Cash exchange practices exist which build the money supply of the community. The building of the supply is done by adding value to the stream resources by labor or by capitalism. All these streams are means of gathering the work and resources of multiple persons into a common pool. The community (including the Church) is overtly supportive of these streams and their passages within the community. The Church supports persons involved in developing these cash streams within the community. The commercial community is understood as a community resource.
II Thessalonians 3:6-14
The Church has consistently accepted the letters to the Church at Thessalonika as genuinely Paul's. The letters open with a simple statement that they come from Paul, Sylvanus and Timothy. This is quite important, but not the telling point.
The critical issue is that the letters are filled with thinking and verbiage that represents other known emphases of Paul. One area of Paul's concern is in his insistence that personal finance is to be handled very carefully and openly. Each makes their own contribution to society in some way.
Paul makes it plain that he works in other ways to raise money for his own expenses. The money he collects as gifts is given to other congregations who cannot support themselves. This personal responsibility, Paul knows, is a path for each of us. It is also the good path for the communities which he has visited. By his own labor he helped increase their economies.
The economy grows as the value of labor, time, tools and real property increases. The real increase comes with labor which takes time, tools and real property. The labor takes these supplies and, by adding some kind of energy, transforms them into something more than they have been. Only the labor, the effort, the energy can be actually adjusted. Time is what it is. It can not change. It only flows, but energy flowing within it can be adjusted in speed and force. Real property is like time. It is what it is, but it can be transformed by energy. Energy makes the only real change in economy.
Now when this change is translated into money, there can be a serious battle in the community. Do we send our money out of the community? Or do we keep a larger portion of the labor/cash exchange locally? In most of the lowest income communities of the nation, only a minimum of cash is kept within the community. Often, in the lowest income counties, more is sent out than is both produced in the exchange and brought in from outside resources such as government and church. This practice simply moves the county deeper into poverty.
