Principles for Economic Life: Stewardship Artwork

Like Minded Deviants

Like-Minded Deviants with Dr. Lindy Backues, Jon-Michael Odean, and Justin Stewart-Fritz is a podcast that seeks to deviate from the norm. As two of Lindy’s former graduate students, Justin and Jon-Michael bring an extended friendship with him cultivated over years, enriched by their present ministries, life as educators, a good dose of grassroots practitioning, and deep respect as close friends and colleagues. Each week these three come prepared to engage in a provocative conversation. A conversation that intentionally and sometimes irreverently unpacks events and ideas plucked from newspapers and headlines, unashamedly channeling these conversations through a theologically jarring lens.

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Like Minded Deviants

Principles for Economic Life: Stewardship

August 24, 2021 • Season 1 • Episode 13

In the Church today there is confusion as to how storied, biblical truth might be translated into principles, themes, and motifs that later can be applied to the world that surrounds us. Like finding a common note in a song, or a common image in a story, we can locate repeatedly appearing images, ideas, or themes running throughout the biblical story, ones that can help us evaluate the economic and political world around us.

In this episode we explore a particular, overarching concept we believe to be at the center of biblical resource management, something that needs to be at the center of all economic systems – Stewardship.

To fit the flow of conversation we have been having so far, our overarching image will need to agree with the topics examined in previous episodes: grace, love, justice, and the kingdom of God. In future episodes, we will use this approach to evaluate the dominant, overarching economic systems available in the world today, i.e., capitalism and socialism.

Texts:

David P. Gushee & Glenn H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016 (ISBN: 978-0-8028-7421-4).
Donald A. Hay, Economics Today: A Christian Critique. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004 (ISBN: 978-157383284).

Readings:

‘Christianity and Economics: Theological Ethics’, Hay, Chapter 2
‘Treasures on Earth: Economic Ethics in the Kingdom Way’, Gushee & Stassen, Chapter 18