If you ask Christians what Jesus talked about during his earthly ministry, you’d hear things like love, salvation, and repentance and rightly so. The last thing you’d hear is economics. But economics plays a major role in much of Christ’s teaching. Host Rob West welcomes economist Jerry Bowyer, chief economist at Vident Financial and author of the brand new book, The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics, to help you gain a fuller understanding of Christian doctrine, and that conversation will actually cover two programs. This one is Part 1.

Many people misinterpret Jesus’ teaching about wealth from both sides of the political spectrum, but why?

The role that economics played during Christ’s ministry can’t be separated from our understanding of geography in the first century. Each city mentioned in the Bible had its own economy and Jesus varied his economic message depending on where he was speaking.

Jerry makes the case that studying the economics of Jesus’ ministry isn’t at odds with our understanding of theological issues, but actually enhances it. One example is Jesus’ execution.

The rest of our conversation with Jerry Bowyer happens in our next program. Next Rob and Steve answer a couple of questions from our listeners:

Both husband and wife are grad students. He gets a stipend. She is about to graduate and start working. Their goal is to pay off debt as quickly as possible, but wonder if it makes more sense financially to put all of their surplus income toward debt so as to get it paid off in 12 to 18 months? Fully fund their retirement accounts during the next year before touching the debt? Or split their surplus income between debt and retirement?

Caller’s son opened a checking account while a student. Now he’s in his 30s. Mom is still named on the checking account and wonders if his writing a bad check would affect her credit score.

Husband and wife are about to become a dual income couple. They want to keep living on only one income, but want Rob’s advice on what to do with the second income?

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