Take Your Hands Off My Stuff

Once when we had a Middle Eastern student living with us, he took off on Janine’s bicycle. This was a bit disconcerting given that he did not ask permission. Whisk! There goes Yahya on Janine’s bike. Where is he going? How long will he be gone? Perhaps he is running away. Maybe he intends to sell it.

Hours later Yahya returned, delighted to have enjoyed a glorious bike ride, and mentioning nothing of it as he passed into his room.

Gratefully, Janine and I held our tongues. We figured this was some kind of cross-cultural mystery. And it was. In many parts of the world possessions are viewed communally. Yahya had lived with us for quite a while. Our things were his things and his things our things. All things in a household are seen through a collective lens in many parts of the world.

We could benefit from dialing back our hyper-individualistic sense of ownership to things. It’s an attachment disorder – a quest for security in our stuff when our security should be located in the Divine Caregiver, and in people placed in our lives to nurture us. Maybe that’s why there’s that command about “do not covet.” Desiring private ownership over things sends us to an unhealthy place.

“‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.’” Leviticus 25:23. I find this passage in the Hebrew scriptures interesting. It is part of a larger section of scripture describing the Jubilee, a re-distribution plan where capital, in the form of land, returned to the original owners on a 50-year cycle. If my grandfather acquired your grandfather’s land – whether by skill or by stealth – I’d have to give it back so we could start over. Nobody in this system was to become a real estate tycoon or become totally dispossessed. This might mitigate our tendency to place our security in how much we own. We become temporary stewards rather than individualistic owners.

There is some benefit to private ownership, especially where toothbrushes are concerned. I just think with our money and possessions we’d do well to think communally, beyond just a married couple. Whether that community is a household, an extended family or a close circle of friends, it’s good for us and good for those around us to view money and possessions as those things we manage on behalf of a radically generous benefactor.