Should you sell all your possessions?

Transcript

So, yeah, this topic is something I've kind of, I've been thinking about for a long time, kind of on and off, but never really taken, like, a deep dive into, because I always hear it kind of mentioned in passing, but not really, I don't know, not really divin' deep into, so that's what I'm going to try to do today. I realized it was a perfect opportunity to do a deep dive when I realized about two days ago that I have to give a Wednesday night class. All right. So Jesus saying to the rich young man is kind of the catalyst for the study, but I surprisingly found like a lot of like related info on it in the Bible and throughout the world, honestly. So we're going to go into a little bit of ethics and philosophy, a little bit of like and obviously digging into the scripture to like consider this question. And then after I finish all that, we are going to end with a little discussion so I can hear all of your thoughts on it.

Okay. So I'm going to start off with a little hypothetical about, it'll be a little bit confusing, but trust me, it'll be related in the end. I didn't come up with this hypothetical, it was actually originally proposed by a philosopher named Peter Singer in a book that he wrote. The book is called A Life You Can Save. I haven't finished reading it, but based on how much I've read so far, I highly recommend it if you're interested in making yourself uncomfortable. So I don't know what Singer's religious beliefs were or if he even heard Jesus's teachings or not to the rich young man and whatnot, but his argument hits strikingly close to Jesus's teachings, so I thought it was worth sharing. Yeah. Okay. So here it is. Imagine for a second, you are out walking like say on your way to work past a shallow bog, when suddenly you hear a cry for help. So you turn towards the bog and realize there's a small child drowning. So you could step into the water, reach your hand out and save them, but doing so would ruin your shoes and pants and you'd have to get new ones. Together these shoes and pants cost about $200, so you decide not to step in and let the child drown. After all, you didn't do anything to put the child into that situation, so you've done nothing wrong, right? I think any reasonable person would hear that and call you an evil monster or even go so far as to say you're as good as a murderer if you don't step in and save the child. But hold on, don't we all do this every single day? Imagine for a second now that a child is dying, not from drowning right in front of you, but from malaria or starvation on the other side of the world. If you see an ad for a charity that promises to save a child's life, if you would only just donate a little bit of money, and you choose not to donate so you can spend that money on something for yourself, are you any different from the person that walks past the drowning child pretending not to notice to save a few hundred bucks? These two situations feel different though, right? Most people think it's obvious you should save the drowning child, even going so far as to say you're probably as good as a murderer if you don't step in.

At the same time, most people also think that while giving to charity is a good thing to do, it's not something you morally have to do in the same way. It's thought of as more of a virtue, but not an obligation. You aren't thought of as a murderer if you don't donate to charity. Many will argue it's the distance that makes the difference here. Obviously, if something is happening right in front of you, you bear more responsibility than if it's happening halfway across the globe, right? Well, Singer's response to this is another hypothetical. So now imagine a child is being tortured by electrocution in the back of a car. The car is slowly driving away from you, but you have a remote that can stop the torture. Are you less obligated to press the button the further away the car gets from you? I think everybody would say, of course not, you should press the button to stop the electrocution. So the distance argument may have been relevant a few hundred years ago, but today we all have the hypothetical remotes to end a child's suffering. Thanks to the internet and globalization, we're not just aware of what's going on in our outside circles, but we have the power to stop it with the press of a button. So the distance problem is kind of irrelevant now.

So every time you or I choose to spend money on ourselves unnecessarily, are we walking past yet another drowning child pretending not to notice? After hearing this argument, I've been seriously reconsidering my life choices. Should I go so far as to sell all of my non-essential possessions and donate them to charity? Singer's argument here is pretty much entirely secular. It's based on people's collective moral intuitions and uses hypotheticals to challenge those intuitions.

Luckily for us, we have more than just our flawed intuitions to base our morality off of. So what does the Bible say on this topic? It's not 100% clear like most issues. There's no one single answer. But I think we can put together an argument based on what we find. So I'm going to read the Matthew 19 section again, verses 16 to 26, just to refresh our memories. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments. Which ones? He inquired. Jesus replied, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony. Honor your father and mother, love your neighbor as yourself. All these things have I kept, said the young man. What do I still lack? Jesus answered, if you want to be perfect, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me.

When the young man heard this, he went away sad because he had great wealth. The thing that sticks out to me is if you want to be perfect, go sell all your possessions and give to the poor. I've often heard it argued that this was a specific command given to this specific person and it's not meant to be applied universally. Which I think is a fair enough retort on its own, but let's take a look at some other verses. Matthew 7 verse 12 reads, so in everything do unto others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets. Are we truly doing unto others as we would have them do unto us if we hold on to anything we don't need while other people are dying? Similarly, Matthew 22, Jesus says, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment and the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. How can we love our neighbors if they are dying of starvation while we hold on to money that could save them? The most challenging passage I found that relates to this was Matthew 25. I'll start at verse 31 and go to the end of the chapter. When the son of man comes in his glory on all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All nations will be gathered before him and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates sheep from the goats. He'll put the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, come you who are blessed by my father, take your inheritance in the kingdom. For you prepared for you since the creation of this world, for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in and you clothes and you clothes me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.

Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when do we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or when do we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothes you? When do we see you sick in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did for me.

Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you who are accursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I needed clothes and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me. They will also answer, Lord, when do we see you hungry and thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you? And he will reply, truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. And they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. Since I have started talking, roughly 100 of the least of these will have died from cheaply and easily preventable causes. By the time we finish this class, roughly 400 more will have died from the same preventable causes. And I had the audacity to spend $200 on a new pair of running shoes last month. None of us can hope to be perfect. We all need forgiveness. But normally when we're talking about our sins that we need forgiving, we talk about things like pride, cheating, stealing or being unkind. But should we begin to talk about our sins of excess as well? I believe we might have to.

James 4 verse 17 says, So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. I'll be honest, doing this study has made me pretty uncomfortable. I don't want to think I'm a bad person for living comfortably and enjoying my hobbies. But if I'm knowingly choosing not to help someone in need by doing so, for me is that sin? I felt hesitant to bring this up because I'm probably one of the biggest hypocrites here if I do. And to throw another complication into it, all of this assumes that giving to charity is the most effective way to end poverty. As with most everything in life, it's probably not that simple. There have been billions of dollars poured into charities and

most have left places they've tried to help in no better shape than when they started. If you're interested in learning why, there's a really good documentary called Poverty, Inc. that I highly recommend watching before you give money to any charity or volunteer for any charity. Yeah, so it's complicated and we might be hurting more than we're helping sometimes when we give to charity. But that still doesn't excuse our excess. It just makes the solution more complicated. A lot of people, especially outside the faith, will point to the global political problems for an excuse not to act. It will throw out facts like there's enough food grown every year to feed 15 billion people, there are more homes in the world than homeless people, and enough money in the world for everyone to have probably $70,000 a year. And they're probably right. It's been estimated that just half of the U.S. military budget could end poverty. But of course, Christadelphians don't traditionally get involved in political matters. We look to ourselves and what we can do to help where we can and leave the chaos of mankind's power struggles to God. So what should we do? Children are still dying and we still have excess. One potential solution, I think, might be to look towards the model that the early church provided us.

In Acts 2, starting at verse 42 to the end of the chapter, we read, We live in a world where wealth inequality is increasing at a staggering pace and it's becoming harder and harder for people to support themselves, even in a country like America, let alone the rest of the world.

And at the same time, people are leaving the church at a staggering rate. When I put out that survey, one of the responses from someone who left was that they left because of the hypocrisy. What do you think would happen if we actually lived our faith? What if the Ecclesia today lived like the early church? If we sold all our possessions to meet the needs of everyone we could? If a church truly did all they could to meet the needs of the poor around them and lived in community together, we might not have the daily growth of the Holy Spirit -filled church. We would certainly probably not be seeing such a sharp decline. I don't know what the solution is, and I don't know if I'm right about this or not. We are probably all going to finish this class and go back to our normal lives. Maybe a few of us will feel stirred up enough to donate a little bit of money to charity to rest our consciences and then move on.

I can't tell you, I can tell you right now, every part of me wants to hear this and go away sorrowful, like the rich young man. But I don't know what to do.

So that's what I pulled out from my study, and I guess I'll turn it over to everyone for discussion.