A thread from notes put together in 2018 on the Holy Spirit as the Lord and Giver of Life, and therefore the Lord and Giver of civilization, culture, and prosperity. Given all that has happened since then, some of this will seem dated, but the macrotrends are still largely holding true:
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of all life, as the Creed says. Thus, he is also the source of all civilization, of all culture, of all glory and wisdom. The Holy Spirit is the source of all the human craftsmanship, creativity, and ingenuity that keep civilization marching forward. He drives all human innovation and ingenuity. The Holy Spirit is the source of all the resources and potentiality within the creation that we use to solve our problems and improve our lives. Non-Christians do not thank or acknowledge the Spirit, but they are very much the beneficiaries of his work, at least in this life. The Holy Spirit preserves, protects, and prospers; wherever these blessings are found in the world, they are due to his work. The Holy Spirit brings peace and prosperity into the world. Again, because of the Holy Spirit, in the big picture, things keep getting better and better. There are setbacks along the way, but the Spirit continues to pull creation into greater and greater glory. And, again, this is not just true in some Spiritual or ecclesiastical sense. It is true comprehensively. By every objective measurement of human flourishing, life is better today that it has been ever since the fall of man into sin. The world is better – objectively better – than it ever has been, and it is getting better all the time. Consider some random facts:
1/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of life. Usually we take that to mean he is the giver of life in creation, and the giver of life in the new creation in Christ. He is the giver of temporal life to all, and of eternal life to the elect. But he is also the giver of all that enriches, enlivens, and extends life in this world. The Holy Spirit maintains and sustains life in this world. One thing we see the Spirit doing as the Lord and Giver of life is extend life expectancies. He gives life and in recent times he has continually increased life expectancy. No, we are not back to those crazy long lifetimes seen early in the book of Genesis (not yet anyway!), but life expectancy has been steadily increasing across the globe for a long time now (albeit with a few setbacks here and there). Global life expectancy has more than doubled in the last 100 years. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, ultimately. See https://humanprogress.org/dwline?p=298&r
0=82&r1=13&r2=17&r3=11&r4=12&r5=15&r6=16&r7=14&yf=1960&yl=2015&high=1
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2/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of prosperity. Those who do not account for the Spirit see economics as a zero sum game, and so those who get rich must do so at the expense of the poor. But the Spirit allows us to enrich one another. The Spirit is the Lord and Giver of wealth, which is why global wealth can continue increasing. Wealth is not a fixed sum, to be divided up like slices of a pie. The Spirit enables us to create new wealth in such a way that a “rising tide lifts all boats.” The pie keeps getting bigger; the Spirit keeps bringing more and more wealth into the world for humanity to share. The Spirit keeps proceeding from the Father through the Son into the world, bringing greater and greater life, maturation, and glory to humanity. The Spirit creates a dynamic economy.
Those who deny the reality of the Spirit’s ongoing creation of wealth, are likely to fall into the traps of envy and statism, thinking the state needs to control the distribution of wealth and “equalize” riches. But when the state tries to play God, when the state tries to take over the role of the Spirit and become the lord and giver (or taker?) of life, disaster always follows.
An ordered free market system actually allows the economy to mimic the body of Christ. In the body of Christ, we have Spiritual gifts that we use for the good of others; as we use our gifts to serve, the body as a whole become greater than the sum of its parts and grows. A political economy that imitates the structure and freedom of the body of Christ will likewise find ever-increasing prosperity. In the body of Christ, service = glory (cf. Mark 10). In the economy, service = profit. All things being equal, profit is a way of measuring how well you are using your gifts to serve others. Profit is Spirit-given glory to reward those who use their gifts to serve others.
(We have to note here that not all profit can be looked at this way because most of our economic systems, even in more capitalistic countries, are rigged, so that the government is continually interfering with the market, picking winners and losers, etc. We have all the wrong kinds of regulation. Plus, sometimes, truly gifted and hardworking people will fall on hard times through no fault of their own. What I have said here should not be interpreted along the lines of the “health and wealth” teaching found among the “prosperity gospel” teachers. The real world situation is always much more complex. Many times, the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer. We should also note that some goods and service are not lawful to profit from [e.g., the sex trade], so they must be bracketed out of this discussion. But the point made here still stands, when properly qualified: In terms of longer-term trends, what I am saying here is really no different than the message Proverbs. It is proverbial wisdom, drawn from and reflective of the way God made and sustains his world. Those who serve the best rise to the top. Those who serve receive glory. Those who serve will prosper. The free market captures this Spiritual dynamic, described by Jesus in Mark 10, and applies it to economic life.)
3/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of food. Fewer people in the world are hungry than at any time in modern recorded history. Fewer people live in dire poverty. In fact, the rate of dire poverty has gone from 85% in 1800 to less than 10% today. Some project that by 2030, dire poverty will be eradicated altogether (with the possible exception of socialist and communist countries, where government tyranny quenches the life giving, life sustaining work of the Spirit). Fewer people and less land is needed proportionally to feed the world than ever before. The Spirit is the Lord and Giver of technology, including agricultural technology, that allows us to keep feeding more and more people with greater and greater efficiency.
4/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of wealth. The wealth of virtually every nation that participates in the modern economy has exploded, starting with Western nations after the Reformation (and especially the Industrial Revolution), but now that same wealth explosion is happening in other places. Sometimes tyrannical, socialist, and communist governments quench the work of the Spirit; indeed, most famines in the modern world are due to centralized “control” leading to mismanagement and misallocation of resources. But the main thing to see is that the Holy Spirit allows the human race to continue creating new wealth. Total world wealth keeps increasing virtually every year. While we might want to see the wealth of the world spread around more in some cases, the most important thing to note is that even the world’s poor are growing in wealth. As the Spririt Christianizes nations, they will bring their peculiar treasures into the kingdom (Isaiah 60). See
https://t.co/IlRZjFGAYC
5/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of money. Global prosperity continues to increase. Over 300,000 people get electricity and clean drinking water every day. Most of the world is connected via mobile phones and the Internet so we can communicate with one another anywhere in the world cheaply and instantaneously. See https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1247 and https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=845. See also Herman DeSoto’s The Mystery of Capital, which argues that the most prosperous places in the world are places where the gospel has penetrated, and this is no coincidence. The “western legal property system,” the foundation of the success found in Western civilization, is the fruit of the Spirit. Spirit-enabled law-keeping is the true key to prosperity.
6/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of technology and health care. More people receive effective medical care than ever before. More people have more comforts and conveniences and luxuries than ever before. Even the poorest people in Western countries live and eat and are cared for better than kings were just a couple centuries ago. All genuinely helpful advancements in human dominion, knowledge, and technology flow from the Spirit.
7/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of education and literacy. The Spirit inspired the Word; the Spirit cultivates a love for the Word and for words. More people are educated and a lower percentage of the world is illiterate than ever before in recorded history. Much of the progress in education, rising standards of living, access to health care and technology, parallels the growth and expansion of the church. Where the church goes, blessings for all follow, especially literacy (since we are the “people of the book” and the Spirit who inspired the book certainly wants people to be able to hear it and read it).
8/15
The Spirit is the Lord and Giver of culture. We can trace this all the way back to Bezalel in the book of Exodus, when the Spirit enabled him to produce glorious works of art and craftsmanship. Art, music, architecture, the culinary arts, etc., are all the result of the Spirit’s work within the human race. There really is such a thing as Christian architecture, Christian plumbing, Christian cooking, etc. These are gifts of the Spirit, given in greater measure to cultures where the Spirit’s presence is more manifest. If we do not see this it is only because we have come to take the Spirit’s work in our midst for granted. The Spirit is the source of all human culture and the Spirit transforms and elevates the products of human culture, especially when the church is at work discipling a culture. Cultures that have more of the Spirit’s work are going to be superior to those that have less. Cultures that have the Spirit’s work in greater measure are going to be both freer and better structured than those that have less.
9/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of environmental stewardship. While the Industrial Revolution temporarily caused the environment to suffer in some places, the Holy Spirit led us to creative solutions to the problems of pollution. The earth is now cleaner and greener than it ever has been in modern recorded history. There is wide ranging evidence that man’s cultivation of the earth has actually made the world a far greener, more productive planet. The earth produces more food now than ever, using fewer workers and less land. Overall, the earth is in better shape than at any time in recorded history. See https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=415 and https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=420.
10/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of natural resources. When you consider that we have never run out any needed resource in the history of humanity, you might consider that the human race is being sustained by some kind of miraculous provision, ala the oil in the widow’s lamp in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 4. Think about that: In the history of the human race, we have never run out of a single resource. What a breathtaking miracle of the Spirit! We are constantly told the earth is running out of natural resources. But is this really the case? These scares never actually come to pass. I can remember when I was growing up, there were constant scares about “peak oil.” And there were occasional oil shortages. But these were caused by political events and mismanagement, not by an actual shortage. Today, no one talks about peak oil because we have so much oil available it’s a non-issue. In the 1970s and 1980s, the thought that America would ever export oil seemed impossible, but today it is a reality. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of oil, and other forms of energy. The Holy Spirit keeps giving us cheaper and cheaper forms of energy. Not only that, the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of precious metals. New supplies of once “rare” metals have been discovered; the Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of yttrium and dysprosium. The Holy Spirit gives and keeps on giving. Indeed, even when we seem to facing shortages, the Holy Spirit helps us innovate our way out of them. How long until the Holy Spirit leads us to find even better sources of energy, clean water, etc. than we have now? See https://seekingalpha.com/article/4060990-peak-oil-peak-gold-peak-anything-peak-nonsense and https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1268. Consider this also, although I admit I do not know enough to argue that oil is actually a renewable resource but certainly some scientists believe it is: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/oil-might-be-a-natural-resource-and-other-things-you-did-not-know/and http://321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html. On new discoveries of lithium being made all time, see: http://321energy.com/editorials/oilprice/oilprice050518.html. One scientist described these newly discovered deposits as providing a “semi-infinite” supply of these metals! For weak attempts at refuting the points made here about abundance vs. scarcity, see https://futurism.com/how-long-do-we-have-until-we-exhaust-all-of-our-resources/ and https://theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/oct/31/six-natural-resources-population?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other and http://slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/has_the_earth_run_out_of_any_natural_resources.html.
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11/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of the environment. This means the environment is not nearly as fragile as we have sometimes been led to think. I remember when the BP oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, we were told the beaches might be damaged for a generation, and indeed might never recover. And yet, in a very short period of time, the beaches were as good as ever and the spill a distant memory for most. Now, certainly we should advocate care so that such spills are avoided whenever possible – they are damaging to be sure. And we should also thank those played a role in cleaning up after the spill. But the fact is that earth’s environment has proven to be far tougher and more resilient than many believed possible.
12/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of hope. Yes, it is true, we are constantly bombarded with doomsday scenarios, such as Paul Erhlich’s Population Bomb (which predicted we would have all died of mass starvation years ago) and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (which was wildly wrong on the changing environmental conditions and their civilizational impact). The fact is apocalyptic scenarios almost never come to pass. And even when they do – even when the ship of a civilization crashes (e.g., the fall of Rome; a hurricane wiping out a city; etc.) – the Spirit saves many people alive to go on to build an even better civilization in its place. In the history of the world, on macro scale, this has never not happened. The end of one era gives way to a better era, even if it takes some time. The earth is not overpopulated. The earth is not fragile. There is no reason to be pessimistic. See https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1269 and https://fee.org/articles/a-lot-of-people-on-earth-share-thanoss-misguided-ideas-on-population-and-scarcity/?utm_campaign=FEE%20Daily&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=62720904&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–vxLC8d6mIstt4jMxOS4GIJ2CXPxoGPM8xKy0LdMrH7Uphp3XDIj87iTmG9_HlAfv0bQFl6mX8QPH0lMZjcgFhuWW1nQ&_hsmi=62720904
13/15
The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of people. People are actually the Spirit’s greatest resource. This is why the over-population myth is so dangerous. It’s one reason why forms of artificial sterility, like abortion and homosexuality, are so problematic and destructive; they are anti-Spiritual. The Holy Spirit is no doubt grieved when countries drop below replacement level birth-rates. To the degree that these declining birth rates are caused by tyranny (e.g., China’s enforced one child policy) and by pessimism about the state of the world, they completely avoidable. The good news is that God’s people are, generally speaking, more faithful in having children. If we cannot convert the world, perhaps we can outbreed the world in the next generation. Having babies and raising them up as “godly offspring” is the most important key to future prosperity for humanity.
Declining birth rates are a sign of judgment on a people, a sign that the water of the Spirit is drying up in a given place. But we know God’s Spirit will continue to work as the Lord and Giver of life. While non-Christian secular people have stopped having children, most faithful Christians still want larger than average families. Where the Spirit is at work, people affirm and embrace new life. Where the Spirit is at work, families are valued. Where the Spirit is at work, children are embraced as Spiritual blessings.
14/15
None of this is intended to diminish the reality of human suffering. There are certainly personal and societal storms and set backs. Some of you may be in tremendous pain, from the loss of loved one or the reality of a deadly disease that is afflicting you. Some of you may be suffering economically and do not find it particularly consoling to hear that standards of living are rising in other parts of the world. What I am talking about here is not intended to address those concerns But do not let anecdotes about terrible things reported on the news overshadow the brightness of the Spirit’s good work in the world. The future is always as bright as God’s promises. Do not ever let your own suffering and struggles blind you to the reality that we live in a good world sustained and cared for by a good God. Our suffering is part of his design as well. God may put individuals and societies through terrible times of tragedy and pain. But in terms of the big picture, his sustaining hand is clearly on the human race. His providence reveals he is a God who delights to do good to us, in spite of our sin and folly. He loves and provides for all he has made, as the psalmist declares again and again.
Further, none of this intended to make us think that temporal prosperity is the most important measure of human flourishing. The real key to human flourishing is always worship of the living God since we were made to thank and glorify him. We can flourish in the deepest sense even when we have almost nothing (cf. Phil. 4, 1 Tim. 6). But humans are aspirational creatures by design and material abundance is certainly a sign of God’s favor, all things being equal. There is nothing wrong with desiring prosperity for oneself and one’s children, provided it is kept in its proper place, relative to God’s calling on our lives. It is fully and perfectly human to desire “the good life.” We should never be embarrassed by the privileges God gives us. Instead, we should rejoice and give thanks. If the world is growing richer, this should be regarded as good news, even as we remember that riches bring certain dangers.
15/15
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Original post (with links) can be found here: https://x.com/Vicar1973/status/1920857797463310726?s=20
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