Biblical View of Economics 1

I'm speaking this morning in Michigan on "Biblical Foundations for Faith, Work, and Economics: Human Flourishing and the Kingdom of God."

I start off with the basics of a Biblical Worldview, using some material I developed to present to a graduate class of Orthopedic Therapists at IWU. Here is the basic worldview piece of my presentation:

1. God exists and is involved in the world.
2. All human beings have intrinsic worth.
3. The world is not as it should be.
4. God has fixed, is fixing, and will fix the world through Christ--history has a direction.
5. In Scripture, God has revealed two foundational ethical absolutes.

My second slide then emphasizes that we should not think of worldviews here as ideas in a weak sense. By "views" I mean perspectives that are expressions of deep seated values and drives, what Jesus calls the "heart" in Mark 7. James 2 indicates how "dead" mere ideas are, even ideas about God. "Faith without works is dead" or we might say, "Belief that doesn't come from the heart is dead."

Our behaviors and habits flow from our loves, which we often try to express in words and ideas. There are also other very significant components to our view of the world--the way we tell our stories and the stories of others, as well as the key symbols and "rituals" of our lives.

I'll post more later...