The Gospel According to Adam Smith

By Dean Ohlman                                            

While researching on the Web some time back, I came across one of the many conservative, laissez-faire economic policy think tanks that dot the intellectual horizon of Washington, DC: the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF). 

            Information on the PFF web site was the same stuff you get at places like the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Acton Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and so forth.  In fact, it is common to find the same speakers rotating within this fraternity of believers in the “trickle-down theory” that promises the end of our social ills and economic frustrations if we would just return to individual liberty, a hands-off government, and a truly free market.   At their wine and cheese receptions held in lounges provided by multi-billion dollar enterprises, wealthy businessmen and conservative intellectuals chat among themselves about the desired end of governmental regulation. 

            The PFF site contained a manifesto on human progress and freedom—the upshot of it being that humanity experienced wonderful progress in the past when people were allowed to freely pursue their financial whims without governmental interference (bringing to mind the thought of Chesterton that “the poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich object to being governed at all”).

            Well, the idea of the PFF was that freedom is essential for human progress.  Take away governmental curbs on personal liberty, and progress will soar.  Increase freedom and the human race is automatically improved.

            I object to such simplicity.

            My first objection is that the common idea of “human progress” is deception.  “Progress” is a word made up of two Latin terms that mean “to step forward.”  But a step forward on the road to perdition is hardly to the advantage of mankind.

            My second objection is that freedom itself is no virtue.  In fact, it could be argued that freedom for the unprincipled, the deceived, the intemperate, the proud, and the greedy is ultimately fatal.  Freedom without truth leads to death.  (Lord Acton, after whom the Acton Institute is named, said in reference to evil rulers: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  If Adam and Eve are taken as examples, one could say, “Freedom tends to corrupt, and absolute freedom corrupts absolutely.”

            Let me elaborate on my objections:

            Those who champion” progress” think of it mostly as technological improvement and economic growth: to move from farming with a sharp stick to farming with a diesel tractor and a ten-bottom plow; to move from checkers to Nintendo; to move from doctoring with a lancet and leeches to doctoring with multimillion-dollar instruments in antiseptic hospitals; to move from a life-expectancy of fifty to seventy; or to go from an annual income of a hundred-thousand dollars to one of half a million.  To them the latter is always “better” than the former—even if in the process of “progress” people are growing in their faith in human technology and declining in their faith in God.

            Reading the Bible, one understands that gaining the whole world and losing one's soul is the ultimate of tragedies.  The traditional perception of progress is pointless to the lost soul.  Hell is as real to the poor Scottish crofter of 1806 as it is to the affluent American “agri-businessman” of 2007.  In other words, without spiritual regeneration, human “progress” is at its best meaningless, and at its worst a palliative—a symptomatic relief that deceives one into thinking he's been cured.

            Every libertarian think tank needs a resident literary scholar who can recite poems like Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” to remind the policy analysts of the shared destiny of us all.  In reference to humble country people Gray wrote this:

            Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

            Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

            Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

            The short and simple annals of the poor.

            The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

            And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave

            Awaits alike the inevitable hour:

            The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

            The idea of human progress is the ultimate of deceptions—that somehow things are better in pagan England today than in pagan Northumbria in ancient times.  In truth, the person born in AD 2000 is not inherently better, due to progress, than the person born in 2000 BC.  The modern divorced female lawyer with her two pampered children is no better than the ancient widowed female housewife with her twelve half-starved children.  The modern slim, trim yuppie stock broker with a hundred-thousand dollar's worth of toys and electronic tools is no better than the ancient fat wine merchant with a large purse and dog-eared ledger.

            In God's ledger, they’re all the same: they live to honor the Creator or reject Him.  They walk through their day either in obedience to Him or in disobedience.  Ultimately they are all dwellers in the eternal light or in outer darkness.

            This is one reason that we all could benefit from a literal wilderness experience.  To separate ourselves for a time from every manmade tool and toy and stand alone before God provides us with the humility we need to free us from the deception of human progress.  A man alone in a thunderstorm on a mountaintop today is just as small, powerless, and frightened as any such man in every age since Adam.  Unless one has moved from proud self-reliance in himself and his tools of “progress” to humble reliance upon God, his Creator, he is deceived—he is doomed.

            A similar observation can be made of freedom.  There is no life in liberty alone.  Consider this passage from the Gospel of John:

“To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' They answered him, 'We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?' Jesus replied, 'I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.' Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.  So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:31-36).

            Freedom that is genuinely freeing is inextricably tied to truth.  Freedom by itself has no power or redeeming attribute.  It could be argued that freedom which puts one beyond the authority or the love of God is a horror unspeakable.  Mankind is created to be in relation to the Creator, and within the bounds set by the Creator.  Much of what we know about those bounds is found in the written revelation given us by God.  In fact, the Ten Commandments are a good overview of some basic bounds of God.

            While the New Testament tells us that, by his own, man cannot hope to live within those bounds, we still have hope—in the person of Christ who did live perfectly inside those bounds.  The One who had the capacity to be a totally free human being chose instead to be bound in obedience to the Father—giving to us the ultimate example and the ultimate gift.  It is through faith in the perfect Lawkeeper that we have hope.  It is through obedience to Him that we discover the happiness Thomas Jefferson thought we'd find in liberty.

            It is thus thrust upon mankind to give consent to God's bounds—the most basic of these contained in simple statements like these: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you love yourself; honor your parents; don't murder; don't commit adultery; don't steal; don't lie; don't covet; do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  If our freedom is not placed within such bounds, it will fail utterly in providing us anything of lasting value.

            So I am not very impressed with conservative, libertarian, laissez-faire think tanks—especially those tied in some way to a humanistic, altruistic idea of progress, freedom, and unending economic growth.  Many of these brain trusts like to point to success achieved and “progress” made in America's past and that somehow it is now being curbed by a malicious government intent upon enslaving us in a socialistic—or at the least, leftist—system already proved to be unworkable.  According to this community, government is “them” not “us.”

            How unfortunate it is that they fail to acknowledge it was not primarily the economic system or degree of liberty in America's past that produced positive results, it was the critical ingredient of a humble faith—faith of believers like Katharine Lee Bates, (writer of “America the Beautiful”) who recognized that the bounty of the creation would be carefully and compassionately used only by those willing to “confirm [their] souls in self-control; [and confirm their] liberty in law.”   Self-control and law are both essential additions if liberty is going to work.  And it is fitting that self-control appears first—a fact not readily acknowledged in libertarian, laissez-faire circles, people who seem to believe that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” provides all the control we need.

            Regardless of the opinions and essays of the “distinguished fellows” of these multitudes of think tanks, the true problem is not the loss of liberty (and the government that’s to blame for it); it is the individual who thinks his/her freedom ought to be absolute and that human progress and economic growth are the end-all of life's enterprise.  Only those humble enough to live by God's mandates and within God's bounds on an earth created by Him, seeking to lay up treasure in heaven, will gain the meaningful and eternal rewards.

            Sometimes it appears that the many Christian fellows who dot the ranks of these centers, foundations, and institutes are often more intent upon preaching this temporal gospel than the eternal Gospel.  They appear to be less witnesses of the true Gospel to their fellow fellows than they are evangelists of a free-market to supposedly left-leaning Christians among the economically unsophisticated masses.  More often than not they end as opponents of other believers who see obedience to the God of Adam more important than allegiance to Adam Smith.