A few days ago I told you a little more about my school program and what our goals are. Then the same week a group of squatters showed up behind the house, highlighting a little bit one of the many conflicts produced by the system that my program is seeking alternatives to. I guess my question is why are we Chrsitians letting some secular government university do what we should be doing? My friend Tom asked about whether the Old Testament laws on jubilee and Sabbath years could be applied to today, especially the issue of land redistribution which is a very hot topic in many post-colonial countries where an almost fuedal system still exists or land holding and power. So that got me thinking about the Christian's role of doing justice on earth.
First of all, with the Jubilee and Sabbath laws, they were part of the Mosaic laws which were put in place to set the people of Israel apart from their neighbors (Most Christians have heard that it was put there to show us how sinful we are and how much we need God. I agree, but I thik we have lost this other meaning because we do not place the exodus and settlement of Israel in its historical context too often. In the Old Testament we see God speeking of his circumcision (the law of Moses) as a way of circumcising the hearts of the people, marking them as a new humanity, to be the example to the other nations of the Way. Many of those laws we see were in direct opposition to the ways of the world, breaking the cycles of oppression and injustice. One set of those laws were the Sabbath laws, which were put into place in order to save the Israelites from going back to the old economy of the empire they had come out of. Again and again we see God warning his people to follow his laws or become like the Egyptians. God brought them out of that imperial economy of death to create a new economy of life-- one that depended on God and their community for support so that no one got too rich or too poor. These laws included debt cancellation, land reform, liberation of slaves, prohibition of collecting interest on loans or creating debt, and protection for the immigrant, the widow, and the orphan, the weakest in the society. God's idea was that there be "no poor people among you." No I don't think God was a communist. It is clear to me from looking at the whole Bible narrative that God was setting up another way, an alternative to all human societies. He used the example of the Egyptian empire as a warning to the Jews of what they would look like if they did not follow his law. God set up a law that systematically and purposefully broke the human-invented system that created poverty and slavery and he chose Israel to live out that law as an example to the world. God's original plan was to redeem the world through the nation of Israel, setting up an alternative on the margins of the empire, a society ruled by Love Herself, calling people not to reform their empire but to come out of it and live a new life.
That is how we as the Church are called to live today. That is the spirit of the law that the Pharisees lost among all their rules and traditions and which Jesus came to proclaim with his words and life(and death and resurrection). We, like the people of Israel before Christ, are now God's chosen people and we too are called to live a life in the world, but not of it. And not for our own sake but for the sake of the Gospel and Christ's redemption of creation. We are the people of the exodus, the cultural refugees, living in exile, not offering the world a better version of empire, but another society completely. That is what gets people into trouble. That is also why we must do it in community, because no one can live the Way alone. We really are building an alternative culture, living the Kingdom values, in our hope and faith that Christ is victorious and he will return to fully establish his Kingdom. The only reason we seem so wierd to the world is because the world has strayed so far from God's plan for it. So maybe we should be searching ourselves if the world is not asking why we are so strange and different. So I didn't talk directly about land reform today, but I think if we are each living the Way we are called to live then each of us in our own circumstances will have the prophetic creativity and imagination to deal with the problems we face.
I'll finish with a quote from Jesus for President, a book by a guy who has been a large influence in my life and probably has influenced a lot of what I just talked about:
"For our Biblical ancestors, the law set them apart from the world they came from-- peculiar ways of living, eating, dressing. God also gave them laws for caring for the poor, the land, aliens, and immigrants. Much of the law was a warning: 'If you do no do this, you will end up like Egypt.' Today things are a little different. If it's not circumcision or eating kosher that sets us apart, what marks us? Wouldn't it be beautiful if people asked questions like, Why do they have homeless folks in their homes? Why don't they watch television? . . . What if we could say to our kids, 'You are different; you are a Christian.' . . . What marks us as different must be more than something external or superficial; it must be a peculiar way of living. . . . Preserving the distinctiveness of the kingdom of God has always been the most important and most difficult task for the church. . . . For our Biblical ancestors, the law set them apart from the world they came from-- peculiar ways of living, eating, dressing. God also gave them laws for caring for the poor, the land, aliens, and immigrants. Much of the law was a warning: 'If you do no do this, you will end up like Egypt.' Today things are a little different. If it's not circumcision or eating kosher that sets us apart, what marks us? Wouldn't it be beautiful if people asked questions like, Why do they have homeless folks in their homes? Why don't they watch television? . . . What if we could say to our kids, 'You are different; you are a Christian.' . . . What marks us as different must be more than something external or superficial; it must be a peculiar way of living. . . . Preserving the distinctiveness of the kingdom of God has always been the most important and most difficult task for the church."
So yeah, that OT stuff does have something to do with the modern problem of land redistribution. But going back to my question way back at the beginning of this post, where is the Church in this stuff? Why are we not more visible? Why don't we stand out? Why do I have to go to a secular university to learn this stuff? I am really glad I am here, and I actually enjoy studying in a secular environment because those are the people we deal with every day, or at least we should be. Don't want to go on to another topic just now though, so I'll leave it right here for now.
3 comments:
thanks, drew, for expanding on this. My heart says "amen" to your words about the church being a different community, but I wonder where to begin?
I think John Perkins would say with prayer. That you can't do anything without prayer. This counsel of his always impressed me because he is such a remarkable activist.
More to the point, though, how can you redistribute land without stealing from present owners? Questions of original ownership get really tricky.
Maybe the answer is more in things like requiring fairer wages to workers so they can save up enough to buy land?
This definitely looks different in a place like Bolivia, as you said.
I agree, it does have to start with prayer. I guess I forgot to mention that. Anyways, land redistribution does look differently than in the States. Stealing from the present owner is the only way to do it, because the patterns of ownership extend back until the colonial period and are themselves results of invasion and stealing, even enslaving the people living on the property to work for the "real" land owner. It wasn't until the land reforms (Bolivia 1953 and Peru 1970) that the andean people have been able to reclaim some of their rights to the land, while this year human rights groups have still reported instances of human slavery on many large estates in the jungle here in Bolivia. Similar land programs have taken place or are in place in many Latin American countries, where they take only land judged to be unused by the owners and unprodutive, not helping the local or national economy. This land they give to landless farmers. This still presents problems in Bolivia, especially in the lowlands where the money and power and big estates remain. The ranchers claim they need 50 hectares of land per head of cattle and there are other problems with corruption, but the idea I think is the appropriate one for the Bolivian context, and South American in general. The reason is that Bolivia as well as many other Latin American countrues remain largly rural and small agriculture is the main source of livelyhood for many.
The land thing becomes a bigger headache when we take it to an urban context like we live in. It probably would not work to remove all the poor renters in Chicago and give them each a hectare of Ted Turner's land in Montana or Colorado or Idaho. Is each person or family entitled to their own property in the urban context? If they are, maybe better wages would be a solution. Even up here on the outskirts of town an empty lot by our house (about 350-400 square meters) costs between $15-18,000. Ann and I were thinking of buying a place until we found that out. Although then as a land redistribution activist in urban U.S. one would probably have to work pretty hard to convince some people that they want their own piece of property, and if they got it they would have to learn to take care of it. Perhaps though, the reason many don't take care of the property they live on is because it is not theirs?
But back to the thing about stealing from the present owners, would not the Jubilee laws be a form of "stealing" from the present owners to give back to the original? Would that be so bad even in the U.S. context to take from a landlord that owns far more properties than he or she needs to live off of and give that piece of property to a person who has proved they need it and would use it and take care of it?
I don't think any kind of program like that would ever take place in the States due to their worship of private property and capitalism, or perhaps more because when you get into discussions about original ownership the real original owners, who are perhaps the most forgotten and marginalized group in our entire country, might rear up and we certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with them. We like them just where they are. I do think that if we are going to talk about land distribution in the U.S. the Native Americans have to be the first topic of discusion. I have other ideas on that.
So I guess the thing about jubilee in the OT that was really nice is that all the land had a clear original owner. Every tribe had its own allotment, so it made sense to redistribute every 7 or 50 years, it would keep people on a relatively equal footing.
It's messier in our world, because we don't have direct divine revelation that "this land is theirs."
I am intrigued by some of these land reform laws, though. I saw the same thing on the north coast of Honduras, where Dole basically owned every foot of arable land, and of course didn't use all of it. Actually, Soluri shows in Banana Cultures that the banana companies had to own larger and larger tracts because they couldn't figure out how to get rid of panama disease except by rotating.
What do they grow in Bolivia?
Post a Comment