Inspired Finance

The Role of Faith in Microfinance and International Economic Development

M. Looft

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137450777
• eBook ISBN: 9781137450784
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Microeconomics
• Index: Social Sciences

By tracing an arc of thought and action from both historical and religious figures up through modern microfinance practitioners, Looft illustrates the many ways religious inspiration continues to remain at the crux of international economic development–while raising compelling questions around God and Mammon working together to help the poor.

1

Charity Revisited

“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”¹

John D. Rockefeller

In his book God’s Politics, the evangelical leader Jim Wallis reminds his readers that one-sixteenth of the verses in the New Testament relate to the poor or the subject of money.² To drive home his point that society as a whole needs to address poverty alleviation, he adds his own twist on a popular anonymous quote, “a society’s integrity is judged, not by its wealth and power, but by how it treats its most vulnerable members.”³ While biblical authority might hold sway over adherents who find inspiration in the words of the prophets, people who do not ground their values in a Judeo-Christian or another faith-based context may instead find guidance in Aristotle’s appeals to universal ideas. To present a model of generosity that gives the recipients of that generosity the power to shape their own lives, this chapter will trace both biblical and secular scholarship around charitable giving. This ethical model contains two primary foundations. First, although there will always be poor people in the world, they need and deserve generosity. Second, that generosity must manifest in ways that help the poor to become self-sufficient and to flourish through their own efforts. This chapter will cover these two elements, and will end by introducing microfinance as a giving method that is not only aligned with this ethical model, but also a very effective way to help the poor lift themselves out of poverty.

Loving one’s neighbor

When the Pharisees asked Christ which commandment was most important, he answered, “[L]ove the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.⁴ The words he uses, “love your neighbor as yourself,” are first found in God’s interaction with Moses in Leviticus.⁵ Some scholars argue that the gospel writers perceived Christ to be the new Moses, sent to remind people that this old law is rooted in love.⁶ Closer inspection of the passages in the Gospel of Mark, also repeated in Matthew⁷ and in Luke⁸, reveals that when asked for one commandment, Christ provided two, nevertheless framing them in unified terms. If loving one’s neighbor depends on an initial love for God, it also relies on an unconditional self-love⁹ that must come first.

If one believes that God is both outside and within an individual, the progression from God to self to others illuminates an iterative process. In other words, God’s love passes through a person, onto other people, then back through God to complete the circuit. By claiming “all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments,”¹⁰ Christ ensured that everything else in his teaching would conform to these two commandments. To follow Christ meant that personal actions had to conform to this standard.

Loving and showing respect for one’s neighbor also traces its roots to the Hellenistic notion of the stranger. The Ancient Greek word for stranger also meant “guest” and “host,” implying a unique relationship that binds people together rather than marking a separation.¹¹ Arguably, the ethical norm of this stranger-host relationship is a central theme in Homer’s two epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. As Homer wrote, “All strangers and wanderers are sacred in the sight of Zeus (Book 6, Line 207).”¹²

In the Iliad, Paris’s abduction of Helen, the Spartan King Menelaus’s wife, violates the hospitality covenant between guest and host, prompting the Greeks to besiege Troy. The Odyssey not only narrates Odysseus’s long venture home after the war, but also the numerous occasions when he and other characters appear as guests in the homes of people they have just met. Despite Odysseus’s disguised appearance as a beggar when he finally returns home to Ithaca, the swineherd, Eumaeus, treats him with the same respect he would afford to any person. Similarly, when Odysseus’s son Telemachus arrives in Sparta, King Menelaus entertains him even though there is a wedding taking place. Homer’s epics demonstrate the harmonious host-stranger relationship with examples of treating the tacit covenant with respect. However, the Greek response to Helen’s abduction and Odysseus’s slaughter of the suitors—fueled by his disappointment at their callous behavior while he was away at war—serve as insightful examples of how badly things can go when people compromise the stranger-host relationship.

Christ takes the concept of the host-stranger relationship a step further in the parable of the Good Samaritan, found in the Gospel of Luke, where he illustrates the proper treatment of even those to whom one has no formal connection. In the gospel, it is not Christ, but an expert in the law who delivers the commandments of loving God and loving one’s neighbor as oneself. However, when he asks Christ, “Who is my neighbor?” he receives this response:

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii[d] and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” “Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”¹³

Both the priest and the Levite were thought to have divine authority: the priest as a presumed representative of God on earth, and the Levite because his tribe was charged with ministering to the priests.¹⁴ If anyone should have stopped to help the dying man, it ought to have been one of those two. Yet it is the Samaritan, a supposed enemy of the Israelites,¹⁵ who showed his love for the stranger. He not only provided food and shelter to the man who would have surely died, but also gave the innkeeper extra money to continue supporting him. As Christ’s parable emphasizes, the commandment to love one’s neighbor was a call for the disciples to notice the people in their lives most in need of help, especially the ones they would prefer to avoid.

Arguably, Christ’s central message to his followers was that they should help those who are worse off than they are. For Christians, when the Son of Man returns, the inheritors of the kingdom of God will be the ones who fed the hungry, clothed the poor, and took in the stranger.¹⁶ The Sermon on the Mount served as a blessing both to meek strangers and to their merciful hosts. Here he admonished those who give to the needy to do so in secret, without sounding off trumpets of self-righteousness.¹⁷ For Christ, we should love our neighbor, whether he is poor, downtrodden, or neglected on the side of the road.

Jim Wallis addresses a common misinterpretation of Christ’s statement, “The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me.”¹⁸ Many people rely on the first clause of this passage to assuage any guilt for either ignoring the poor or even placing the blame on them for their own poverty.¹⁹ Wallis underscores the context of the passage, wherein Christ is protecting a woman who pours expensive ointment on him while he is seated at a table in a leper’s home. The disciples criticize her for wasting money on the ointment, rather than spending it on the poor. Christ is reminding them that the mission of helping the poor is ongoing, and that people can still be generous with the poor yet extravagant in their worship of God. Furthermore, as Wallis has pointed out, Christ grounded his teaching in Deuteronomy:²⁰

If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him, and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take heed lest there be a base thought in your heart, and you say, “The seventh year, the year of release is near,” and your eye be hostile to your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and it be sin in you. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him; because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land.²¹

The poor might always be in the land, but the God of the Bible commanded people to give generously to the poor rather than passing by and leaving them for dead.

Aristotle and generosity

Aristotle’s systematic ethical system has served as a foundation for theological and secular thinkers for over two millennia. In fact, his thought has been so influential that the well-known British analytic philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe’s 1958 paper entitled “Modern Moral Philosophy” argued for a return to Aristotle’s conception of virtue ethics as a guide for morality.²² This view indicates that his ancient ethical system might still serve as an excellent guide to resolving modern dilemmas—regardless of the time period.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserted that the aim of a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Charity Revisited
• 2 Financial Services for Poverty Alleviation
• 3 Protestant Influences
• 4 Theology and Development
• 5 Usury
• 6 Inspired Microfinance
• 7 Can God and Mammon Work Together?
• Bibliography
• Index