From my essay:
“In God’s world, property has no value. It simply exists, but no one could tell you that a fish is worth less than a tree if there weren’t markets there to tell you what fish cost and what wood costs. There are no markets in Heaven. So, what is the benefit in religious terms of a gift of gold to a baby, for a religion that places no value on gold as a means of enrichment? Well, there is a benefit, but not to the recipient. To the giver.”
That article explores what on Earth it was that possessed the Three Wise Men to traipse across the Middle East to visit Jesus; and it is the benefit to them of their coming that I am convinced explains the story better than the value of the gifts, at least in money terms, which they bestowed on the baby Jesus.
Last weekend, I offered voluntary services to an amateur theatre show. They assigned me to look after the cloakroom. People handed in their coats and umbrellas and what-not, and these were hung on sturdy hooks, from which a token with a corresponding number was removed and handed to the coat’s owner. The reverse happened when they wanted to leave. And, interestingly, there was no charge. The theatre itself supplied laminated notices, one side of which said “Cloakroom—free of charge” and the other side of which said “Cloakroom—charge 50 cents.”
On the second day, I turned the card over. The attendees at this event were wonderful people, but had no holes in their coats. I asked them for 50 cents to hang up their coats and they paid. A friend in Africa had that week asked me for food, and I’d refused his request because I had no money. With the 50 cents from each coat, I would be able to feed him and his folks.
The organisers were outraged. I was dishonest, unworthy, a disgrace. And so I am. I had abused their trust and profited from their clientèle. It was injudicious of me, even though it seemed like a wheeze at the time. But it wasn’t fraud: they wanted to hang up their coats and I said, it’ll cost 50 cents, and they agreed. And everyone got their coats back. I could see no harm. But the organisers saw harm. They took the money off me.
The above article, Eyes of Needles, starts with a Bible quote about the perfumed oil that a woman used to soothe Jesus in Bethany. Some there complained they could have raised 300 pence for the poor by selling the oil. Jesus said “Ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good” and, in the article, I explore why this sounds a little abrupt, and go on to cite the well-known quote: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
So, a paradox. If, in God’s world, property has no value, then why does it have value when it comes to entering the kingdom of God? If the young man who asked Jesus how he could enter the kingdom of Heaven was told he needed to sell all his property and give the proceeds to the poor, how come Jesus Himself was gifted gold at His birth?
The episode at Bethany, with the spikenard oil, is evidence of the fact that it was common currency at that time, just as it is now, to look at property as representing money’s value. The oil could have been sold for 300 pence. Elsewhere, Jesus is challenged about whether it is right to pay taxes to Rome, and He takes a penny to say, “Give to Rome what is Rome’s and to God what is God’s.” When Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus, he is paid for his endeavour: 30 pieces of silver. Judas is a controversial figure, and much has been said about him that is inconclusive, from acting on instructions from Satan, to acting on instructions from Jesus, from thwarting Jesus’s mission, to fulfilling it. But, because the place of money in our material world is so established and entrenched and understood—or so we would have it—we label the wages of Judas’s sin as blood money, and that, pretty much, is that.
We do not, on the whole, pause to consider in how far our weekly wage is blood money. Or corporate profits. Or tax revenues (the funds for raising an army often come from taxes paid by a country’s citizens, so it is, is it not?, the citizens who by proxy shoot the people of other countries against which their own government wages war … If it works for felony murder, why doesn’t it work here?)
Nor do we dwell, when using the term blood money, on whether the blood is the responsibility of him who accepts the payment or, on the contrary, the responsibility of him who makes the payment, in order to procure the act of … betrayal, nonchalance, blind eyes, adherence to rules, disregard for injustice, doing as you’re told, whatever. The lack of proximity between the job of work that we do and any harm that might be occasioned by the activity to which we thereby contribute is so remote that we do not regard ourselves as earning blood money, whether through a weekly wage or an annual dividend, and it can be that it would be right for us to do so, and it can be that that would be nonsense. When so-called whistleblowers reveal details of nefarious goings-on in corporations and governments, one wonders whether the denials that are then forthcoming can even be serious, whether the retribution wreaked against the whistleblower is fair, or even whether the whole whistleblowing procedure isn’t there simply to out the heretics among us.
Why is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? In the past, I have entered the United States of America, and the officers at the gate of entry asked me about my financial resources. My American Express card, Mastercard, Visa card, and cash holding, travellers’ cheques, and so forth were enough to satisfy their enquiry and allow me entry. If I had had none of those assets, I’d have been returned to Europe on the next flight home.
There is a certain irony that, when arriving at the gates of heaven, the absence, rather than the possession, of such riches is what would be required to accord me entry there. Or, if the official were to indicate a needle and say, “Could you just crawl through the eye of this object, sir?”, I would need to become very small. Very, very small. Minuscule. Virtually invisible.
It is not money’s value as such that sits askew with God. It is not money that is somehow bad, and poverty that is somehow good. We see assets as conferring the ability to liquidate a precious possession—silver, gold, diamonds—in order to raise money that will buy … commodities that feed those who have no victuals. Because that is how our world is structured: the rare and the valuable, as against the plentiful and cheap.
But our world does not simply function as a marketplace of goods, in which two oranges will buy you one lemon, or three herring one salmon, where a silk garment can be had for the same price as five cotton ones. It also functions as a marketplace of power and influence. The power to control others, to impose upon them from a position of superiority; and superiority and inferiority, like value, be it the high value of spikenard, or the low value of the poor, simply do not exist in heaven. Heaven is a place of an equality that we are as good as incapable of achieving here on Earth, because we cannot conceive of value without a currency symbol in front of it.
We labour likewise under a similar misconception as to what power is. We equate it to the prerogative to exercise dominance, and many sceptics who doubt the existence of God time and again ask why God allows disasters, or why some people survive an air crash, and others don’t, what the innocent did to deserve a seemingly catastrophic fate, why so many had to die in Pakistan in the floods a year or so ago, and why the children of Robb Elementary needed to die in their schoolroom. If God is so powerful, why does he allow these things? Because God baulks at exercising his power of Creation to prevent a flood in Asia, the sceptic will conclude that the existence of such events is proof of the non-existence of God, rather than that the existence of such things as lie within man’s prerogative is proof of the fact that man does not love his fellow man as he would be loved. Sooner there’s no God than man wilfully disobeys God.
What the young man who was told to sell all his possessions could not appreciate was that it was not the possessions that would form a barrier to his entry into heaven; it was the influence and control that his possessions allowed him to exercise that would hold him back. He who lords it through wealth over others can only with difficulty join with the Lord. Only the very, very small can pass through the eye of a needle, after all.
More or less, that’s what it comes down to. God has zero interest in your worldly possessions. His interest, His love, extends to those who love as they would be loved, and to those who show remorse for the influence they have brought to bear over their fellow man, through money, possessions and manipulations like cloakroom tickets, as if they themselves were the Lord God Almighty. Remorse, not by relinquishing possessions, but by relinquishing the position and influence that possessions enable.
At Christmas time—the season of giving, as the card and fancy goods manufacturers all tell us—you shouldn’t give to others what they need. You can never know what they need. But you can know what you need. Most of us will give, even if we give to charity, and not just to colleagues or family and friends, a collection of presents that, when all added up, come to a sum that is bearable, whilst we’ll even likely complain that—as usual—it’s too much.
But, few of us will broach a limit we impose upon ourselves that is designed to protect the funds we need in order to maintain our own existence, whether that’s the rent money, next year’s holiday fund, the money for the gas and electricity, or whatever. That sum remains sacrosanct. Even Peter Singer would agree with that.
But then, there is the amount between what you actually give to others, and the amount you keep for all your necessities; and then there is the rationale you have for disbursing all three of these funds: the Christmas gifts, the necessities, and the amount in between.
Your rationale is that which you want to achieve with each of these disbursements. What Jesus perhaps isn’t recorded as saying to the young man who needed to sell his possessions was why he needed to sell them. In a way, the young man’s question was the wrong question. He asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”
Relinquishing one’s possessions is not what one does in order to inherit eternal life. That is what one does in order to love as one would be loved; and, if the relinquishment comes not as a result of loving, but with a targeted aim of inheriting eternal life, it won’t work. The eternal life will be inherited if you love; but not if you manipulate your investments to give the impression that loving is what you do, when in fact you don’t.
I have been cast out for what I did, and you, as well as those closer to the events, may judge me for what I did. But only He above will ever judge what my aims were, whether I showed remorse, and whether I’ve learned more from the experience than some think they have learned about me.
Image (public domain): portrait of Oliver Cromwell, by Samuel Cooper. When asked whether the artist should beautify the portrait, Cromwell replied that Cooper should paint him as he is, “warts and all.”