MtM 16 - On created goods

Why are 640 elephants marching into our country parks? It’s hard to imagine hundreds of elephants, but that’s the size of 3,200 tons of discarded food dumped in Hong Kong every day. That’s right: a culture of instant gratification and unrestrained entitlement breeds bad habits we are oblivious to in the face of global poverty. You don’t have to go far to meet the poor, those living along the margins of society, so destitute that in a literal sense, they have nothing. Poverty is hard to describe in words. It’s an absence, a nothingness difficult to appreciate, if not experienced in life. It’s an emptiness that has no way of filling its need. It’s a suffering that has no means of altering its fate. It’s a misery that has no hope of avoiding despair. Poverty is essentially an absence of possibilities. We diminish the needy in our affluent society, when we protest: “It’s not my fault!” and brush these issues off as somebody else’s problem.

The gap between Rich & Poor is wider now than ever; it amplifies Prophet Amos’ plaintive warning with embarrassing accuracy. Regrettably three millennia later, his social indictment rings as true today, as if posted online yesterday. Amos condemned his contemporaries for taking advantage of the poor; for preferring to buy luxuries than assist the helpless; for enjoying extravagant lifestyles in the face of widespread hardship. He sarcastically berated indulgent ladies as “Cows of Bashan” who oppressed the weak, tyrannized the needy and called to their husbands: “Bring wine, let us drink!” Amos’ exhortation was echoed through the centuries by the Fathers of the Church, who tirelessly urged everyone to generously distribute to the poor the abundance they were blessed with. How is anyone justified to keep for personal use what he doesn’t require, when other people lack what is stashed away? 

According to the nature of Created Goods, nothing is subject to our power, nothing can be called ours, that we don’t have eternal control over. Everything is subject to God’s sovereignty and man should be honored to be steward of creation, by power of his intelligence and freewill. Why not set a reasonable level of material comfort for our family and turn our attention to those in need? Were our talents bestowed on us so we might die rich or to empower us to assist those struggling in society? Along the lines of in-flight safety videos, when the cabin loses pressure, first take the oxygen mask to sustain yourself, then quickly pass it on to those in your care. Otherwise there will be no end to the devastation of greed, as exemplified by the insatiable kleptomaniacs who plunder two thirds of the planet. Instead, let’s stand for Equality and Justice in the distribution of created goods and together resist the cavalcade of secular materialism.

Third century St. Basil wrote: “Who is a man of greed? Someone who is unsatisfied with what is sufficient. Who is a cheater? Someone who takes away what belongs to others. Now, someone who takes a man who is clothed and makes him naked would be called a robber; but when someone fails to clothe the naked, while he is able to do this, is such a man deserving of any other appellation? The bread which you hold back - belongs to the hungry. The coat which you store in your locked wardrobe - belongs to the naked. The shoes locked in your closet - belong to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place - belongs to those in need. Therefor, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many more are those whom you wronged today!”