A response to Andrew Kania's commentary...

I was struck by Andrew's piece on "affluenza" — the endless pursuit of possessions, driven by the conviction that possessing things is the key to a better life.

The Freedom of the Consumer

In the west, all our lives this message is driven home. Wealth gives me choices. I can choose where to live, what to drive, what school to send my child to, what hospital to go to when I am sick, and so forth. I am free to live the kind of life I choose to live. Wealth brings freedom.

To an extent, this is true. Having money does open up a range of choices. But what is troubling is the equation of "having choices" with "being free". Equally troubling is the unspoken corollary, that if we do not have money, if we do not have choices, we are unfree; we are slaves.

The Freedom of the Christian

For a Christian, there must be more to freedom than being able to make lifestyle choices. Freedom means the freedom to live as we are called to live; to become who we are called to be.

Christ began his public mission, Luke tells us, by identifying himself as the one sent to proclaim freedom to prisoners. He was not talking simply of releasing those in prison; he intended a wider meaning. But, still, it's a safe bet that he wasn't promising us freedom through having private health insurance and a two-car garage.

I don't deny that Christ did preach freedom from material want. In the Kingdom of God, the sick and the lame are cured, and the hungry are filled with good things. These are not just metaphors for freedom from sin; the signs worked by Christ include actual healing of the sick, and actual feeding of the multitudes. Ever since, the Christian tradition has strongly affirmed the freedom from material hardship and from material want are an intrinsic part of the Kingdom, and much Christian endeavour has been devoted to making this a reality. And, of course, this necessarily involves the creation and exploitation of wealth.

But that is not the whole of the Kingdom. Poverty and economic injustice are the specific consequences of sin, but Christ offers not just freedom from specific consequences of sin; he offers freedom from sin itself. And we can never achieve that by amassing wealth, no matter how wisely and virtuously we use what we have amassed.

Wealth and Slavery

Far from freeing me, if money is what I want more than anything, it becomes my idol, and eventually it consumes me. It dictates how I must live my life. It enslaves me

We can easily see this. We all know that, say, to build your business into a giant and wealthy concern takes more than a passing fancy. It takes whole-hearted dedication, sustained over years. How much freedom does that give you to live the life you want to live?

Another potentially imprisoning feature of wealth — and one more relevant to those who have managed to build up, or inherit, a degree of riches — is fear. The more you have, the more you have to lose, and the more other people will be happy to take it from you

Even the biggest companies in the world live in perpetual low-grade anxiety. You always have to beat last year's numbers, fight off the latest competitor, top your previous achievements, or in the heartlessly efficient market you risk losing it all.

Exactly the same goes for entire societies that perceive themselves to be wealthy and powerful; they fear the anger and the envy of other nations. And that fear, that insecurity, limits the choices they can make - as we can see all too clearly in current events.

The Illusion of Freedom

The bottom line is that the freedom apparently conferred by possessing great wealth is illusory. Wealth may be good and desirable from other points of view, but it does not give the freedom to live your life as you wish that it appears to promise. Nor does it give you a greater freedom to behave morally, to live fittingly, than poverty does. Wealth does not free you from sin. If anything, the fear and insecurity which comes, not from wealth and power itself, but from the conviction that possessing wealth and power is essential, and is the key to the life you are called to live, will drive you further into sin rather than free you from it.

The Gospel, then, is not just a prescription for social justice, but a declaration of reality. It is a denial of the illusions that lead to murder, to greed, to exploitation, to injustice, to neglect of relationships and family, and to other sins.

A leftist critique of western materialism and economic inequality goes like this: "You have all the good things, and what's wrong with you is that you misuse them and you don't share." But I think a Christian critique is "You don't even see what the good things are."

I think the danger in envying wealth is that, even in criticism, it colludes in the illusions of the wealthy that they have the best in life. The Gospel says otherwise. They think they have power and freedom, in reality they are slaves.

Now, I'm not about to deny that the Gospel demands sharing of material things. But it also emphasizes the Kingdom as a pearl of great price, and a treasure greater than any earthly treasure. I think that aspect turns the attitude toward the wealthy and powerful from one of envy to one of warning. The wealth and power to which they devote themselves are ephemeral. They are trapped by illusory things that are not from God, and when those illusions are destroyed they will be destroyed along with them. They lash themselves to the mast of a sinking ship. The beatitudes are not a prescription for how society ought to be; they are a description of how things already are.

And by the way, though I say "they" here, this goes for me too. No one in the world is either 100% powerful or 100% powerless, but most of us in western societies are pretty wealthy, and pretty powerful. If wealth and power do enslave, then we are at greater risk of slavery than most.

Photo Credits:
The main title image comes from Haute Living magazine which describes itself as “Haute Living is the only magazine ... targeted specifically to those who demand – and have the means to afford – the most luxurious choices in real estate and design. In a sleek, oversized format, Haute Living features top-notch exclusive editorial content along with gorgeous full-bleed images and lavish print quality.”
The luxury women's sandals come from www.kinkyangel.co.uk. The bloke's sandals come from we know not wear?

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©2006 Peregrinus

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