What is the product of work? Is it a human property?
When I hear someone shout that word, “Occupy!” I think about the recent shouts over Wall Street and the shouts of the 1960’s and 1970’s over some administration building on a university campus.
The similarity of inspiration in both shouts as advocacy for justice is apparent. In the former case it was to end a
war sired by a distorted political worldview, and the latter to overturn an
oppressive economic order sired by centuries of capitalism and globalization
that draws its fuel from science and technology.
But, I can also see an insidious temptation in that shout to
embrace of the very thing the shouts opposes, the idea that the product of work is human property.
In the former case, motivation was as much to avoid being
drafted and sent to Vietnam with the risk of death as it was to obtain justice for
a country habitually ruled by Western influence. In the latter case, the
motivation comes as much from the self-interest to get as much of that pie that
the rich have as it does for the desire to “feed my sheep.”
One may argue, “What does it matter if we achieve a good purpose, namely, ending an unjust war, or redistributing selfishly acquired wealth to those in need?”
Perhaps it does matter. I wonder if it really
boils down to rejecting or embracing that basic premise about work. To
make an absolute claim on property as an exercise of individual freedom has to
give way to the reality that everything we have is on loan from God.
Our private claim to the product of work is as heretical as
the idea of the self-made person. We do
not own the product of our work; therefore, when we propose to take it (occupy it) regardless
of who holds it at present we are
seeking to take from God something that is rightfully God's. When we do this we
seem to have found the heart of sin.
When we see the product of our work as a blessing from God
and strive to share the creation of our own work with the remainder of his
creation, then we have found the heart of grace.
The only person we can change is our self. Once we have done that, perhaps our deportment will encourage others to do the same.
Happy New Year!
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