Overview
There are many components to the conversation about the economy of god but they all begin and end with this simple fact: the earth and all its abundance belong to compassion. We can be stewards, squatters, or thieves but we can not own it. Neither can we claim any part of it for ourselves except as we claim it for each and all the rest.
I realize that my conviction in this matter leaves me terribly at odds, not only with my culture, but with many of those within my culture who are themselves professed god-lovers. This being at odds is perhaps the main reason my work has been so hard for me to claim and take up. I have found it particularly heartbreaking and difficult that so very many of those who claim to love Jesus, to be his disciples, to have been saved by him, are so comfortable with the institutions of private ownership that they would actually say that these are divinely ordained. Also excruciating is that some will say that these institutions have something to do with freedom. Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a cornerstone of human rights work in the world and held up by organizations I love such as Amnesty International, says that the right to own property and to promote ownership of intellectual property is a fundamental human right. The freedom that human beings have, that Jesus and Buddha and all the great teachers have revealed, is so far from having anything to do with the private ownership of property that I want to rip my garments in grief whenever I hear such talk.
A large part of the problem is that we have inherited a long history of rationalized teaching in support of the institutions of ownership. We are in the same position today as early Americans who had to decide the issue of slavery. It was taught as divine ordination as well. I'm here to say that the oppression of people will continue unabated as long as there is private ownership of land. The people run with the land and there is nothing but heartache awaiting as long as we continue to think the land can be enclosed for private profit and pleasure while the people are evicted and left without a place to stand much less to live. Do you realize that it is not only possible but not the least unusual to be born on the planet today and for the rest of your life have no legal right to lay your head upon even a square inch of it anywhere?
