A Season of Plenty — and of the People Who Make It Possible
By Dr. Diane Bowen
As November turns our attention toward Thanksgiving and Christmas, we enter a season of fellowship over football, food, and faith. Families who haven’t shared a table all year will pull up extra chairs. It’s a time for giving gifts and offering hospitality — a season when markets matter. We look forward to the sales, the bargains, and the joy of buying for those we love.
It is also a season when conversation around the table can turn to politics. Lately, capitalism has taken a beating, and some folks — perhaps someone at your own table — have started shopping around for other economic systems. Before we judge that, or each other, let’s be clear on terms.
Capitalism is an economic system in which property and businesses are privately owned, and prices, wages, and production are largely set by free exchange — people buying, selling, and working – all by their free choice. That is why it is also called a free market economy. Profit rewards those who meet others’ needs well; loss corrects those who don’t. Socialism, by contrast, places ownership or control of major industries and resources in the hands of the government. And we all understand to shut the door if someone says “I’m with the government, and I’m here to help you.”
Democratic socialism seeks those goals through the ballot box rather than revolution — expanding government programs, raising taxes on higher earners, and placing more of the economy under government administration. Both systems claim to serve the common good. Their real disagreement is over who decides: millions of individuals making free choices, or officials acting on the public’s behalf.
To weigh that question, we must see capitalism for what it is: a framework whose working parts are human beings. It’s more like a car, which can carry you productively down the road or mow down a crowd. The people inside the system produce the flourishing — or the floundering, or the flat-out fraud. And people exist in every system.
The founders understood that well. Steeped in history, they set the country on a footing that has been held for 250 years. What was that footing? Many point to the classics of Greece and Rome, or to John Locke (1632–1704), the English philosopher who argued that every person is born with natural rights to life, liberty, and property — rights no government grants and none may rightly take away. His ideas echo in the Declaration of Independence. Yet when American political documents are studied, researchers found the Bible accounted for roughly a third of all citations. The book of Deuteronomy alone was cited more than any other single work — nearly twice as often as all of Locke’s writings combined. That grounding helps explain why we were founded as a constitutional republic: rule by law, in which the people elect representatives to make and enforce the laws. Beginning from an honest recognition of human fallibility, the Constitution builds in checks against tyranny and balances against excess.
When fraud makes headlines, as it often has lately, the problem isn’t the system so much as the people in it. Every system rests on a moral foundation; the question is always whose. The founders believed law rooted in the supreme lawgiver would be impartial, applying equally to rich and poor, native-born and immigrant — the image of blind Justice. My concern is that when the majority’s wishes become the only measure of right, we drift toward “might makes right,” and toward a morality of feelings, envy, and covetousness. Anyone who has managed kindergartners or teenagers knows how that goes as policy — as they are simply younger versions of us. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Asked what the Constitutional Convention had produced, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and ditch the system because corrupt people have abused it. The fault lies not in the system’s essence but in people who won’t hold to its high ethics. Capitalism in a free-market economy is not an end in itself; it is a means to human flourishing. Before the Fall, four things were woven into the world God made: relationship, responsibility, restraint, and rest. Work was not the punishment. It was a responsibility given so we could join in the creative work God set before us. A civilization that honors meaningful work honors the laborer; one that disparages work traffics in envy and victimhood.
Here’s the thing, though: the same humility that makes a good republic makes a good holiday table. If none of us are angels, then none of us — not the relative who votes differently, not the cousin who worships differently or not at all, not even ourselves — has a corner on virtue. The founders built a system so that people who disagree could live together in peace. Families can do the same. We can hold our convictions firmly and still pass the stuffing kindly. Listen more than you argue. Ask why someone believes what they believe. Remember that the person across the table is not an opponent to defeat but someone made in God’s image, and someone you love.
I write this as we enter this season of thanksgiving, gift-giving, caregiving, and joy, to remind us of the source of our blessings. For me and for many Christians, that source is the triune God and our Savior, Christ, who came not to win arguments but to reconcile people back into relationship with Him. Because relationships existed before it was woven as the first gift in creation, and it is still the best one. This year, let the table be bigger than the disagreement. Let fraud and graft give way to faith and grace — and let our differences give way to fellowship and care and rejoice with one another.
“This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” — Psalm 118:24