The Obsolescence of Ownership

Shane Claiborne spoke of the requirement of “sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us” as one of the requirements to live as a Christian in the book School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of the New Monasticism, the first book my roommates and I are reading together. This deals with general worldly compassion as much as it does Christian faith, so please continue reading, everyone. In a few places, Claiborne really struck me with a profound and, quite frankly, commonsensical argument regarding sharing:

· “The more I’ve gotten to know rich folks, the more I am convinced that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, but that rich Christians do not know the poor.”

· “It is much more comfortable to de-personalize the poor so that we do not feel responsible for the catastrophic human failure that someone is on the street while people have spare bedrooms in their homes.”

· “Redistribution is not a prescription for community. Redistribution is a description of what happens when people fall in love with each other across class lines.”

All of this makes complete sense to me. When we truly understand the hardships people face on a daily basis, and when it connects effectively with our human understanding, we move beyond giving out of the goodness of our hearts or out of charity, because it is natural, organic, to share with a friend. For many people, the “poor” have moved beyond reality and into the realm of the hypothetical; re-personification of those hypotheticals can be powerful. I heard this in a child’s observation today during the Migrant Sunday worship service at Southside Presbyterian Church. When the pastor was discussing the suffering of migrants as they wander the desert, one of the boys spoke up and said something that really touched me because of the sincere concern as well as the true empathy it illustrated: “And if they are walking for a long time, they might be walking during their Birthday, and miss their Birthday.” For any child, this would be the height of injustice, and that recognition and awareness indicates compelling levels of affinity. Whether it is the poor, the elderly, the mentally ill…the marginalized societies of our world are best armed with their humanity, and when this ammunition is discovered by those with abundance, needs can no longer be ignored and healing efforts to comfort those societies become the instinctive reaction.

I want to make the argument, however, that it is not this disconnect that truly causes us to close our hearts to the abandoned people that make up most of this world, to search for more when we have more than enough, leaving millions with less. Maybe the real argument is against our understanding of ownership, that we think that because we have worked, and because we have received money in return for that work, and because we buy something with that money, that thing belongs to us and thus cannot belong to anyone else. When you think about it, doesn’t it just seem so arbitrary—that something should belong to you and not to someone else by virtue of an economic system? And how small, to think that anything can ever belong to anybody, that anything can be owned. What would that even mean, to be owned, to belong exclusively to something? It is oversimplification, and it runs our world, and it brings so much sorrow to those that illogically do not have the same amount of resources—and very rarely because they do not work as hard. Does creation enable ownership, does purchasing enable ownership, does claim enable ownership? And why? If there is enough of something in the world—which is true of food at the very least—what prevents it from going to those in need? How does that make sense? Why do we set so much stock in something that randomly benefits some and leaves others destitute? If you are one that follows the Bible, think about how manna would play a role in this. The only thing you owned was what you could actually use in one day. The rest was meaningless. Can that understanding be relevant for us now? Why or why not? Do we own something if we do not put it to use?

If not for an irrational and tightly held concept of ownership, would there be a need for discussions about sharing? I would say no. Can we all examine our perception of ownership—even just think about it, really consider if it makes sense to you. If it does, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, why not reexamine some of the things you own and see if anything could be effectively and beneficially redistributed. If I sound self-righteous, please know I wrote this as much for myself as for anyone.

Also, Claiborne’s actual message really was compelling, so let me know if you want to hear more about it. I’ll close with something Claiborne quotes in the chapter: “When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.”

As I am only two chapters in, I cannot attest to the quality of the whole book, but here it is: http://www.amazon.com/School-Conversion-Monasticism-Resources-Discipleship/dp/1597520551/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255332324&sr=8-1