Sarx

The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is snot a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is an invention of civilization.
- Marshall Sahlins. Stone Age Economics (1972)

The proper question in regard to US Health Care is not economic. It’s ecologic. It’s not a question of money but of people & culture. Who wants to live in a home where 1% of the family hogs 90% of the stuff.

I’d rather live in a society that robs from some and gives to all than in the failure we currently have. That’s all there is to it. And damn those who say “my property is more important than someone’s health”.

This is not a question of money, not a question of rights, but of civilisation vrs greed. And so far, greed is winning.

That’s not a family I want to be a part of.
– Me on Facebook (2009)

To be sure, neither of these is a profoundly religious statement. I don’t imagine that enforcing a literalist reading of my religion (“Sell all you have and give it to the poor”) would result in a resolution of poverty issues. The wealth of American society (indeed, of our poorest…) is far greater than anything in the Bible. It would take far more than a religious revival to fix that… assuming that poverty, itself, is the issue.

But on the construction of a just society (in which religion might play a part) I think a society that enforces sharing might be better than one that does not.

The religious ideas of economic redistribution, common in traditional Christianity and Judaism, require a change of heart. This is not, of course, possible as an act of law. It takes an act of personal will. But Christian Charity and Hospitality do not make a just society. The culture of pre- and post-Constantine Rome was still inherently unjust in terms of economics: we do well to realise that religion and politics are not the same thing. A Christian living in a society with a just distribution of resources is still called to sell everything and give it to the poor; to realise that all he has comes from God and is for the feeding of others. The actions of the Gov’t for or against such teachings have nothing to do with the Christian.

The question is not “how do we create a more-christian economics” but rather “how do we create a more-just society?” A society based on greed and acquisition is not the latter.