This article is about buying 1 kg of pork even if you can afford 2 kgs. It is about settling for a Nokia C5 although you want a Nokia Lumia 800. But don’t get me wrong. It is not about being stingy or cheap. It is not about going for second class, say, settling for a look-alike poster rather than enjoying a real Van Gogh painting.
We live in an increasingly unequal world. You don’t have to go far to notice how unequal we are becoming. For instance, check your local church annual tithe report and see the income inequality between members. Thank God for those big givers who give in a month more than what some other families earn in a year. Thank God? Yes, for there are many rich people who are miserly at giving to the church. But still it leaves a very unpleasant feeling that one tenth of the monthly income of some people should be way higher than the entire annual income of some other families in the same church. The gap is increasing rapidly. The richest 20% of the world now earns 86% of the world’s income and consumes 80% of its resources. India’s booming economy with scores of billionaires is home to the most number of malnourished children, more than that of Sub-Saharan Africa. But we are so used to it that we hardly notice it anymore and it takes a tourist to be appalled by the poverty in our country. If you care to look, there are needy people all around us. There’s the beggar on the street. Closer home, each of us probably has family relatives and dear ones who are poor. It may be your aunty in the village or your childhood best friend who dropped out. Try sharing the tussle in your brain - whether you should go for a Nokia C5 or a Lumia 800 - with this aunty in the village who lives a hand to mouth life. The irony will show.
The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil, but it does not say money per se is the root. What about too much wealth? In that case, will possession of wealth in itself be wrong? What if such wealth is gained by fair means? Does that justify the possession of huge amount of wealth? When we look at it ‘relationally’, possession of too much money even if by fair means seems problematic. For example, if we build ourselves palaces to live in when we are surrounded by thousands who live in slums, it’s very difficult to claim that we have love. I’m not against prosperity. God wants his creation to prosper. But prosperity needs to be inclusive. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. We need to think deeply what that command entails, involves, includes, contains, implies, intends, signifies; i.e. to love our neighbor just the way we love and take care of ourselves.
There are a lot of people who blame the poor for their poverty. Some people only feel sorry for them and wish them well. God has compassion for them. He stands for them, by them and with them. As Christians, it is not enough that we feel pity for the poor, but we should look for ways in which we can help reduce poverty and stand in solidarity with the poor. One way to do that is by inculcating moderation as a habit: having a limit, an ‘Enough’ in life. Even if we can live lavishly, we need to be mindful of the people we live in this earth with and the limited resources we all share. In our consumerist society, we are encouraged to buy stuffs that we don’t need. The 500 billion dollar advertisement industry confuses our wants with our needs and we always find ourselves in ‘need’ of that next product. When the world faces economic downturn, we are encouraged to buy our way out by spending money that we don’t have yet. We are enticed to ‘Buy now and pay later’. In our society’s single minded pursuit of wealth somewhere, we need to learn to draw the line and say ‘enough is enough’. As for me and my house, this much will do.
Jeffry Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his latest book ‘The Price of Civilization’ showed that increase in income in the US has not resulted in increase in happiness. In fact, level of happiness has declined with increase in per capita GDP. Beyond a certain level, raise of income doesn’t proportionately increase the level of happiness. Instead, happiness level is shown to spiral down. He then recommends the Middle Path which is worth emulating. He says, ‘as individuals, we need to regain the balance of our lives between work and leisure, saving and consumption, self-interest and compassion, individualism and citizenship’. He cites 8 dimensions one should be mindful of so as to achieve this balance:
· Mindfulness of self: personal moderation to escape mass consumerism
· Mindfulness of work: the balancing of work and leisure
· Mindfulness of knowledge: the cultivation of education
· Mindfulness of others: the exercise of compassion and cooperation
· Mindfulness of nature: the conservation of the world’s ecosystems
· Mindfulness of the future: the responsibility to save for the future
· Mindfulness of politics: the cultivation of public deliberation and shared values for collective action through political institutions
· Mindfulness of the world: the acceptance of diversity as a path to peace.
The middle way/mindfulness/moderation is not a future aspiration but a deliberate choice one makes for the present. Not for ‘one day when I have that’, but for the imperfect here and now. In the career option that you choose, job you do, house you design, vehicle you buy, land plot you keep for yourself, mobile phone you select, amount of pork you eat; one can decide, ‘this much will do. I am not running in this rat race; this mass, relentless pursuit of wealth’.
