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Table 5.18 The teaching of the church which has helped raise the economic position\u000A Numbered according to importance and frequency\u000A1. Teaching about economic themes: Giving, tithing, offerings and management of finances 2. Exhortation to live according to the Word of God\u000A3. Teaching to reach for professional, spiritual and material success\u000A4. Formation of moral values: speak the truth, how to relate to others, pay taxes\u000A5. Teaching about the position in Christ: \u2018I am a son of the King who is the owner of everything that exists\u2019. 6. Teaching to transform the way people think: paradigm change and new ways of thinking\u000A7. Faith in God and his supernatural work\u000ASource: Survey of Neo-Pentecostal entrepreneurs and professionals 2003\u000AThese perceptions are expressed in religious terms that later transfer to the social and economic planes. According to the believer\u2019s \u2018position in Christ\u2019 he is placed in a privileged situation which allows him to reach all the blessings that come from conversion. These lessons, as will be mentioned ahead, rest on a series of rationalizations that justify their understanding of economic issues. Although predestination and the call from the Weber\u2019s ethical point of view are not present explicitly in their teaching, some similar characteristics can be perceived with regard to their attitude about work, discipline, saving, rational use of money, and an entrepreneurial sense, among others. According to Martin they must understand the language and religious categories in order to apply them in the economic context. He specifies that in the atmosphere of religion \u2018economics\u2019 is not a different category,\u000ABut is woven into a comprehensive fabric and subsumed within such moral rubrics as prudence. A word which could evoke that fabric is \u2018betterment\u2019. \u2018Betterment\u2019 includes moral recovery and restitution of previous wrong; it suggests a reversal of old ways and wasteful and destructive priorities. To seek \u2018betterment\u2019 is adopt personal disciplines and restraints, to be reliable and punctual, to accept regimes of health, wholeness and holiness, and conduct transactions in a spirit of integrity and trustworthiness. Underlying the notion of \u2018betterment\u2019 is a broad search for \u2018wealth\u2019 rather than \u2018wealth\u2019, for worth rather than worthlessness, for a clean future rather than the dirt of the past. In this way, the economic category of \u2018good\u2019 is part of the moral category of the good. It is the seamless web or living which forces academic research to abandon the idea of a separate \u2018economic\u2019 aspect and, to treat goods and gods together (1992: 11, 12).\u000AFor Martin \u2018conversion\u2019 turns on a dramatic rearrangement of the key elements in the symbolic universe, altering the way gods evoke the \u2018good\u2019. From a different view it\u000A  311\u000A


































































































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