My Life and Books (1)

I grew up on a farm beside the Pareora River in South Canterbury, New Zealand. It was a marvellous life, so I left school early to become a farmer. After a couple of years working on the farm, I realise that I did not have the strength and stamina that farming needs. While working with sheep and driving the tractor, I had lots of time to ponder the poverty and suffering that are rampant throughout the world. The root causes of these problems are economic and political, so I enrolled at university to study economics and politics.

By the time, I had completed four years study, I realised that I was digging a dry well. These disciplines did not have the answers to the problems that worried me. The assumptions that economists have to make to ensure their models work are so unrealistic that their theories are irrelevant to the real world. It seemed that during the first three years of economics, they told you all the solutions, but in the fourth year, they explained why they would not work. (I noted that my fellow students who went into politics, often only did the three-year course, so they went out boldly assuming they had effective policies to implement).

While growing up, our family had gone to church every Sunday, but for me it was just a habit. When I reached university and studied philosophy, I gave up my religious habit and I decided that I was an atheist. However, I found it is hard to be an honest atheist, because life loses meaning and purpose. So I constructed a safe philosophical god that suited me.

While I was studying for a Masters degree in economics, I heard the gospel of Jesus clearly for the first time. Just when I became disillusioned with economics, I had a deep encounter with the living God. He said, “I am who I am. You are trusting in an empty box. If you want to follow me, you need to accept me as I am”. I surrendered to him and decided I would live by his Word and Spirit.

A few months later, I had an exam for a post-graduate course on comparative economics. The lecturer was a staunch Marxist. Full of my new-found faith, I wrote in my paper that Marx has no solution to human problems and that Jesus is the answer. I gave a similar response in an exam for a paper on macroeconomics.

Surprisingly, I passed the course with first-class honours. However, my professors must have decided to tackle the problem because at the beginning of the following year, one of them asked to meet with me. He disclosed that he was an atheist. He said that he could not understand it, but, but acknowledged that my faith seemed to be genuine.

He told me that it was not enough to say that Jesus is the answer. I needed to explain how he could be a solution to the problems that concerned me. He concluded with a telling question: “What would the economy and society look like if everyone was a Christian”. I had no answer to that question. I knew it would be different, but I could not explain how.

My lecturer suggested that I should enrol in a Ph.D programme and he would supervise me while I developed an answer to his question. I took his advice, but after a couple of months, I realised that I simply did not have enough knowledge to tackle the problem. There were very few books or journal articles to draw on. I realised that I did not know enough about God, or his solutions to economic problems. I needed to be better prepared before I could answer his question, so I pulled out and moved to Dunedin to study theology in preparation for ministry.

I went to seminary for three years and studied theology and New Testament Greek. Later, while employed as a parish minister, I read every book and article that I could find that is relevant to economics and the gospel. I always knew that I would come back one day and answer that important question.

During the following thirty years employed as an economist, I studied and thought deeply about both theology and economics. I also studied Hebrew for several years to get a better understanding of the Old Testament. I eventually got to the place where I could answer the tricky question, but it was a long journey.