“You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, and a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 25:13-15
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A free market economy such as we enjoy in America depends on a high degree of trust. Lenders trust that those who receive their funds will repay them promptly. Consumers trust that the goods and services they purchase are of a proper quality or up to a high standard. Employers trust that employees will exchange a fair day’s work for a fair wage, and employees trust that employers will be timely and fair in their compensation practices. Everyone trusts that the money which changes hands in our economy is what it claims to be: “legal tender for all debts, public and private.”
There are always people in any economy who don’t agree with Franklin that honesty is the best policy. “What’s best for me” is their motto, and they will do whatever they can get away with in order to make a buck at someone else’s expense. Most of us have been taken advantage of at one time or another in an economic transaction. So common has dishonesty become, in fact, that one only has to mention certain occupations – lawyers, say, or used car dealers – and caveat emptor begins to sound through the hollows of our brains.
The Law of God understood this tendency and explained it as a manifestation of human self-love grounded in sinful rebellion against God. Because this is a universal condition – all have sinned – it had to be checked, especially when its unbridled manifestation might jeopardize the public weal. Hence the laws insisting that sellers use fair weights and balances, so that they would charge the same price to every customer, whether wealthy or poor.
But the Law of God went beyond this. For in the statutes elaborating the eighth commandment – no stealing – are also rules guiding what today we would call restorative justice. In restorative justice a man who was found to have violated the basic principle of honesty in transactions was required to make good on what he had “shorted” his customer, and then to add a fifth to it (cf. Lev. 6:1-5). Jesus approved these laws when he affirmed Zachaeus’ resolve to repay those he had cheated (Lk. 19:1-10).
Dishonesty came at a high price in ancient Israel. The man who had cheated his neighbor would not go to jail, where he would be sustained by his neighbor’s taxes for a period of time. Instead, he would be required to make the original deal good and then to add one-fifth of the value of the deal in compensation to his neighbor. The neighbor would be satisfied, and then some, and the offender would be duly chastened, and less likely to do such a thing ever again.
What good, for example, does it do to put Bernard Madoff in prison, where he can do nothing to atone for his dishonesty or to recompense, be it ever so slightly, those he cheated? By requiring him to continue working we might keep him off the public dole, restore to him a measure of dignity, continue to recoup the stolen wealth of his customers, and even gain some larger economic benefit from his considerable skills (such as jobs). If we truly believe that honest is not just the best policy, but the only policy that we will tolerate in economic matters, then should we not work harder to enforce honesty than to punish dishonesty?
By following Biblical principles of restorative justice – such as were laid upon BP in the Gulf oil disaster – we do not merely punish dishonesty, although we do, but we inculcate honesty both in those guilty and in the rest of society. And we lower the burden of taxation on the populace as a whole by requiring the dishonest to relearn proper behavior rather than languish behind bars.
Biblical Law thus proves again the merits and possibilities of an economics of love.
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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
VP Economics of Love
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