"All Things in Common"

If there is an aspect to the Christian faith that "scares the pants" off most of us, it is the hint of "socialism" in Acts. The early Christians gathered together in community and shared all of their possessions. Each contributed as was able; each took what was needed. The story of the couple who sold their farm and tried to pretend that they had given all of the proceeds to the "pool" is a very scary story. It cost them their lives.

This notion that we are all in this together and need to share all of our resources together may be traced through the Old Testament prophets as well. The health and well being of a society is how it cares for all of its people. The anger of the prophets at the business leaders who grabbed the land of the small homeowner by fraud and foreclosure is the heart of Amos.

There is a fundamental reality that this is God's creation and we are all his children and so we must all care for each other and make sure we are enjoy and participate in the blessings of creation. Obviously there are going to be some who have more than others, but there has to be a constant concern that the gap between the rich and the poor does not become too wide.

G.K. Chesterton in June of l921 was writing about the industrial revolution and the economic energies of that time. "It was a race of competition, of commercial adventures, of scientific inventions, and one which was run not only boldly but blindly; by men who shut their eyes to all other realities -- to agriculture, to art, to religion, to the romance of living. But above all they shut their eyes to the one thing which demanded most attention in a democracy, or anything attempting to be a democracy. They shut their eyes to the distribution as distinct from the accumulation of wealth. They said that Birmingham was growing richer when they meant that one man in Birmingham was growing richer, and ten men were growing poorer. They would not see that their machine of capitalism was not creating capitalists but proletarians, was not making merchants but beggars."

It is this aspect of the Christian faith which now looks at the last ten to fifteen years in this country and sheds a tear that we have not focused on the one thing that we need to focus on if we are to be Christian people; "the distribution as distinct from accumulation of wealth." In the last decade the rich have gotten much richer, the middle class has shrunk, and the poor have gotten poorer. The rich have gotten richer by a machine of capitalism that has suddenly collapsed and put all of us in jeopardy. There is a reality that we are all in this together, and if we will not share the blessings then we will all share the pain.

The Christian faith does believe that there is a great fulfilment of the intentions of creation when we hold all things in common, that we understand that we are all entitled to benefit from the blessings of creation. One of our disciplines as people of faith is to watch that the distribution of wealth does not become evil.