thought about usury from the perspective of a hardworking, middle class family, it was hard to see what the big deal was. What problem could the stock market or modern banking system be (besides investing in corrupt companies) because of the simple fact that it works—it really does generate wealth and a future retirement, something very important for the family. In fact, it seems cruel and scrupulous to tell someone that investment, their 401k, or charging interest on loans might be sinful.
However, there was another perspective I did not consider: what does it mean for an entire economic system to be fundamentally dependent upon, essentially, a ponzi scheme? The recent GameStop incident clarified “the way things are” for me. Watching a bunch of Redditors raise up and then destroy a stock’s value based largely on a joke made it glaringly obvious that, in the stock market, the actual value of a company is fundamentally disconnected from its perceived value on market or the wealth generated there. So long as people acted like GameStop had real value, it did—even though the company was failing. The wealth gained from GameStop stock was real, but it was based entirely on myth (or, perhaps, meme), rather than reality. What does it mean for a whole economic system to depend on something so fundamentally disconnected from real wealth and value?
I could go on, but I think C.S. Lewis best articulates the growing suspicion I, as a Christian, have developed toward these things. As he writes in Mere Christianity:
I am sure that, along with the ancient Greeks and Jews and Christians, Pope Leo XIII could not have imagined all the ways that usury in the stock market, banking systems, and retirement plans has developed today. But perhaps the Pope understood, and could foresee, the looming threat on the horizon, hazy as it was. Is C.S. Lewis right? Might not many of our problems today—the power of big tech and corporations, growing personal and national debts, our utter dependence on the market as consumers, etc.—come from this modern financial experiment? Could disconnecting ourselves from the natural order of wealth in this way lead to an ultimately unhealthy financial society?
I think Rerum Novarum was right about usury and its consequences. And unfortunately, looking at our economy and society today, we can expect to be the beneficiaries of even more consequences. What does this mean for Christians navigating a world already riddled with usury? In some ways, it’s the same problem as all those cheap products coming from China—we all know that the ethics behind what we get off of Amazon is wrong, but the market is flooded with them. How do we avoid monetizing injustice?
I think the first step is to recognize that “all systems are just built by other men,” and we can be living in one that has introduced sin into its very structures—without channels for legitimate alternatives. I do think this should mitigate our personal guilt in what seems to be a corporate sin, put in place before we were born and handed to us as wisdom. I also think we have a responsibility to respond to the call of Rerum Novarum in some substantial (and probably risky) way, even if it is just one small change. Ultimately, it does not seem like financial risk is totally unavoidable in a system so deeply entrenched in usury (as in, you will definitely lose out on certain financial benefits), but at least we will be in good company. It seems that the call of Christians, generally speaking, means sticking our necks out for the sake of virtue, a very vulnerable and uncomfortable position to be in. But it is that vulnerability and risk that creates the space for real virtue, for real change, and real alternatives.
