“Most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.”

I find it all over the web, cited as from the movie, but no historical documentation. So it may just be a well-flourished turn of the script-writer’s pen. But it is of maxim quality. And it is painfully true. I do find it paired with this wonderful line, here… “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Both of these lines, I think, have to do with my earlier question: is it a right or a privilege to have fare more wealth than your neighbour?

If it is a right (as given by “nature and by nature’s God” or else by the Constitution and law of the nation) then it is a right not enjoyed equally. It is a right for some but not all people. All men are not created equal.

If it is a privilege, earned by hard work, etc, then honesty requires us to admit it is a privilege earned only by some. For some work hard all their lives and never get very far ahead. In this day and age the things we call “work” are, rarely, thus. Thinking, pushing papers and selling other people may take skills and bravado, but it’s not “work”. If it can’t be measured in horsepower, I suggest it’s only difficult: it’s not hard. Most of our rich folks get there by being clever. They are an example of the motto, “Work smarter, not harder”. Rich folks get to move away from “harder” to “smarter”; and, having earned a certain amount, one needn’t work very hard any more, wealth attracts more wealth by usury and other “magic” or invisible means. And the man who rode hard the backs of the poor to get to that magic amount now only need his money to continue riding hard. He can sit back and enjoy the benefits. It is a privilege in the fullest sense of the latin roots: a private law.

This last makes some sense: there are only X number of resources. Only so many acres of arable land, only so much food, only so much potable water. And, largely, the rich have polluted what they do not, themselves, use. Huge tracts of land left for housing the poor are, like here in New York, polluted and leaking. These are not arable lands, they are toxic. (See: privilege.)

If wealth is a right it is so at the expense of the rights of others.
If wealth is a privilege, it is so only in the sense of a “Private law” but not at all in the more-common sense of a “gift” or an “honour” to be enjoyed.

Birthday Party & Lunching Ladies

One of the most common levels of discussion in the USA is money. Everything boils back to finances, to discussions of “fairness” based on cost. Here: let’s look at two examples.

An afternoon Lunch: when the ladies who lunch stop shopping for a three-stinger respite, they will proceed to argue around the bill over who had the chef salad or the fritata. Each will insist that they pay only for what they ate and not a cent more for anyone else. (Usually the waitstaff loose out in this equation.)

A birthday party: a birthday party held at the same restaurant, later that evening, will function completely different. When the check comes, everyone will pay an equal share (to make up for the birthday girl’s 17 martinis and her surf-n-turf) and no one will care because everyone had a good time. (Usually the waitstaff win big in this equation.)

Wealth, in the USA, functions like that afternoon lunch. Everyone grapples over getting their fair share. Everyone wants to leave paying the least amount possible. Everyone wants to claim totally honesty, but no one trusts anyone else and so they argue over the paycheck.

In an ideal world, wealth would function like the Birthday party: where everyone shares, everyone enjoys and those who haven’t enough (including the birthday girl and the poor) pay what they can or not at all.

Another set of analogies…

Dinner Party & Pot Luck

When I lived in San Francisco, and was earning more than my age, I loved to hot dinner parties. Holidays were my big ones, full-on meals, turkeys, hams, etc. My friends also brought some things (drinks, breads) and we had a good time. Usually ten or so people some cocktails etc. One time I even catered a party!

But nothing compares to the Holiday Dinner for 45 we had last November! There was more food on the table than I’d ever seen before – half a turkey, wine, cakes, veggies, etc etc…. it was amazing. A pot luck where those who could supported those who could not and everyone washed up afterwards.

You may begin to see where I’m going here…

Wrong Question

Rather than a Right or a Privilege, or (as a couple of folks suggested on Facebook) rather than a Blessing or an Opportunity, wealth, in the Christian view is exactly a responsibility. If you got it by “smarter work” you need to see that you owe it to the people who were working hard under you or in the darkness behind you: I particularly am reminded of the the biblical command to leave the edges of your field unharvested and that we are forbidden to take up the gleanings – and these are too be left for the poor. There is no private property in the Bible: it is all God’s in exactly the same way that all of Egypt belongs to Pharaoh. The rest of us inhabit what we do by his divine leaving and we can not do with it what we choose: only what he chooses.

Let me say that again: there is no private property (by the modern understanding) in the Bible. Everything belongs to God. If you get to have more property it is exactly so you can give it away caring for those who have less.

Equally we know from the Bible that there was no private property in the Early Church and Paul over and over castigates the wealthy for not caring for their brothers and sisters in the faith. This is not Charity (those who do not work do not eat) this is the assumption that gathering around the Messianic Banqueting Table is a call to share in God’s bounty – that is, the stuff in your pocket. This is the meaning of the Biblical line, “The Earth is the Lord’s and all the fulness thereof.”

Not Socialism

This is not socialism. The concept in all statist practices replaces God with the State: it is the state that owns everything and has the power to redistribute it. This is perhaps the most anarchistic concept possible. There is no earthly ruler at all – even the rulers only have their power from God. In a Christian society, founded and run on Christian understandings, there would be no need for socialism because all would be held in common.

This is what Gregory of Nyssa means when he tells us that the extra clothes we have in our closets belong to the poor. The extra bread on our shelves belongs to the poor. If we let food spoil it is the poor that we have robbed. And in doing so to them we have robbed God: so David says, “Against you and you alone have I sinned.” Yet for all of Gregory’s preaching – and John Chrysostom and the other Saints – there is no advocacy for the State (even the Christian, Byzantine State) to take on this duty. It is the duty of the Christian people to act this way. This is not socialism.

This is Christianity.

In the World but not of it.

Most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

First off, I have to say I can’t do this yet. I’m scared. I can’t turn my life over to the Messianic Potluck, feasting with Brothers and Sisters at the table of the Lord. But I know people who have. They walk right up to the edge of the River of the Water of Life and dive right in. That level of trust is beyond me still.

But our system is designed to inculcate such a feeling of distrust. We are trained to imagine we can “have it all” if we only follow the rules. In fact, following the rules is exactly the way to NOT have it all. We become convinced that if we let go of what little we have we will have nothing. If we stop grasping for more we won’t be able to keep what we have “earned”.

And yet I know that if I stop grasping, I will find the freedom enjoyed by Jesus, by the Saints of East and West, and by some postmodern folks. I think of my community as a half-way house towards this goal.

We Americans – even our “poor” – are amazingly wealthy compared to the world. Yet we can not bring ourselves to share what we have, even amongst ourselves. We harvest the fields right to the edges and we rake twice and three times over what is there to remove any chance of someone stealing “our stuff”. Then we dole out enough to “charity” to feel better. We (rightly) worry about the Gov’t stealing from the people, but then we proceed to steal from the people ourselves.

There is no private property. Everything that is is God’s and it is him and him alone against whom we sin.

And when the poor die or starve or go hungry God will not ask why we refused to share. He will ask why we stole what was rightfully his.

So, someplace between the two…

Please don’t give the public fund to businesses. Cars, banks, insurance… this is silly. Rather than Gov’t-run, socialised banking or federally-mandated wages for car makers, I’d rather have federally-funded medical insurance and other social services. Then let the economy collapse and let us build it up again.

Mind you, I’m not saying you must give the public fund to anyone at all.

But it strikes me that if we’re not worried about the basic needs of life – health, food, etc – we can set about competing to build the best businesses possible. Yes, there are some who would be lazy in such a situation. To that end I propose a ten-year plan by which this welfare should decrease, nationally, until there is just enough for the recipient to have rice and beans and a trip to the clinic. Some might live on that indefinitely. But I’d prefer the freedom to buy some grass-fed beef every now and then. And I’d prefer to have the freedom to build the business that would empower me to do so.

Stop trying to liberate the wallets of the rich: trickle down, supply side, Voodoo Economics has never, ever, worked. The rich, predictably, don’t want to carry the poor clinging too their coat tails. Rather, give the poor a road to walk on and we will move forward on our own feet – the rich may follow if they will.

HE RICH usually imagine that, if they do not physically rob the poor, they are committing no sin. But the sin of the rich consists in not sharing their wealth with the poor. In fact, the rich person who keeps all his wealth for himself is committing a form of robbery. The reason is that in truth all wealth comes from God, and so belongs to everyone equally. The proof of this is all around us. Look at the succulent fruits which the trees and bushes produce. Look at the fertile soil which yields each year such an abundant harvest. Look at the sweet grapes on the vines, which give us wine to drink. The rich may claim that they own many fields in which fruits and grain grow; but it is God who causes seeds to sprout and mature. The duty of the rich is to share the harvest of their fields with all who work in them and with all in need.”

- St John Chrysostom

(It’s funny, the sort of timely Communist Propaganda one hears on Ancient Faith Radio.)