Finance has always been faith-based. We believe in free markets, Alan Greenspan, the sound dollar and the ever-surging stock market. Like the Biblical character Job, our faith is tested – with market sags and recessions – but on the whole we believe.
And faith certainly pays, as the lifestyles and appearances of many a tele-evangelist can testify. Faith-based enterprise can indeed reap… well the only word to describe the results is miraculous. One of the world’s best-selling books, with some 8 mn copies sold, is Atlanta pastor Dr Bruce Wilkinson’s Chronicles I, based on one of the obscurest verses of the obscurest book of the Old Testament. It is the most entrepreneurial publishing event since Random House took the entry for the F-word from the Historical Dictionary of American Slang and sold it as a stand-alone book.
Chronicles is one of the those books with much begetting, rather like a Jerusalem telephone directory circa 275 BC. Then, mysteriously, as an oasis or a scribal error, appears Jabez. ‘And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren: and his mother called his name, Jabez, saying, Because I bore him with sorrow. And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it may not grieve me. And God granted him that which he requested.’
According to many of the credulous, a regular recitation of Jabez’s prayer will work wonders for your financial, physical and emotional health as well your spiritual well-being. As one advert declares, it is ‘creating miracles and power in the lives of average people all around the world.’ The Jabez web site features, among many other testimonials, a mayor who won elections without a run-off, and a PR worker who was spontaneously offered a hefty raise by a Fortune 500 client.
Of course the version I quoted is the old King James one, while Dr Wilkinson uses some bowdlerized new version which would have had the irascible old monarch rushing the revisers off to the Tower: ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.’
Apart from literary and stylistic objections, the altruism of the new anodyne version – ‘that I may not cause pain’ – does not ring true. In between the begetting, Chronicles is a smidgen heavy on the smiting. The same chapter in which Jabez appears shows why it was no fun being an Amalekite: you tended to be smitten a lot. For example, some of Jabez’s kin relocated to Petra, and ‘smote their tents and the habitations that were found there, and destroyed them utterly unto this day, and dwelt in their rooms. Because there was pasture there for their flocks.’
So that’s alright then – ethnic cleansing was okay so long as they had a good excuse. On the other hand, it does tend to cast contextual light on how Jabez may have enlarged his coast or territory. After all, Jabez was more concerned about evil giving him grief, instead of the other way around. As the smitten Amalekites could testify, the enlargement of one person’s coast can imply a serious shrinkage of someone else’s.
Of course it is a theological dilemma that, in war, the priests of both sides often invoke the same deity to bring victory. Perhaps the most tasteless example is the verse on the London memorial to the British Machine Gun Corps: ‘Saul hath slain his thousands, but David has slain his ten thousands.’ Not quite what the Prince of Peace had in mind. But then again, neither was Jabez’s prayer on his mind when he mentioned the infinitesimal chances of the rich getting to heaven.
However, it is indeed good business practice to cater to people’s whims, from smiting to begetting to praying. If the credulously pious think frequent recitation of an obscure prayer will make them prosperous, then you have solid historical grounds for assuming that pandering to those whims could make you very prosperous indeed.
The Speculator
