- Theology and Identity
- Season 2
- Episode 6
- Airdate: 2 May 2025
- Please note this is a script, and not a transcript. There may be slight differences between this text and the actual broadcast.
- All Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
Audio Links:
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In season 2 of this podcast, I’ve been going through the prayer that Jesus taught to his followers, and we’ve now arrived at the 4th petition - which is ‘give us this day our daily bread.’
As we look at what Jesus was really teaching, we will see that there are certainly some ideas that challenge our individualistic, capitalistic worldview. In the Lord’s Prayer, Christians are taught not only pray for their own personal material needs, but for the needs of their community. And there is an implicit, encoded message in this petition which might actually be saying that Jesus prioritized provision for the community above individual prosperity.
Now in advance I want to clear - I don’t see anything in the teachings of Jesus suggesting that its wrong or sinful to be rich. But I do see some indications that the overall material well-being of the community is more important to him than the prosperity of a minority within.
Do I think Jesus promoting something similar to what Marxists pushed for the in the 20th century? A world in which wealth is equally distributed among all, where there are no rich people and no poor people? No I don’t think that. But I do see some elements in the 4th petition of the LP that that might make me and my neighbours in Wimbledon a bit uncomfortable. And this is what we want to explore today.
Ok, so to begin, lets clarify exactly what elements of Marxism we’re referring to.
Marx argued that under capitalism, wealth is distributed very unevenly. A small group of people — those who own the resources — controls most of the wealth. At the same time, the majority of the popuiation works hard produce the wealth, but only a small share of that wealth trickles down to them in the form of the wages they receive.
So for example, lets think about the company Amazon. Jeff Bezos the founder is worth over 200 billion dollars. To become as rich as Jeff Bezos, you’d have to earn 27.4 million dollars a day, every day for the next 20 years.
In contrast, the average warehouse worker at Amazon in America earns $18 hr. For that worker to match the wealth of Jeff Bezos, earning $18 per hour working 40 hours per week, it would take him approximately 5,341,880 years to accumulate $200 billion — and that is based on the assumption that he could save every single dollar he earned, with no expenses at all.
So Kal Marx thought that this kind of unequal wealth distribution was unfair.
Marx argued that the only way to fixt the problem would be to abolish capitalism and replace it with communism — a system in which the means of production (like factories, land, etc.) are owned by the community, not by individuals. In such a system, wealth would be distributed based on need. Jeff Bezos would be an employee at Amazon just like the warehouse workers. They would all work full time, and they would divide up the profits according to their needs.
Marx’s teaching on wealth distribution can be summarised in the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Its based on the understanding that some people super productive people are generating way more than they really need. And at the same time, some less fortunate people are generating way less than they really need. So the answer is to collect all of the wealth together and distribute it to each person not on the basis of what they have produced, but on the basis of what they need.
Now allow me to here comment that with regard to my personal economic viewpoints, I am not a Marxist. I am a deeply committed free-market capitalist. My dad was an entrepreneur, my grandpa was an entrepreneur, my great grandfather was an entrepreneur. The Clark family has done very well in business.
My own career path was first missions and is now academia – but it would be disingenuous for me not to acknowledge that I have benefitted enormously from the success of my family. So as I talk about Marxism, I am definitely talking as an outsider.
I am not aware of any of any historical example where Marxist – communist system of government has succeeded. I’ve been to North Korea and witnessed starvation first hand. I’ve been to Cuba and seen how the people of that nation have suffered. I’ve seen first hand how communism works. And in my view, its all been a total disaster.
That said, I do see some things in the Bible that very similar to this idea of ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
Lets start in Exodus chapter 16.
Here’s the scenario: Moses and the people are in the Sinai wilderness. Starting in vs 2
And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
Continuing in vs 13
in the morning dew lay around the camp. And when the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an omer, according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.’ ” And the people of Israel did so. They gathered, some more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over till the morning.” But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank. And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, each as much as he could eat; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.
Let’s look at this more closely. In vs 4 God said to Moses, “the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day.” But this initial phrase is actually a bit misleading. Each person didn’t actually gather a day’s portion every day. Each person walked away with a day’s portion every day.
The actually process of gathering the manna was different. In vs 17 it says ‘they gathered. Some more, some less.’ You see some people were better at gathering than others. Everybody had to go out, everybody had to do their part. But it was unsurprising that a young man would gather more than a disabled old woman.
So what happened next? The individual people of Israel had all gathered different amounts. When they came back to the camp, but they all dumped what they had collected into a common pile. It was then distributed to each family according to their need. Everybody got one omer (which is the equivalent of 2 litres). And when they distributed 2 l of mannah to everyone, it was gone.
God had sent exactly enough mannah for each person to walk away with 2 litres. Vs 18 it says that when they measured it out, those who had gathered a lot didn’t get any extra, and those who had gathered little were not left falling short. Every person walked away with exactly the amount of food they could eat in one day.
Now, just to save themselves some work, some people tried eating less, so that could have some left over for the next day. But that didn’t work. Whatever they didn’t eat on the day of collection would go bad overnight.
They had to go out everyday. Different people gathered different amounts. But when it came to the distribution, everybody got exactly what they needed for one day. The idea was that each individual saw his or her own intake as God’s provision for the group. Everyone worked hard, and everyone brought home the same amount .
That’s what we see in Exodus 16. And if we’re honest, we have to admit that this whole system sounds a bit like Marx’s "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
But before we draw any conclusions, lets see how this relates to the Lord’s Prayer.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer contains a strange repetition: Give us this day our daily bread, or translated literally: “Give us today the bread that we need for today.” Why does it express the idea of ‘today’ two times?
It would have been fine just to say: ‘Give us our daily bread’. And it also would have worked to say ‘Give us bread today.’ But what it actually says is ‘Give us today the bread that we need for today.’
What we discover is that the petition uses ‘today’ in two ways. First – it describes the amount of bread you ask for – you ask for a single day’s portion. Second, it refers to the frequency of getting the bread – which is each day. So you ask for a single days portion, and you have to come back and ask for it everyday. What you get today doesn’t carry you over into tomorrow.
And so we have to conclude that when Jesus taught his followers to pray ‘Give us today the bread that we need for today’ he was making a deliberate allusion to Exodus 16:4, where God had told Moses: ’and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day.’ As far as portion – they will get enough for one day. And as far as frequency, they have to go out every day. It’s the same idea in the Lord’s prayer. The followers of Jesus are to pray for the bread they need for one day, and they are make this request every day.
Now in previous episodes, I’ve talked about the idea of encoded meanings in the Lord’s Prayer. This is to say the LP contains certain words and phrases that carry a meaning which goes beyond their face value. They are symbols, or allusions pointing to something bigger and more complex.
And that is what is happening here in the 4th petition. When Jesus taught his followers to pray ‘Give us today the bread we need for today’ he wanted them to think about the manna. He wanted them to make in their minds a connection with Israel in the Sinai wildnerness.
Whatever God was doing in Sinai at that moment in the past, was the same thing that Jesus was doing among his followers.
In the Sinai wilderness the focus was not on individual accumulation of bread. The focus was everyone working hard so that the entire community would have enough to eat.
With the LP - the followers of Jesus don’t physically go out to collect a day’s portion of bread every day. But they do pray every day for the bread they need for each day.
And what I want to emphasise is that they weren’t praying as individuals for their individual needs. Jesus didn’t teach his followers to say, “Give me the bread that I need for today.” He taught them to pray Give us today our daily bread. They were to pray as a group for the needs of the group.
Among the followers of Jesus, just had it been among the people of Israel in Sinai - each individual was challenged to see their own personal intake as God’s provision for the community. In Sinai, everyone worked hard, some people gathered more than others, but everyone brought home the same amount.
Jesus deliberately echoed the language of Exodus because this is how he wanted to his followers to think. In the LP, the group prays together for bread. Different people may bring in different amounts of bread. But those who bring in more should be willing to share with those who bring in less.
And so the Lord’s Prayer is a call to be attentive to the material needs of others. Those who ask for God to provide for others must be willing to share what they themselves have taken in. This was God’s intention for the people of Israel in Sinai, and this is the same idea that Jesus was teaching in the Lord’s Prayer.
As we look at the early history of the church, we see this attitude on display among Christian communities. In Acts ch 4 we read about the church in Jerusalem
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.[1]
We see this is in the first letter of Paul to Timothy. In ch 6 Paul wrote
As for the rich in this present age . . . They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.
So it is very clear in the teachings of Jesus, in the example of the early church, and in the teachings of Paul that Christians who are blessed with material wealth are called not to look at what they have gathered in as being ‘theirs alone’. They are to be attentive to the material needs of those around them. They are supposed to ask questions like:
How much bread do I really need for myself?
And
Could it be that the bread I have collected is meant to serve as provision for my brother?
This is what I believe Jesus was getting at when he taught his followers to pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’.
So is this Marxism? If we’re honest, what we read in Exodus sounds a lot like Marx’s ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’
As we have seen here, the Bible does support the idea that those who collect more material wealth than they need should share with those who have not collected enough to meet their needs.
But to specifically address the question about the Bible and Marxism, I would emphasize the following:
- Marx called for structural revolution — the complete overthrow of capitalism and private property. Communism implements a forced redistribution of wealth. There’s nothing in the teachings of Jesus, nor in the Bible as a whole, that calls for Christians to instigate this kind of political upheaval.
- The teachings of Jesus focus on the transformation of the heart. Jesus didn’t advocate the creation of a system wherein the wealthy were forced to surrender their resources for the benefit of the poor. Jesus and the apostles envisioned a church wherein the wealthy were attentive to the needs of their poorer brothers and sisters, and were wiling to share with others in a spirit of freedom and joy.
So the answer is No - the Bible does not promote Marxism.
But this doesn’t mean that Jesus would promote the kind materialistic worldview that many Christians have today.
When Jesus taught his followers to Jesus pray ‘give us this day our daily bread’, they were to pray for the group. This prayer did not mean: ‘give me this day my daily bread.’ Or ‘give my family today our daily bread.’ Rather, they were supposed to think about the community that they were part of. They were to pray for the needs of their group, and they were to desire that the needs of all be met.
And this can be controversial – because it sets up a potential tension between individual prosperity and the overall material well being of the community. In our Western, individualistic capitalistic mindset – our primary concern is often individual prosperity. We all want to gather to ourselves as much as we can possibly accumulate.
What I see in the LP, however, is something different. Jesus is not challenging the right of an individual to accumulate wealth. But he is challenging the heart of the wealthy person who fails to pay attention the needs of those in his community.
This is the challenge of Jesus to his followers: Pray for your own needs. Pray for the needs of your brothers and sisters. And be open to the possibility that as you pray ‘give to my brother today the bread he needs for this day’ – you may be the one who has gathered that bread on his behalf. You might be the answer to the prayer that you have prayed.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ac 4:32–35.