Poverty and Wealth: Personal Choices and Systemic Injustice by The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Posted on
September 25, 2016
Trinity Church, Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Proper 21
|
|
|
There are times when I simply want to ignore the numerous but inescapable biblical references to the rich and the poor, three of which are prominently on display this morning in our readings. Talking about rich and poor is uncomfortable for many of us whether we fall in our personal situations more to the rich side or to the poorer side of the ledger. We are tired of the inflated rhetoric and simplistic solutions to the issue. Some would argue that who we are, deep down within, in the core of our very being, should count far more than how much wealth we have or don’t have. Isn’t the state of our souls of far more importance than the state of our bank accounts, whether full or empty? Shouldn’t the prophet Amos and the repentant rich man in the gospel story really be more concerned about their future lives in either heaven or hell than about their relative wealth or poverty when they were still alive in this world? After all, we are often told, the condition of things in this earthly world pales in comparison to the things of heaven in the next world.
It is certainly true that wealth and poverty are of little moral importance in themselves. As the epistle of Timothy reminds us, it is not riches per se but the love of them that is the root of evil. And what we love is a reflection of our essential moral and spiritual character. That is the crucial psychological fact that makes talking about wealth so difficult because it easily reduces itself to an implicit judgment on the character or moral worth of the person who owns more or less than we do. But all this being said it is still true that Amos was not reluctant to condemn those who used their riches to feel at ease in Zion, or lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and fail to grieve for the ruin of joseph.
Amos is not condemning their having wealth per se. But he is questioning how they had acquired and used that wealth in order to flaunt the distance they have created between themselves and those they have impoverished along the way. They have engaged in economic practices that have sold the poor for a pair of sandals and have trampled their heads into the dust. Note also that the unnamed rich man in the gospel is not condemned for being wealthy. He is condemned because he used his wealth to dress in purple and fine linen and to feast sumptuously every day while at his gate there lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores. What was morally egregious about their relationship was that the rich man exploited his economic superiority and would allow the poor man to satisfy his hunger only with what fell from the rich man's table. And there was a conceivable alternative: a publically available store of food that could be drawn upon to feed anyone who was hungry because food is a good necessary for human well-being, whether one is rich or poor.
Food is a common good that according to the principle of justice ought to be accessible to any human being simply by virtue of their being human. It should not be a privately owned good available only to those who can afford it at prices determined solely by market forces. Remember, a good is called such because it is morally good and it is morally good because it is necessary for a good and healthy life and such a life is good because God values it and intends that we enjoy it.
Now what does this suggest? It suggests that our response to these disturbing passages on wealth and poverty must pay attention both to the personal moral dimension of our relationship to others who are less well off than we are, and to the social dimension of how the community to which we belong provides the goods that are necessary to those in greatest need. The personal and the political cannot be cleanly separated from each other. By the word “politics” I simply mean the free development by the people of a democratic society of laws and policies reflecting their basic common values. The practice of politics can be debased, as it often is, but it can also be a noble and genuine contribution to how we ought to live together in accord with the principles of justice. Politics can determine the fair and effective ways in which a society permits wealth to be gained and then distributed according to human need. It does little good to rail against wealth or the wealthy in the abstract or to rail against what some see as the laziness or idleness that leads to poverty and an unfair ‘taking’ of wealth when one has not earned it. Wealth and poverty are relative and are created and sustained both by the personal decisions we make and by the social, political, and economic structures that we create for regulating our social relationships, including those that relate to our access to the basic goods necessary for a good and healthy life in a good and just society. We can’t solve the problem of economic inequality merely by appealing to private personal life-style changes or to charity. But nor can we solve it simply by reforming the economic and political system in and through which we have the freedom and power to create wealth in the first place. We can solve it only by addressing both dimensions at the same time: the personal and the political. (Remember that what is acceptable economic behavior is determined, at least at the margins, by political decisions. You can’t legally choose to produce child pornography no matter how profitable it might be. You can’t pollute the environment without paying for it to some extent as determined by laws and regulations that were created in the political process because pollution harms everyone.)
If we look at the situation of Lazarus and the rich man, one can criticize the lack of personal compassion by the rich man but one can also ask, what kind of political and economic system leads the hungry man to have to depend upon the droppings from the rich man’s table? All the personal compassion in the world will not, by itself, ensure that all those who are hungry get enough to eat. All the personal charity we are capable of today cannot guarantee that all who are ill will have access to quality medical care and the ability to pay for it. Charity and philanthropy are given, thankfully, out of the generosity of good and moral people. But generosity and charity are not based on justice but on the uncertain disposition of the heart and they can always be withheld if our disposition changes. Food and health care are, however, basic common goods that ought to be provided as a matter of right or justice, not as a matter of our personal inclinations. We know enough about the evil in our hearts not to trust just our hearts to feed, clothe and care for the poor. As a free and autonomous philanthropist I can withdraw my generous gifts whenever I feel like it. As a citizen in a just society, however, I cannot simply choose not to pay my taxes because I don’t like the fact that they are providing food stamps or medical care to people I don’t even know.
If, as Timothy says in the epistle, the problem is not riches themselves but my undue attachment to or love of them, then he points us to a better solution to the problem of the conflict between riches and poverty. If we need wealth and riches in order to create the goods that are necessary for human well-being, then we need to free ourselves from the unhealthy and soul-destroying infatuation with the accumulation of personal wealth as a symbol of our success and status. Instead we should use our wealth-generating ingenuity and creativity, which a free market has given us the tools for, not to create vast pools of wealth to be spent primarily on ourselves, but to produce goods for our fellow citizens and fellow children of God. On the basis of our lives reconstructed and renewed by God’s grace, not by how much we own, we can use our freedom and our wealth to see to it that the goods on which we depend are distributed fairly and justly to those in need. This may require a sea change in how we view the benefits of the market and that sea change, grounded in the new and fuller life God has given us, can also help us change our core values. It will go to the heart of our personal spiritual character. But it will also help us to redirect our attention not to helping the hungry pick up the scraps of food dropped from the tables of the wealthy but to finding a way to reform the laws and policies of our society so that the hungry can receive their food, a fundamental good, as a matter of right and justice. We can and must create wealth but we must also by God’s grace use that wealth not for our own glory or ostentatious display but for the well-being of all our poorer brothers and sisters.