Asked whether he took pleasure in the endeavor, the pastor admitted it was “fun to be a part of this moment.” Speak adds, “At some level, overnight these investors are losing their investing lives; it’s being demanded from them. And they’re left wondering who’s going to get what they had prepared for themselves.”
At Christianity Today, author and professor Michael Rhodes takes a deeper look at that parable, concluding that “Jesus’ economic justice doesn’t mean beating the rich at their own game.” While conceding that the rich fool in the story is basically “opening the first-century equivalent of a one-man hedge fund,” Rhodes points out that Jesus is conveying a broader lesson about the temptation of greed. The parable, he says, is “a warning about the kind of financial insatiability that Jesus believed even the poor could get caught up in.”
Perspectives on Christian Stewardship
From a global perspective, says Rhodes, co-author of Practicing the King’s Economy, American Christians are the so-called one percent. “We, the richest people who have ever lived, read ourselves in the role of the peasant and find somebody further up the economic ladder to play the part of the fool,” he writes. “We ignore the ways we are the rich fools at our own moral and spiritual peril and at our neighbor’s expense.”
Instead of “squeezing hedge funds,” Rhodes recommends that Christians take financial steps such as investing in minority-owned businesses and in organizations that assist with wealth-building, education, and homeownership for economically disadvantaged communities. “We could creatively protest some of the dysfunctions of our economic system while remembering that Jesus’ parable is a warning for us as much as it is for financial professionals,” he concludes.
In his exploration of the GameStop saga, seminary president Albert Mohler writes that although the stock market can become a form of gambling, it should involve skill, investment, and “real value growth.” Pointing to Jesus’ parable of the talents, Mohler notes, “It was actually Jesus who said, ‘The wise steward is the one who multiplies the investment, wants to see the investment grow.’”
The stock market involves ups and downs, winners and losers—and it’s not yet clear who will win and lose in the GameStop situation, writes Mohler. “But it’s a good time for Christians to think about the fact that our investments, including investments in stocks and bonds and other mechanisms, our investment in the economy should be based upon the hope for, and the anticipation of, real value, real economic right activity, real growth, because our concern is not merely to grow economically, but to grow in ways that lead to human flourishing, to people, having the things they need to an economy that is growing in a way that helps to build the entire society.”
