Sticky Fingers Series

One of my favorite movies ever is a little gem called “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” It starts out with an idyllic look at society among the stone age tribesmen of the Kalahari desert. They have absolutely no possessions. Not one. Not even so much as a loin cloth. They spend most of their time hunting for food and eating it. It’s the most appalling diet; I’d lose weight in no time. They eat roots and seeds and insects and lizards and possibly when they’re lucky a bird’s egg. Well, anyway, as you’ve probably gathered, this primitive community lives together in an absolutely idyllic communal existence, with no violence of any kind, no rivalry, not even any “just-for-fun” competition. And of course they never, ever, ever have to spank their children.

And then one day what should fall – literally out of the clear blue sky - from a passing single-engine airplane - but a coke bottle. An empty one. And it’s the only one of its kind, and there’s never been one before, and there’ll never be another one like it ever again, and all of a sudden - you guessed it. The coke bottle is a sort of 20th century serpent in Eden, bringing with it violence, greed, covetousness, and finally murder. And finally one adventurous young tribesman takes his life into his hands and starts a desperate journey away from everything he knows to take the bottle back to the gods who sent it. His people don’t want it.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the story shows us our 20th century so-called civilization from a not too complimentary vantage point. It’s a comedy, filled with some truly great slapstick and not too subtle irony, but a comedy with a point about possessions which I’m sure will ring all too clear for most of us. We’re a materialistic society, after all, and we know how difficult it is to be a Christian in such a society.

You know what I think is just as appalling, if not more so, than all the sex and violence that surrounds us and our children? It’s the idea of shopping as a hobby. Or “retail therapy,” feeding the hunger of the soul with a mani-pedi or a new power tool. Not to mention that awful meant-to-be-funny saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” How profoundly and tragically empty that is - the purposeless acquisition of goods as a way to give meaning to life, or as medication for depression or loneliness, or as a way to assert power in the midst of helplessness and chaos.

Well. As I said, the themes of materialism, acquisitiveness, and greed certainly ring all too clear to us. We know we live in a materialistic culture, we know it poses a spiritual danger to us, we know all that. What we really don’t know is what to do about it. How do we keep a Biblical perspective on possessions?

The first thing to remember is that things are not the problem. Coke bottles falling from the sky disturbing a mythic paradise notwithstanding, things - material goods - by themselves are not the source of the problem. Rousseau’s romantic 18th century fantasy of the noble savage living in serene harmony with creation and one another has been pretty thoroughly debunked. It’s not things that are the problem. It’s not income inequality, or evil capitalists, or the supply chain, or globalism, or anything at all in the external environment. It’s people. It’s us. It’s our own attitudes that are the problem.

And that’s why God had to give Moses the 8th commandment. “You shall not steal.” God knew we would. God knew that every time we thought no one was watching, we would try to grab more of whatever else was out there to add to our own stock of - whatever. Bananas. Camels. Pretty rocks.

But the point of this commandment is not anti-materialism. The New Testament commentary on this commandment is not “sell all you have and give to the poor.” The point of this commandment is not just about how we view our own possessions. It is also about how we view other people’s possessions. It’s about the place material things occupy in our lives and imaginations.

This commandment teaches us to treat personal possessions, property rights, with the utmost respect. This commandment teaches us that keeping our hands off our neighbor’s things is as important as keeping our hands off our neighbor’s neck. This commandment affirms that there is a difference between “my things” and “your things” and warns us against trying to correct any perceived imbalance either by force or by fraud.

God created us to be workers, creators, makers, and doers. He affirms our labors, and the fruits of our labors, and desires that those who live according to his commandments should prosper, living in peace and enjoying the abundance of God’s grace. Throughout the Old Testament the theme of the righteous person enjoying prosperity is affirmed. We are embodied creatures, and we are economic creatures. The philosophers of the Greeks taught that in order to by holy you had to be separate from your body, insofar as possible, and separate from all economic activity. Our God, the God of the Hebrews, teaches that holiness is possible both as embodied creatures and as productive creatures. This commandment, then, is step one on the journey toward economic righteousness.