Does “Abundant Life” Include a Living Wage?

IN A JUST ECONOMY, everyone who wants a job has one, and it pays a living wage, sufficient for workers and their families to thrive. Everyone’s material needs — for nutritious food, safe and secure housing, transportation, clothing, utilities, education, health care, and economic security — are met. Economists call this full employment in living wage jobs, and it is a goal of many justice advocates. It is also God’s vision for society.

Jesus told the disciples that he came so all may have abundant life (John 10:10). As Jesus showed, God’s vision encompasses more than abundant spiritual life. Jesus understood that God’s vision of abundance encompasses material needs as well as spiritual ones. Jesus healed broken bodies. He fed hungry people and encouraged others to do so as well. In God’s reign, everyone’s material needs are filled. But how does God envision this to happen?

The Old and New Testaments reveal a great deal about God’s intentions for the economy, the word we use to describe the way in which we use God-given natural resources — soil, rain, sun, fuels, minerals, trees, etc. — in combination with human effort and ingenuity (also given by God) to produce all our goods and services. We can gain important insights relevant to our economy today by examining the economic circumstances of the Israelites during three different biblical eras and then exploring what the biblical writers and Jesus taught about the economy and economic injustices during those periods.

Over the more than 10 centuries during which the biblical narrative was composed, the economic circumstances of the Israelites changed markedly and, in response, so did the economic instructions in the Bible. But, surprisingly, in each of the three eras, the instructions called for livelihoods for all that enabled thriving or, in our language today, full employment in living wage jobs.

In the Old Testament — the Hebrew Bible — the economic instructions are part of the laws found in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Today, Christians often insufficiently value this body of law. Some of it seems strange to our modern ears. Other provisions fall far short of current standards for justice — for example, slavery and patriarchy were normalized then. Certainly some of our laws today will fall short of more enlightened future standards. But as we will see below, the law contains much timeless wisdom. To the Israelites, the law was a gift from God, a blessing, a guide to more joyful and fulfilling lives lived in right relationship with God. Psalm 23, one of the most beloved and well-known biblical psalms, tells of the comfort derived from God-the-Shepherd’s rod and staff, tools used to guide sheep in safe, life-giving paths. If we are open to it, we can gain important insights from the ancient laws.

The time of the judges

DURING THE HEBREW BIBLE period — from roughly 1300 B.C.E. until the time of Jesus in the first century C.E. — the Israelite economy was based on agriculture. Most people worked the land and produced all they needed. Land was the source of food, shelter, clothing, fuel, and economic security.

In the two to three centuries after the Israelites first settled in Canaan — that is, during the time of the judges, or roughly 1300 to 1000 B.C.E. — extended families worked their own land, which was passed down within a clan across generations. Archaeologists today who study the ancient hilltop villages tell us that society was remarkably egalitarian. Every clan had land which, they believed, had been given to them by God who distributed it fairly according to need (Numbers 26:52–56; 33:54). Laws in Exodus protected those few who might fall to the margins of society: widows, orphans, and elders (Exodus 20:12; 22:22–24). Those who suffered agricultural losses for whatever reason — pests, adverse weather, injuries, personal choices, or misfortunes of whatever kind — could borrow what they needed without interest charges (Exodus 22:25). Neighbors helped neighbors in a system of mutual support. Everyone worked, and everyone thrived.

The era of monarchy

BUT UNDER THE monarchy that was instituted in about 1000 B.C.E., families began to lose their land due to high taxes and through debt and foreclosure. Farming is always risky. But peasants’ efforts to thrive were made much more difficult due to the large taxes levied by the kings to support armies, construct palaces, and pay for lavish lifestyles. The tax assessments — a portion of a peasant family’s harvest — left them with less to live on. Any adverse event could push them deeper into poverty and into debt.

If a family’s crops provided insufficient food for the year or too few seeds for the next planting, they might be forced to borrow, using their land as collateral. If they could not repay the loan, they could lose some or all of their land. People with money to lend to struggling peasant families were happy to do so, often at high rates of interest, in hopes of foreclosing on the indebted land and increasing the size of their estates.

At this time, the value of land was rising due to the growth in trade around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which provided more opportunity to sell agricultural products that could be profitably shipped such as olive oil, wine, and grain. Land, which had been a source of universal thriving, was being transformed into a source of profit for the wealthy few. Fraudulent transactions, high interest charges on loans, and high taxes were forcing landholders to become tenants owing rents or hired hands on estates owned by the wealthy. Increasing numbers of families became impoverished. A family with land could usually meet their material needs and thrive. But if they had no land or too little, there were few alternative ways through which they could work to meet their needs.

The prophets voiced God’s criticism of these economic trends that were depriving peasants of their livelihoods and impoverishing them. Micah cried, “Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields and seize them; houses and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance” (Micah 2:1–2).

At the same time, discerning biblical writers sought to understand God’s intentions for their economy. We know their insights — God’s revelations, as they understood them — as the laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. These laws criticized and challenged the economic trends that were harming many Israelites. These laws have numerous provisions to protect families’ landholdings. Buying or selling farmland was prohibited (Leviticus 25:23), so debt and foreclosure became the primary way in which the wealthy dispossessed peasant families. If someone lost their land through foreclosure, another family member was obligated to buy it back (redeem it), if possible (Leviticus 25:25). The new laws again stated the prohibition on interest charges (Leviticus 25:36–37; Deuteronomy 23:19–20). For neighbors with sufficient resources, lending to those in need was no longer an option but an obligation (Deuteronomy 15:7–11), and unpaid debts were to be canceled after six years (Deuteronomy 15:1–2). Most important, if a family lost their land, during the year of Jubilee — which happened every 50 years — the land was to be returned to the original landholders (Leviticus 25:8–17). This was God’s law for instituting economic justice at this time. There were also laws prohibiting fraudulent and corrupt market exchanges such as using false weights and measures, moving boundary markers, and bribing judges. The provisions of the law attempted to recreate an economy in which every family had a livelihood that enabled thriving.

The time of Jesus

BY THE FIRST century C.E., the time of Jesus, the Israelites were living under Roman occupation. Most families had lost their own land and worked as tenant farmers, laborers on the large farms of wealthy landowners, or as landless artisans or fishers. Herod the Great, the Roman ruler of Palestine, and his son Herod Antipas, who ruled Galilee during Jesus’ life, owned between one-half and two-thirds of all the land that they ruled. Taxes assessed to support their lifestyles, construct new cities and palaces, and pay for the military were an unbearable burden for many families. Most of the non-elite 90 percent of the population, especially those who did not have their own land, lived in poverty or very near it. But returning land to original landholders was not an option. Did Jesus have anything to say about these circumstances?

Jesus knew that God’s reign — on earth as in heaven (Matthew 6:10) — was already present (Luke 17:20–21), small but growing, like yeast mixed within a bowl of flour or a tiny mustard seed planted in a field (Matthew 13:31–33; Mark 4:30–32; Luke 13:18–21). Jesus knew that God’s intention, as shown in the Hebrew Bible law, was for all households to have land and to produce, through their labor, all they needed to thrive. But in first-century Roman-occupied Palestine, very few families had land, and obtaining land was impossible for poor families. So what did Jesus understand God’s intentions for economic justice to be at that time?

In one of Jesus’ parables depicting the nascent reign of God on earth, here and now, he tells of a vineyard owner, the figure in the story who enacts God’s intentions (Matthew 20:1–15). Early in the morning, the landowner goes to the marketplace and hires workers, promising to pay them the usual daily wage of one denarius, enough to support a worker and the worker’s family for one day. Over the course of the day, the landowner returns to the marketplace four more times; the last is at 5 p.m. Each time, the landowner encounters unemployed laborers looking for work and, each time, the landowner hires everyone he finds, promising to pay them “whatever is right.”

At the end of the day, the landowner pays everyone the same wage, a denarius. This was what he had promised to those hired early in the morning. But this was also what every worker needed to support his family. Their pay was determined by the similarity of what they needed, not by the differences in the labor they contributed. The vineyard owner’s generosity seemed unfair to the workers who had labored all day. Maybe it seems that way to us today. The psalmist reminds us that the earth and all that exists belong to God (Psalm 24:1). Jesus understood God’s intention for God’s resources was for them to be shared so all could thrive, regardless of our flawed understandings of worthiness and deservedness.

The parable also illustrates our dual relationship with work. The vineyard owner calls all the idle laborers to come and work. For those able to work, work is an obligation. (Not everyone needs or is obligated to take paid employment; many people — certainly women in the first century — were doing unpaid work at home that was also essential for a thriving family.) While work is an obligation, it is also what we today would call a right. All the jobless were offered work. Everyone seeking a job got one in which they could support themselves and their family. Society also benefits from the labor of all of us. Economic justice encompasses contributive justice, the opportunity for all to contribute their labor to society.

Despite the passage of centuries, the problems of unemployment and inadequate wages are still present. In the U.S., even during the best economic times, millions are jobless and tens of millions work in jobs that pay wages too low to enable thriving. The biblical teachings are clear. Adults need, and God’s intention is for them to have, work that enables them to support a thriving family. But today as in centuries past, no automatic economic mechanism ensures the number of jobs matches the number of job seekers or that all jobs pay enough for workers and their families to flourish. These goals will be achieved only when we enact public policies to ensure that all people who want a job have one and that all jobs pay living wages. Our material needs are important to God, and having everyone’s needs met is God’s vision for society. We are called to act so God’s vision of universal thriving is realized.