This week's headlines have been about elections (in Britain and the Philippines), the economy (in Greece and Australia), justice and law (banning the burqa and monstering asylum seekers).
Elections, the economy, justice and law are also central themes of Christian theology. It can be illuminating to compare the popular understandings with the theological ones.
In the popular understanding elections are the place where we define ourselves as citizens. We choose our rulers and the policies by which we shall be governed. Those vying for election try to persuade us that they are worthy and that they will have our interests in mind. We weigh their merits and make our choice. Often ungraciously.
The popular image of the economy is of an impersonal machine with its own laws and disciplines. It does not care for people. If we trust the market, we shall make, spend and accumulate wealth freely. If we scorn it, as did Greece, the result is impoverishment. People who fiddle with the machinery of the market make it less efficient.
Laws are popularly understood as a constraint, desirable or undesirable, on the liberty of the individual. They are made to prohibit practices that society considers prejudicial, and are sanctioned by punishment. If burqas are considered undesirable today, as Catholic religious dress was in earlier centuries in England, or people facing death keep arriving on our shores, we make laws to stop them.
Justice is understood primarily as ensuring that those who break laws are punished adequately. It only secondarily concerned with seeing that those who are punished are punished fairly.
The understanding of election, economy, justice and law in Christian theology belong to another world. Each of these words is used to describe God's relationship with the world. Election has to do with God's choice of human beings, not people's choice of God. God chose to make the world, chose the people of Israel, chose to share the human condition in Jesus Christ, chose to save all human beings through his death and rising. The doctrine of election says that God chooses us not because we are not worthy, but out of love. It is a matter of grace, of gift.
Economy, a word which referred to the management of the household, refers to the way in which God relates to the world in making it, choosing the people of Israel, sharing our humanity and saving us. God's economy expresses a