ISBN: 0-8024-3462-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8024-3462-3
5.5 x 8.5 Paperback, 250 Pages

>About the Authors
>Book Excerpt

Description
Most of us turn to the Bible for decision making, but since the Bible deals in morality and value, it’s difficult to apply its principles to the economic choices we make each day. However, by measuring the outcome of these choices with the use of economic theory, we can determine long-range implications and more easily evaluate them according to biblical criteria.

Good Intentions suggests that it is possible to do good in economic matters if one begins with the right assumptions. By combining a biblical framework with standard economic tools and principles, the authors assess the morality and biblical "rightness" of choices we make every day. Rather than suggesting what readers should think, they provide sound economic reasoning that can be coupled with scriptural directives and examples to help readers make up their own minds about even the thorniest economic issues of our day.

Christian Principles: A bit of the design behind this book.
Two caveats as we proceed.
The first is that we are not theologians. The authors of this book are an economist and a religion journalist. We are not attempting to tell Christians what decisions to make, and we offer no magic formulas. Instaed, we will combine some basic Christian principles with the tools of economics to look at some pressing social issues and ask, "How can we apply these Christian principles in an effective way? How can our actions produce outcomes that match our values?"

One such guiding princple comes from the book Kingdom Ethics, by Christian ethicists Glen Stassen and David Gushee. "All material goods," these authors write, "including the most basic—food—must be viewed as God's good gifts, divine provision for all humankind." The goal of Christian economics is to get God's gifts into the hands of as many of God's people as possible. This is easier said than done, but the Bible establishes it as a guiding principle.

A few additional guiding principles taken from the Scriptures:
>Everyone deserves a fair shake.
>Everyone works.
>God wants people to prosper—to be able to make a living.
>Some people, for a number of reasons, will fall behind and lose the means to make a living.
>God wants those people to be restored, so they have access to the means of making a living.

The second caveat is that economics is not an exact science. After asking "Will it work?" economists often ask a second question: "What comes next?" Economic solutions often produce unintended results—results that will then require new solutions of their own.