Why Christianity Is Not About Redistributing Luxuries

Luxuries are harmful to the Soul

Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  The English word “rich” is an analogue for a Greek word that can be defined as “material abundance” — that is to say that material luxuries are included here.  Material luxuries may even be the primary definition, since someone who puts their wealth towards a righteous cause can probably avoid being counted among the “rich” if they live frugally.  The point here is to establish that luxuries are harmful to the soul, potentially even more harmful than money.

Don’t Covet Your Neighbor’s X

The 10th Commandment says not to covet anything that belongs to your neighbor.  This means that even if your neighbor has some kind of luxury, you are not supposed to want it, much less try and take it from him.

What does it mean to love thy neighbor?

“Love” doesn’t have an agreed upon definition.  If riches and/or luxuries are harmful to the soul, giving luxuries to another would harm their soul.  This means that sharing your luxuries with them is not loving towards them according to the Christian definition of the word.  You might also be encouraging them to covet your luxury, which would be encouraging them to break the 10th commandment.

How Can You Share Luxuries?

Let’s assume that, despite the first three points, you still wants to hold a position that the eleventh commandment (“Love each other” or “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”) requires the sharing of luxuries.  This means that you’ve somehow decided that luxuries are not harmful to the soul and that the Christian definition of love is compatible with material luxuries.  A dilemma remains in that some luxuries cannot be split.

For example, someone could buy themselves a new television.  If you have two neighbors, how do you handle such a luxury? You can’t break your new screen into thirds, no one can use one third of a television.  One could decide that instead of buying a nice television, if they have two neighbors, they could buy three cheap television sets instead.  Then they share the televisions with their neighbors and are in compliance.  Although, what if your neighbors already have a television? What if you have ten neighbors? Do you buy eleven televisions?

Or does it mean that you can only buy yourself a television that is equal to the ones they already own? That might seem like a way to make it work, but what if they all have different models and sizes of televisions that each have different values? Do you average them all? Figure out who has the cheapest television? Is that worth it? Will they hate having you in there examining their television sets?

We could go on about this for quite awhile but it would be unnecessary.  The conclusion Jesus wanted us to come to here is obvious if one does what they’re supposed to do: give up.  The impossibility of solving this dilemma is meant to make the Christian give up on obtaining luxuries entirely because it’s not a dilemma that can be solved.  This very difficult question makes perfect sense if one accepts that luxuries and riches are considered harmful to the soul, aren’t loving and should not be possessed in the first place.

If we want to choose another example, let’s pretend that the luxury is a fine vase.  If one has four neighbors then the vase needs to be divided into five pieces, one for each household.  Doing this requires smashing the vase, thereby destroying it — exactly as God intended.

The Political Angle

People will have their politics, there is no helping that.  They should, however, leave Christianity out of it.  Christianity has no position on the redistribution of luxuries because a good Christian is not supposed to have personal luxuries to begin with.  If a Christian does have them, he is encouraged to agonize over them until he eventually smashes them into pieces.

In the United States right now, we have Democrats saying “Jesus wants you to buy people Obamaphones” and Republicans saying “Jesus wants you to buy yourself an iPhone” but the truth is that Jesus doesn’t want either of those things.  The real Jesus is not very popular these days.

Approved Luxuries

It should be added (and I intend to source this eventually) that certain kinds of communal luxuries are clearly approved of in the Bible.  These are luxuries which, by their nature, can be shared with others.  Decorations in a community church or other community places are mentioned consistently in the Bible.  Musical instruments are also mentioned and they are a kind of luxury that can be shared with others (when you play the instrument for them) and which are of no use to someone who lacks the appropriate skills anyway.

Common sense should dictate that extremely expensive instruments should be avoided if that expense bears no additional function.  You also can’t make use of half of a guitar (unless you’re a luthier?) so even if your neighbor is a guitar player who lacks a guitar, you don’t have to smash your guitar for him.  It would make sense though to collaborate with your guitar-less guitar playing neighbor and see if the two of you can obtain instruments together.

Traditionalism and the Labor of Argument

Julius Evola had a concept he called “history’s demolition squad.”  A way I would attempt to truncate this is to note that people will attack tradition just because it’s tradition.  They don’t need to feel they’ve won an argument rhetorically in order to continue attacking it.  Let’s consider two popular anti-Christian memes as examples.

First is the claim that the bible says “Thou shall not kill” which is used to attack any Christian who is to the right of anything.  The actual meaning from the ten commandments is more closely translated as “Thou shall not murder” and murder of course has completely different implications than not killing.

A second and related meme is that “Turn the other cheek” means pacifism.  The only major sect of Christian sect I’m aware of that practices pacifism is the Seventh Day Adventists and even they are pacifist in the anti-war context, or as conscienscious objectors, they aren’t necessarily pacifist in the individual context.  This is because most Christian interpretations of “Turn the other cheek” aren’t pacifist.  Turning the other cheek is actually a very complex method for dealing with bullies.  You can read St. Augustine’s theory on this (or Catholic or Orthodox theory) to get an understanding of it.  It’s really a pretty ingenious method and if you understand it, you quickly come to realize why western culture is the way it is regarding how everyone covets victim status so that they can accuse each other of bullying.  The primacy of the victim is a uniquely western concept because it’s a Christian concept.

Misconceptions like the above are wrong but that hasn’t stopped them from being harmful as arguments.  This is because even when the proponent of an argument is wrong, the argument can still harm the other party if it’s laborious and hostile enough.  Again, it’s not necessary that an argument be correct; it’s only necessary that the argument wastes people’s time and intimidates them.  Speech can be used as a weapon or a club, turned into speech-objects meant to subsume other speech instead of promoting rationalism.

Economically and socially, people who regard their traditions as existing in a realm beyond reproach tend to do measurably better in life.  This persistence can be attacked as insular but we live in an age where someone needs to be insular in order to live a real life.  We have this thing called the internet and an industrialized grievance industry instead of letting people handle their own issues, as such there is no end to the people who have chosen to remain unsatisfied. When United Airlines refused to refund me half my ticket value after I used half the flight, even though I paid for flexible fair, I chose to never fly United again, I didn’t sue them or accuse them of racism! That’s because I have a life.

As I mentioned earlier, the bible does not say “Thou shall not kill” and “Turn the other cheek” means pacifism only under a minority viewpoint.  These facts have done nothing to prevent the deconstruction of western traditions because the deconstruction requires only that enough noise and distraction is made.  Saying “thou shall not kill” instead of “thou shall not murder” enables someone to kick up dust, make noise, claim to be aggrieved, call the other person a hypocrite and generally try to intimidate them.  They want you to give up and that doesn’t require rational or logical certainty from their opposing viewpoint, if anything, being rational would hinder them.  What they want is the labor of argument, I think we can fairly call this the labour of argument when people are arguing only to be laborious.  There should be no duty to engage with people like that.

We live in an age where destructive lust does not need to be justified but things like faith do need to be justified.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful, we laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitours in our midst.  A person should understand their own traditions because their traditions empower them, honoring their ancestors and themselves.  Being able to deflect attack is only a secondary benefit of understanding your own traditions because the defense is an activity that never ends.  Even if someone is called upon to defend their faith rhetorically, as with Christianity, they should do it within limits and recognize that some people only want to generate labor and create a hostile environment.  Truly defending faith means standing up to hostility and telling the other person what you believe, it doesn’t mean laboring to reason with someone who’s chosen to remain unreasonable.