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.
But God asks us to do even more than just refrain from doing evil.
Moses shows that God desires us actively to protect the property of our brothers and sisters. We are to go out of our way to make sure that our brothers and sisters do not suffer any loss. We are to treat property rights as personal rights.
"You shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and withhold your help from them; you shall take them back to your brother. And if he is not near you, or if you do not know him, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall be with you until your brother seeks it; then you shall restore it to him. And so you shall do with his ass; so you shall do with his garment; so you shall do with any lost thing of your brother's, which he loses and you find; you may not withhold your help. You shall not see your brother's ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and withhold your help from them; you shall help him to lift them up again." [Dt 22:1 4]
It’s too easy to say “people are more important than things” and overlook how very deep and fundamental the relationship is between what we are, and what we produce. Out of who we are comes what we create, what we have chosen to invest our lives in. You may not agree with how someone has chosen to invest their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, but there is an inseparable connection between the two. You cannot respect a person, and stomp all over their treasures.
I have an acquaintance whom I’ll call Leann, a very sad person, I think. She’s a little younger than I am, an attractive woman with a good job. But she has very little sense of her own identity and value. At any rate, what she has invested her life in is in buying every one of a series of “Winter Wonderland” collectibles, you know, little houses, and churches, and shops, and light posts and so on to recreate a whole rustic village. One entire room of her house is devoted to this hobby. Now, my personal opinion is that this is a very lonely and ultimately unsatisfying way to fill her need for meaning and purpose - but nonetheless, it is where her heart is. And if Leann’s house were to be broken into, and her treasures stolen or destroyed, it would affect her like the loss of a child. Part of my obligation to her as my neighbor, and as my sister in Christ, is actively to protect her from loss. It doesn’t matter whether or not I approve of how she has chosen to invest herself, or even whether God does. It is not my job to correct her heart. What matters is that what she has invested in has become part of herself.
But just as important as the relationship between ourselves and those things that we have made, created, and invested in, is the relationship between ourselves and possessions to which we have no right. To own or use things to which we have no right diminishes us as much as having what we did create taken from us. How sad and empty it is to live off of someone else’s creative power, like buying pictures of someone else’s ancestors to put on the walls, and pretend that it gives us identity.
Now, there is nothing wrong with exchanging the fruits of our labors for the fruits of another’s. That’s not what I’m talking about. Equal exchange is a matter of mutual respect. But to appropriate the fruits of another’s labor without equal exchange is to appropriate their labor itself, and effectively make them into our slaves. And that will not do.
There are many ways we can violate someone’s property rights, violate a person through their possessions. Most of them aren’t as straightforward as breaking into someone’s home and taking their jewelry and collectibles. Many of them are sufficiently far removed from an act of personal creativity that it doesn’t feel like stealing at all, from padding your expense account to using the office copy machine for a personal project. Some people even argue that insurance fraud or shoplifting is okay, since a store or corporation is the injured party, not another person.
Theft isn’t only taking someone else’s goods. It is also theft to deprive them of what they should have. Underpaying workers, cutting corners, misrepresenting products, manipulating prices are all violations of this commandment, whether or not you disguise it as “sound business practice.” Regardless of the economic or business or legal environment, no one is required by circumstances to behave unjustly.
What we don’t understand is that stealing from others, defrauding others, cheating others violates our own property rights, as well. Anything that we have taken and used unlawfully, to someone else’s detriment, harms us in the long run, even if we can’t see it right away. It’s as though our sticky fingers leave something behind that gets into everything we own, and keeps it from working right. Even though Proverbs 6:30 says “Thieves are not despised who steal only to satisfy their appetite when they are hungry,” that is not an endorsement of theft. Because someone unable to feed himself or his family through his or her own creative power is diminished in himself – or herself. Have you ever noticed how much more fulfilled you feel when you are exercising your own particular gift – whether it’s singing or cooking or balancing accounts? And there are a lot of gifts that aren’t obvious at all, like taking care of the sick and dying or picking up other people’s garbage. It makes a difference, and it makes us whole. When we are doing what God has created us to do, being what God created us to be, only then are we complete.
God provides, and we are to thank and trust in God for his amazing generosity. But God has also provided us with work that matters, and lives that matter. There is an almost sacramental aspect of property rights in the deserved enjoyment of the fruits of one’s own creative labor. God gives to us a shadow of that profound satisfaction which he felt on the sixth day, observing what he had made, and calling it good. To deny the fundamental importance of property rights is to divorce us somehow from our own creativity.
Profiting from the fruits of someone else’s labor, instead of our own, robs us of that most profoundly important source of self worth, of meaning and value. God made us to be creators, not thieves. It is only as creators that we can live in peace with our possessions.
