If you continue hostile to me, I will be hostile to you. Homes in walled cities are owned in perpetuity, but homes in villages must be released after 49 years. The sacrifice price of a male is 60 shekels of silver, a woman, 30. I must remember that this is all in context. And try to find what was being said by God’s people back in those times. And Leviticus is rich with things to wrestle with, like these.
I do like the idea of the jubilee year, where slaves are released, loans are forgiven, private ownership wiped out (except in walled cities). It feels like the opportunity to reset, a mulligan of sorts. Not only an opportunity to reset, but also an acknowledgement that it all belongs to God, and although 49 years of circumstances can create great disparities, they are disparities we create and we perceive, not God. I’m not sure how a jubilee year would work in the 21st century, but there’s something to this notion, I think. Whether it’s developing country debt, or excessive private property ownership, or modern day slavery, we should figure out how to pause and start over.
I had a colleague who argued that private property ownership plus the uglier side of capitalism were two forces that were creating and exacerbating the problem of people not having homes. I have never met a homeless person who was not suffering from either mental illness or a substance dependence, both of which society has deemed as illness, something that needs to be helped and cured. Granted, some of the substance abuse started as bad choices, but at some point, those choices are moot, and the person is left with no choice but to feed an ugly insidious habit. If rehab is funded by insurance for the haves, society has determined it’s worth treating. It’s unconscionable to blame the person for an addiction of the have-nots, and treat the addiction of the haves, as if one is to blame and the other is not.
While I didn’t always agree with my colleague, the notion that God’s earth has been partitioned off, lines drawn, and deeds written that doesn’t provide a place for God’s people doesn’t make sense. That, in itself, is like a cosmic, evil game of musical chairs, where there never were enough chairs, and the slow kids never had a chance.
Throw in capitalism, and it’s a rotten system. If property is a tool to make money, those chairless kids don’t have a chance. There’s no money to be made building more chairs. There’s no money to be made building housing on someone else’s possible revenue generating land, for people dealing with illness. They certainly can’t pay. So the market system continues to draw lines and write deeds for bigger pieces of land, more profit, and effectively taking away more chairs.
Non-profits try to make up the difference, acknowledging that they are not in the business of profit. But still someone needs to build the chairs, buy the land, provide the services. It’s no wonder that some of the most capitalistic wealthy countries and cities are also home to the most homeless.
To be clear, I own a home and hope it will appreciate in value. But this is just one example where there is something to be learned from Leviticus. It’s not fair to read it as a rulebook, but dismissing it out of hand seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
This morning, I’m thinking about musical chairs, about the absurdity of a system that lays blame at the slow kids who don’t make to an empty chair when there weren’t enough chairs to begin with.
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