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Pilgrim

Social justice and social responsibility



 

Last time I talked about the sin of covetousness, which I argued is a mixture of sloth and envy with perhaps some pride thrown in. “I want what that person has, but I don’t want to work for it, or even to acknowledge that that person might deserve what they have. But there is another kind of covetousness usually called avarice, and that is not the same thing at all.

 

The man or woman who is a prey to avarice has wealth, great or small. Often, they have earned their wealth — and may be only too ready to point this out, but they are unwilling to share it. The wealth may be material, or it may not. The miser hoards his money, the power-hungry refuse to delegate, the arrogant take all the credit for themselves and refuse to share with others.

 

I believe avarice is a form of pride. It is natural to feel pride in a job well done. Even God himself, at the end of a day’s work, looked on what he had made, nodded and said, “It is good.” It is natural and only fair to enjoy the benefits of our labour. Last time I said that almost all the best things in our world were created not by people who wanted to do good for others, but by people who wanted to make money. Why shouldn’t people like that be rewarded for their work? Of course they should, after all, human nature being what it is, who would work if they couldn’t enjoy the benefit of their labour?

 

Deuteronomy 25 4 states “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads the grain.” Partly, this is meant literally. The ox would certainly become hungry while working and if it were muzzled, the sight and smell of grain it couldn’t eat would drive it mad. The small amount of grain eaten by the ox would certainly not justify the cruelty of muzzling it. This verse has also been widely interpreted as not preventing humans from benefiting from their labour. Paul quotes this verse in his first letter to Timothy, Chapter 5 verses 17-18.

 

Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, the labourer is worthy of his reward.

 

In this case, the reward is not necessarily monetary but in honour, but the same principle applies.

 

It is not wrong to work for pay, or to hope for a just reward, or to take credit for what you have done — provided it is earned.

 

But here too, sin crouches at your door.

 

In his excellent The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis has the senior devil, Screwtape advise the younger Wormwood to encourage his patient to think of his time as his own. The ‘patient’ should awake in the morning, promising himself a day, hour or even weekend spent in happy pastimes of his own choosing. He should not be allowed to realise that the time he thinks of as his own belongs to God, and God, not he, will decide how it is to be spent.

 

The same principle applies to material goods. Jesus explains this in one of his most succinct parables.

 

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

                  Luke 12:16-21 NIV

 

When God made the world and pronounced it good, he had no intention of keeping it for Himself. He made the world for us to use, but the world and everything in it still belongs, to Him. There was nothing wrong with the rich man planting the crop and bringing in a bumper harvest. His sin was that he saw the grain as his own, to store up and live on for many years to come. He also committed the sin mentioned by Screwtape of assuming that he had many years ahead of him when his life would be demanded that very night. This is not to say that the rich man should have given his grain away; he should have sold it at a reasonable price to hungry people and used the money to grow more grain.

 

Clearly, avarice is another reason why it is so difficult for a rich man or woman to enter the kingdom of heaven. Like many sins, avarice is often its own punishment, in its terminal stage, avarice prevents the miser even from sharing his wealth with himself. He stores up his treasure and lives a miserable life until, eventually, he dies and someone else gets everything. As Screwtape also says, one of the Devil’s favourite things is when men reach the point where they continue to sin even though the sin gives them no pleasure.

 

As Christ says:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

                  Matthew 6:19-21 NIV

 

Christ also preaches against the sin of avarice when the rich young man comes to him asking “What shall I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven?” Christ tells him, “Go, sell everything you have, give it to the poor, then come and follow me.” This story is so important that it is related in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew 19:16-26, Mark 10: 17-27, Luke 18:18-27. There is no doubt that the young man was basically good, but for him his wealth had become an impediment to his faith.

In the old days, rich and poor alike went to church on Sundays. The rich man sat in the pews and heard sermons, parables and readings from the gospels. He would have been told how John the Baptist said, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11). He would have heard how Christ would say either “I was hungry, and you fed me,” or “I was hungry, and you gave me no food.” He was reminded that his life too might be demanded that night, and he didn’t want to be like the foolish rich man.

 

So, many rich men did charitable works, building hospitals, schools and orphanages, endowing scholarships, creating charitable foundations. Others simply gave to charity, but here was a problem. In previous times, the church made a very lucrative business of selling indulgences. Rich men, and they generally were men, salved their consciences by paying money to the church, who would then offer prayers for the remission of the sins of their rich clients. This was nothing short of blasphemy; God cannot be bribed. A repentant sinner should receive absolution free of charge or not at all.

 

Christ tells us:

 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

                  Matthew 6: 1-4

 

This public giving was not giving at all, it was a transaction: exchanging money for honour. Of course your Father in heaven will not reward you for it.

 

Today, fewer people, rich and poor go to church, so we have invented the secular equivalent: social justice.

 

There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. As I said in an earlier piece; without love, all the charity in the world is not only meaningless but harmful. Take God away from a charitable organisation or activity and the result, will be disaster for all concerned. Rich people who engage in this kind of philanthropy are simply engaging in the modern form of buying indulgences or, to use the modern parlance “virtue signalling” (though I think virtue simulation would be a better description). They are no different from the people who gave alms in the synagogues to the sound of trumpets.

 

Even worse are those who push ‘Social Justice’ seeking to take money from the rich and give to the poor. It sounds good, but stealing is still stealing whether you keep the loot or give it away. This so called ‘Justice’ is based on the teachings not of Christ but of Marx. It is the sin of Cain again; I can’t be rich, so I’ll drag that rich person down — but it’s all right because poor people will benefit. Some businesses practice so called Environmental and Social Governance (ESG). A business that follows ESG becomes less profitable, and an unprofitable business is no use to anyone. The directors of such companies are guilty of embezzlement; they are using funds entrusted to them by the company to salve their own consciences. You may think this is a victimless crime, but that money is owned by the shareholders, many of whom may be retired or planning to retire and need those funds.

 

To cap everything, few social justice activists have any true love for those they claim to help, and we have already seen where charity devoid of love ends.

 

How might a rich man truly help the poor? By putting God first, by praying, and by thinking carefully about where his money will do the most good. Usually, what poor people need is not alms but jobs or opportunities. The businessman should create opportunities for poor people to lift themselves out of poverty and dependence. He should focus not on an amorphous, faceless mass known as The Poor, but on real flesh and blood people. He can provide things that they cannot provide for themselves, like schools and hospitals. He can fund medical research or provide cheap and effective cures for diseases like malaria. He can provide the less glamourous solutions to serious problems. No one wants a sewage treatment plant named after them, but it may be more desperately needed than another youth centre or art gallery. What better way to do good in secret?

 

I’m not saying that art galleries and youth centres aren’t important, they most certainly are, but first make sure clean water comes out of the taps, the light comes on when you flick the switch and the brown stuff goes away

 

Above all, the rich man should monitor the effects of his charitable work to ensure that his money is well spent and not doing more harm than good. In short, he should work humbly, knowing that being expert in one field does not make him expert in all, while using all the talent and business acumen that made him rich to help those less fortunate than he is.

 

Those talents too, were entrusted to him by God — but that is for another time.

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