Ted Turner recently committed one billion dollars to U.N.
efforts over the next decade. Speaking in round figures, that's
about one billion dollars more than I even expect to make
in the next decade, let alone give to charity.
Still, I have to say, big deal. Charity is cheap—compared
to justice. Turner's net worth increased by a tidy one billion
dollars in the first nine months of 1997 alone. He was already
worth just over two billion dollars at the end of last year, and
suddenly it dawns on him, I could give away everything I've made
so far this year—and I'd still be obscenely wealthy. And
then, riding on the euphoric wave of this insight, he declares,
"I'm putting the rich on notice. They're going to be hearing
from me about giving money away."
Well, as someone sitting well within the lower tiers of the
economy—and as a Christian—I'm unimpressed.
See, Jesus put the rich on notice long before Ted Turner did.
Among other things he said, "Sell all that you have and
distribute to the poor...; and come, follow me" (Luke
18:22). And "Where your treasure is, there will your heart
be also" (Matthew 6:21). And finally, "It is easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:25).
Although I suspect that Jesus' views on wealth sit rather
uncomfortably beside our own, he didn't have a problem with
material goods. After all, he knew how to throw a party; he
entertained thousands (albeit on rather simple fare: loaves and
fishes) and still had leftovers (Mark 6:30-44 and 8:1-10). He
turned water into wine, and not just into Mogen David (or worse,
Boone's Farm!); we're talking a vintage wine that impressed the
connoisseurs (John 2:1-10). And he didn't seem to mind at all
when a woman of some means (regardless of her reputation) bathed
his feet with costly perfume in a scene so suggestive that it
unnerved even the Calvin Kleins of the first century Jewish
community (Luke 7:36-50).
Yet Jesus saw a clear priority between goods and people. Goods
are here in order to serve the needs and celebrate the joys of
people. People are not here in order to accumulate goods;
nor simply to labor so that others might accumulate goods; and
least of all to become pawns in a system in which wealth takes on
a life of its own and bends human lives at all levels to its own
inhuman and inexorable yearning to see more and more of itself.
When Jesus said, "The Sabbath is made for humans and not
humans for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27-28), he was extending the
critique made by the prophets centuries earlier. They had railed
against Israel's Sabbath practices both because the wealthy spent
the day impatiently waiting for the stock exchange to reopen the
next morning (Amos 8:5) and because they failed to see that the
injustice rampant in their social life could not be reconciled
with the piety pretended at the altar (Isaiah 1:13).
Jesus seems to discern that in his day the powerful sought
even to sacralize injustice, employing the Sabbath to keep
oppression in place. And once even the Sabbath becomes twisted to
serve human designs, then the cause of the poor is truly
precarious, because now the rich "put the rich on
notice." Now "charity" flows freely. Now Ted
Turner can claim the spotlight. And now the God of justice can be
quietly kept back in the shadows.
What's so wrong with charity? Nothing—except this: It has
the frightening capacity to dull our senses to God's call for
justice.
The early church fathers knew this well. St. Symeon represents
a much broader company in declaring, "Charity which flows
from your surpluses is merely the return of stolen goods."
Instead of celebrating Turner's huge gift to the United Nations,
maybe it's worth asking why he gets to run his fencing operation
in the public limelight with accolades all around—perhaps
all the better to distract us from asking why one man can have so
much to spare (and get praised for it!) in a country where
poverty (especially among children!) is on the rise.
So, why is it that Jesus sees it so difficult for the rich to
enter the kingdom? Surely not because God doesn't love the rich,
though perhaps it begins in that the rich may find it difficult
to love God. If indeed our hearts make their homes in our
treasures, the rich are ever in danger of having hearts tethered
to treasures that not only can't be taken with them—but may
instead keep them from going anywhere worth going in the first
place. But even this stops short.
The real reason for Jesus' ominous lament lies in the
character of the kingdom itself. When Jesus' phrase "the
kingdom of God" is cast into English we inevitably lose some
of the dynamic character of the Aramaic expression. Jesus isn't
talking about the place or the time where God is king, he is
describing the dynamic and omnipresent activity of God as king.
The kingdom that the rich find it so difficult to enter, to
participate in, is this: the activity of God making justice.
God doesn't give Pharaoh a billion dollars to ease the life of
the Israelites; God says "Let my people go!" (Exodus
5:1). God doesn't just thank the rich for their charity, but may
as likely counter, "It is you who have devoured the
vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you
mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the
poor?" (Isaiah 3:14-15). Indeed, when God in Jesus took the
decisive action of the kingdom, he "emptied himself, taking
the form of a servant....[A]nd he humbled himself and became
obedient unto death" (Philippians 2:7-8). No wonder the rich
would rather serve up notice on their own terms.
I don't think charity is bad, per se. And I certainly don't
suggest that the United Nations spurn Turner's gift. (Even the
Israelites accepted the silver and gold of the Egyptians as they
left the land; Exodus 12:35-36). But let's not make it out for
what it isn't: some heroic gesture of generosity. Charity is
cheap—compared to justice.
Until Mr. Turner and the others in his league dismantle the
economic empires that suck the wealth of the many upward into the
fortunes of the few, I refuse to be impressed. God put the rich
on notice long before Ted Turner did, and the challenge wasn't to
lead the way in charity. The terms are the same for all of us:
"to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God" (Micah 6:8).
When this article appeared, David R. Weiss was writing his
doctoral dissertation at the University of Notre Dame on faith
development, justification by faith, and Lutheran ethics.
|
Subscribe to Sojourners today at a special introductory price and save $10 off the basic rate! Click here for details.
WE WANT TO HEAR from you! Click here to share your views. Or write to "Letters," Sojourners, 3333 14th St. NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20010; fax (202) 328-8757. Please include your name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters may be edited for space and clarity.
|
|
