Wealth and Poverty

At a time of global financial crisis and multi-million pound pensions, not to mention the chronic disparities of wealth in our own society and across the world, we need to think seriously about what Christianity has to say on wealth and poverty.

There isn’t a single clear position. On the one hand, Christian social concern, through organisations such as Christian Aid, works toward the ending of poverty as a blight on people’s lives. When we put money in the red envelopes, we hope to make poor people wealthier. On the other, wealth is seen as a spiritual danger, a barrier between people and God. You cannot, as Jesus said, serve God and Mammon. ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ (Lk 18: 25, JB).

But Jesus also (rather obscurely) encouraged his followers to ‘use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity’ (Lk 16: 9, JB); which suggests at the very least that his disciples were to live in the world as it is, and, to some degree, on the world’s terms. Behind all the argument about wealth and poverty there lies a deeper argument, about whether Christians are to be ‘worldly’ or ‘unworldly’, and what those words should properly mean.

Recent Christian theology has spoken about God’s ‘bias to the poor’. This is not quite the same as a bias toward poverty; but in what follows I set out some arguments around the proposition that Christianity favours poverty, and that wealth is properly regarded as a spiritual danger.

In everything that follows, ‘poverty’ is taken to mean ‘chosen poverty’, not the poverty imposed on people by inadequate material resources or exploitation by others.

POVERTY

• Jesus was poor; it seems that he had no home, and no resources apart from what others gave him. ‘The Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.’ We are called to imitate Christ, in this as in all else.
• Wealth always involves someone else’s deprivation. It is not something that we can enjoy without consequences to others: my cheap shirt is someone else’s waged poverty. Practically all material wealth is based on injustice, and as Christians, we should take no part in that.
• Poverty requires discipline, and a disciplined life is spiritually beneficial. This is one reason why a vow of poverty is part of the vows of most religious orders.
• The world, because of its fallen nature, presents us with the temptations and distractions of material things. Wealth is a giving way to those temptations.
• Poverty is not just about material possessions. It is part of our realisation that we have nothing of ourselves, that we are wholly dependent upon God. Wealth leads us to feel that we can manage without him.

WEALTH

• Poverty and wealth are relative terms. One is poorer than…, wealthier than… It makes little sense to turn them into absolutes. When is one poor enough to satisfy God? When does one become wealthy enough to anger him? These rather absurd questions, of themselves, make it clear that poverty and wealth are not the main issue.
• The good things of the world are genuinely good; they are not the temptations of the devil. ‘Wealth’ means no more than having access to the good things that God has created.
• The cultivation of self-denial, whether materially or emotionally, may lead some to a clearer vision of God, but more often leads to narrowed and impoverished personalities who can do little to serve the spiritual needs of their fellows. Better Friar Tuck than a sadistic nun.
• Wealth can do great good for others, whereas poverty lacks the means (Margaret Thatcher’s reading of the Good Samaritan).
• It is inconsistent to choose poverty for oneself, but to see the enriching of others as a desirable social end.
• Societies, not individuals, determine relative wealth and poverty. We live within the economic possibilities of our society, with the resources that our society has. Even the poorest in Western societies are wealthy compared to the poor of the third world.
• A society of ascetics is almost unimaginable. Individuals might make the choice for poverty; but human societies are bound to live through their available material resources, and will naturally seek to maximise their material possibilities.

THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

How we think about these matters will depend on how we understand the nature of the world and the Christian’s relation to it.

If you suspect creation; if you are inclined to believe that the world is a bad place, and that we should detach ourselves from it to draw closer to God, then you will probably see poverty as a part of what is required of us.

If you see creation as sacramental, as capable of mediating God’s being through objects and events, you will be more ready to embrace material things as part of God’s good creation and as the means of drawing closer to him.

If, regardless of your view of the created world, you feel that human beings tend to avoid God by placing things between themselves and him, then you might feel that, good or bad, we have to clear the things of the world out of the way in order to see God truly.

If you believe that God relates to human beings in a punitive way, you will probably feel that poverty is a way of making yourself acceptable to him by anticipating the discipline that he will impose upon us.

If you believe that God’s attitude to us is generous and fulfilling, and that he desires all good things for us, then you will be less suspicious of the good things of the world. There are even Christian groups that believe that salvation is demonstrated by wealth, because wealth shows God’s favour and approval.

If you believe that fulfilling ourselves is not the point, and that the way to God is the way of the Cross, which involves a self-emptying akin to that of Jesus (Phil 2, 6-8), then chosen poverty will almost certainly be part of that way.

If you believe that being a Christian is primarily a call to an ‘unworldly’ state, you will tend to suspect wealth. If you place more emphasis on the Incarnation, on the realisation of God within the material world, you will be less suspicious of material things.

Assisted dying

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT?


In what follows, we are talking about a person in a situation where, medically, death is the only outcome; not through age or the normal passage of time, but because he or she has a condition that will, according to the best medical understanding, bring life to an end. In addition, the person concerned is suffering to a degree that makes life a burden,and a burden that he or she no longer wishes to bear.

We are not talking about any situation in which the decision to end the life of another is taken against that person's wishes. We are not talking about most cases of suicide, where the criteria outlined above do not all apply. We are not talking about chronic illness which, though it may be certain to end in death, nevertheless allows a satisfactory life. We are certainly not talking about decisions to end the life of another in circumstances other than those described, for personal or social or political reasons. Such a decision, however rationalised, would be regarded by most as criminal.

We should recognise that at the heart of this argument is the intention to the end the life of another. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, makes a clear distinction between suspending 'burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate' treatment because death is accepted as inevitable, and any act or omission with the intention of ending life. Only the former is morally permissible.

In summary: assisted dying can be understood as deliberate intervention to end the life of another person approaching inevitable death in a state of great suffering, who does not wish to continue living in that state and who wishes that intervention to take place.

ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR

Christians may argue in favour of such intervention on a number of grounds.

1. There is a duty to show compassion to another human being. This compassion, by which we seek to minimise or end the suffering of another, is part of love of our neighbour. To have the means to limit the suffering of another, and not to do so, could be judged a failure in love toward our neighbour.
2. God's first gift to his creation, and to us as a part of that creation, is freedom. With freedom comes responsibility. God has given to us the responsibility of judging the rightness or wrongness of our actions. To place one class of actions, helping others to die, outside that responsibility is to refuse the freedom and responsibility which God has given us and which defines us as human beings.
3. Bodily life is not, for Christians, the only or the ultimate good. The ultimate good is our life toward God, a life that we enter through participation in the eternal life of Jesus Christ. This life is not dependent on the physical life of the body, though it is through the life of the body, our life in this world, that we come to know both Christ and God. Nevertheless, the life of the body is not the ultimate consideration.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST

Christians can argue against assisted dying on a number of grounds.

1. Though Christians believe that their ultimate life lies beyond death with God, death is nevertheless the great enemy ('the last enemy', according to St Paul),and not something to be colluded with. We should resist secular arguments that naturalise death 'as part of life', and insist that death (traditionally seen as the consequence of sin) is the enemy of what is human and divine, the antithesis of God's gift of life.
2. God has given the commandment 'thou shalt not kill', which is not qualified (e.g., by 'except in battle', or 'except in cases of terminal illness'). From this it follows that the intention to kill, however well motivated, must always be wrong.
3. Life and death are not ours to decide, but God's. Sometimes this view is expressed by saying 'we should not play God.' People die when God decides they should die. It is his decision not ours.
4. A more nuanced argument might say that we do not determine the meaning of our lives for ourselves. Secular society deeply believes that we do exactly that; but for Christians, the shape and meaning of a life is what flows from our relationship with God. It is God who gives meaning to experience that to us is meaningless or unendurable. So it is not up to us to decide that our life has ceased to have meaning and should therefore be terminated.
5. There are also a number of practical or procedural problems, not specific to Christians, which need careful consideration. The situation proposed - a person facing death in circumstances of great suffering, who does not wish to continue living - sounds clear and easily identifiable. In practice, it may be less so. There may be some question about the medical outcome. There may be questions about the inevitability of the suffering. Above all, there may be questions about the validity of the person's decision to die: does their situation allow a decision in full clarity? Is that decision genuinely their own, or has it been influenced by the wishes of others?
6. There is the further problem of decisions taken in advance, 'living will' decisions in which a person, not facing immediate suffering and death, gives instructions for future intervention. How valid can such decisions be when they are, by definition, taken in quite different circumstances? Should there be any time limit on the applicability of such decisions? Any legislation allowing for assisted dying would need to take careful account of such problems.

THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

How we decide this issue will arise from assumptions which we may not recognise as theological but in fact are so, in that they shape our understanding of what Christianity is.

If your theology emphasises God's creation of humanity in freedom and responsibility, you may be more likely to favour arguments for assisted dying. You will be less impressed by accusations of 'playing God'; you may say that God has given us, as dignified, responsible beings, our own domain of choice and action, and that this includes decisions about our own death and the deaths of others.

If your theology has at its centre the love of one's neighbour, you may also be inclined to favour assisted dying on grounds of compassion. You may feel that the arguments against such intervention are remote and abstract in a situation of desperate immediacy where someone is in acute torment.

If you see this world as a fallen reality, hiding a truer and greater reality, you may be inclined to feel that the maintenance of life under any circumstances is not an absolute consideration.

If you see God as primarily a lawgiver, you are likely to feel that the argument stops with the sixth commandment.

If you see death as the antithesis of God's creation, the negation of his being which is always life, you will be suspicious of any argument which makes terms with death, which allows death free entry on whatever justification. You may suspect that death tempts us in many circumstances (war, abortion, suicide) with specious offers of convenience or release; whereas the only true freedom is the life of God.

If you believe that our lives have their meaning only in relation to God; that our decisions are held within a pattern that is God's loving purpose for us; then you will be less inclined to take the major decision about death out of God's hands, whether for yourself or for another.