THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS: November 30 2014
Away to the USA.
It’s been more than a week away from home. Spent 10 days, including travel, in the U.S. of A., the week of Thanksgiving and the (in)famous Black Friday. I had come with specific instructions to buy dressy black shoes and a new white shirt, both formal because a granddaughter is getting married.
I am one of those who grew up in wartime Holland from 1940-45, which was preceded by 10 years of depression, all of which I lived through and which shaped my outlook on economics. Economics, in my book, has as root the word ‘economy’ which to me conveys being frugal and by that I mean hanging on to my money. Of course I have black shoes already, but, really, no, they could not pass for formal. You see, I resoled them myself, using my staple gun and a bit of shoe goo to fasten new soles and little nails to give them new heels – with a bit of glue as well. The upper heels on both shoes were frayed, so I patched them up with black gorilla tape, as shiny as the shoes themselves with the result that when viewed from eye level they still looked quite respectable. But rather than risk the ire of the mother of the bride, I became a shopper, guided by our youngest daughter who knows her way around Minneapolis-St Paul. So I now have another white shirt, which I will wear perhaps twice, and new shoes which will see a bit more use. I can assure you that I am not like the former first lady of the Philippines who had 1200 pair of shoes. I am amply supplied in running ones: three pairs but can only boast of two pair of normal shoes, a decent pair of brown and these abused black shoes. So, yes, buying another pair was really no luxury.
I love meeting interesting people. In the Toronto airport I walked around and talked for a while with 6 young women from Somalia and Ethiopia. They had been on a trip back home and were on the way back to Minneapolis where some 30,000 of their kin live. All wore pure black, including hijabs. I can recognize people from Somalia, so I picked out those who had come from there and had a delightful time with them, laughing and joking and guessing the age of their small children, fast asleep after travelling from Addis Ababa and Mogadishu. I love African people. Of course they are Muslim. So what. Is Christianity so exclusive that it is the only religion that offers salvation? Is Hinduism also all wrong, and Buddhism? On Sunday morning we attended our daughter’s church, Episcopalian. The rector there was as glaring in white- as were the deacon and two others – as those Muslim women had been in black. I had an uncle in Holland who always wore black: because of his sins, he said. I never asked him what they were.
There’s something about a big city that simply cannot be duplicated in Tweed where the entire municipality has less than 4,000 people. Big cities can offer much. Sunday afternoon we went to a concert in a large new Lutheran church, a beautiful building, with a million dollar pipe organ. A performance by a full symphony orchestra, all volunteers, all professionals, who even pay to be part of this huge musical endeavor. Even though some 500,000 thousand – 15% of its 3 million population – are colored in the Greater Twin City area, the audience was all white, white beards, white hair, perfect middle class ASP, Anglo-Saxon-Protestant. I did not see one different face, either in the 70 performers or in the 700 person men and women there.
I was wondering what is going to happen in the future of music making now that the middle class is under immense pressure. The average wage in the USA is under $20.00 per hour: that is not enough money for the kids to go to music lessons and for their parents to pay for concerts.
Minneapolis St Paul is an immense city bisected by the Mississippi River. I am always amazed at the extent of its urban area. To go to that concert we had to travel 35 km one way, and to buy the shirt and shoes we had to drive 35 km the other way. The Twin City area is 16,000 square kilometers compared to Toronto of some 7,000 sq. km, with identical populations.
The price of fuel there is now $2.66 for a US gallon, or about 70 cents per liter, adding 12% exchange rate makes it about $0.78 Can. Compare this to the Ontario price of $1.10, which brings me to the topic I really want to write about: money.
Is money the meaning of life?
We live in a society obsessed with money. By and large people are not measured by what they do or say, but by the size of their net worth. Money is the most important rule in today’s society and the acquisition of it is seen as its highest goal. Curiously people often spend it before they have it, and mortgage their future at a rate never experienced before in modern history.
There’s a war going on, a money war. Japan is all out to weaken its currency to make it more competitive. The Canadian dollar too is dropping and so is the Euro, while the US dollar has become much more valuable.
In spite of all its drawbacks, money, as a tool to facilitate the commerce between human beings, was and is, nevertheless, an inspired invention, with tremendous potential for both good and evil. That is why, when first invented, it was administered by the priestly class. Today, more than ever, Money makes the world go round and goes around the world with a velocity equal to the speed of light and in torrents unequaled in history: the daily flood amounts to more than One Trillion Dollars. Because of Money the global economy is like a jet plane, fast, comfortable and when it crashes, its fall is also spectacular.
WWJD? What Would Jesus Do?
When Jesus came to earth, forever to retain the status of both God and Human, he could have been a human being of any description, stature, degree and condition; and yet he chose to be poor. The English poet Christopher Harvey said of him in the seventeenth century:
It was Thy Choice, whilst Thou on Earth didst stay, And hadst not whereupon Thy Head to lay.
No wonder that throughout the Middle Ages Jesus is appearing not just as God, but as a pauper. Curiously the fastest growing Protestant movement in Brazil, the so-called Crentes as the believers are known, preaches the theology of prosperity, which promises material success as well as eternal salvation, a puritan ideology imported from the United States. With such a complete reversal of what Jesus portrayed in his life, we do well to investigate the relationship between Jesus and money a bit closer.
I am convinced that Jesus had some basic misgivings about money – just like we do at times- because we all know that wealth and its acquisition makes people do crazy and often dishonest things. “The love of money is the root of all evils,” is Paul’s warning to Timothy and this probably was one reason why Jesus did not like money. If I understand Jesus correctly I think that with Jesus there also was a deeper reason, something very personal. I get the impression that Jesus went out of his way to avoid contact with money and was even loath to touch the stuff. Why do I make that assumption? Well, Jesus has pure recall of everything, past, present and future and so had perfect insight, hindsight and foresight into everything. His betrayal, his suffering and death was directly associated with money. How would we feel if we knew that money would eventually kill us, which may well be the case anyway? I think that this view governed Jesus’ attitude towards money and perhaps even towards economic theory.
Take the feeding of those thousands: Jesus knows that if these people had gone off to buy bread and fish in the neighbouring stores, the merchants, being good businessmen, would have suddenly increased the prices of these basic food items because of greater demand. The law of supply and demand is certainly not a latter-day invention: it has existed as long as people have traded. That’s what economics is all about: charge high when everybody needs it. So what did Jesus do to forestall this price-gouging? He simply by-passed the economic law of supply and demand and created bread and fish ex nihilo- out of nothing- well, almost out of nothing.
Then there is that so uncharacteristic incident where Jesus almost went berserk when he chased the money changers out of the temple, upsetting much more than the tables. After all having these business people do their work in the temple was an age-old tradition and necessary to keep the Jewish house of worship functioning properly because only certain kinds of money were accepted in the temple. And how else to get the proper animals for sacrifice? I think it was money and its abuses that made Jesus so angry. Another, more indirect, indication: I find it curious that Judas, the unredeemed among the saints, carried the purse and handled the finances: Judas, who loved money more than Jesus. In the end he ended up with thirty pieces of silver and then discovered that money as an idol wants our very lives. In that sense we are much closer to Judas than to Jesus. With ‘we’ I include all people in the over rich West.
Also to me a tip-off was Jesus’ great disdain for the nominal value of currency, evident when Mary spent perhaps a year’s income on that precious oil. “So what,” Jesus remarked, “so what if such a large sum was spent. It is only money.” Or consider the occasion when Peter was asked if Jesus would pay the temple tax. “Of course,” is Peter’s immediate reaction, “of course Jesus pays.”
But for Jesus this was not such a straightforward matter. Why this reluctance to pay the temple tax? Well, I have my theory about this. I think Jesus knew that perhaps this very money given to the temple was going to buy his life and ensure his death.
And then, in an ironic twist, with almost a touch of black humor, Jesus shrugs his shoulders and says: “OK, not important. Let me not major in minors. Go to the lake, catch a fish and there you’ll find a silver coin enough for the both of us.” I like that. Jesus is never skimpy. And, of course, with this gesture, he shows that all the fish in the sea and- by implication- the cattle upon a thousand hills, are his. Here we see Jesus’ royalty coming through. Queen Elizabeth never carries a wallet. Wherever she goes on an official visit, she goes free. Jesus is the same and much more so. Here he shows that he is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, but people do not recognize him that way. He also sees money as what it is: a fiction.
It’s all about money
Jesus once made a radical statement: “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” In our Western world everything is about money: the stock market, the strength of the dollar, the price of gold, three items mentioned in almost every newscast. Let’s not kid ourselves: Mammon is God, the Dollar is King in the world and its possession a holy grail. We now put a price tag on everything. First on Jesus – 30 pieces of silver – and now also on the rest of creation: the woods are paved, the mountains mined, the seas eaten, species eliminated: all because of money. Already half of all wild animals have disappeared in the last 40 years because of money. We all participate in that criminal act. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave: we are selling creation to serve us as a slave. We, as 6 percent of the world’s population cause 40 percent of the world’s pollution, in perfect accordance with the aims of Capitalism which defines itself as Creative Destruction. I am more and more inclined to think that Capitalism and its exponent, the global money economy, is the Anti-Christ. I know, that is a strong statement, but I think that’s why Jesus feared money because he foresaw how destructive it would be for him, for his creation and for us. He died so that we too could be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than we can ever live in a money society. If we want to share in that life then we must regain a new sense of value; we must reset our priorities to have our treasures expressed not in money but in love, in genuine compassion for all God’s creatures, humans, animals, trees, flowers, air, water. God so loved the cosmos…. (John 3:16).