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The rainbow of entitlement
An adapted excerpt from a recent Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit Discussion Document exploring consumerism and what we feel is ‘rightly ours’.
I deserve better.
I deserve it.
I deserve more.
Now.
Whatever I want.
Whenever I want.
Whoever I want.
Entitlement.
Economics of God
The Gospel of Luke, chapter 12:1-48, contains a fatal clash of entitlement with the countering economics of God.
Jesus is working the crowds. He is smack in the middle of delivering a counter-cultural discourse on what or who is to be truly feared when a man interjects: ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ It’s the language of entitlement, isn’t it?
Today, if you listen carefully, you can hear this same destructive entitlement re-enacted wherever there is economic inequality, ethnic friction, and religious strife.
Jesus dodges the disruptive claim of entitlement (how can I get what I deserve?), and with a clever change in direction homes in on what matters most: how to be human, and how to be human together?
The dodging: ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’ The homing in on what is at stake: ‘Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’
The getting and grasping of entitlement is not what it means to be human; what we ‘have’, ‘get’, own or possess is not a measure of our significance. There is more to the good life, there is more to you and me, than the incessant chasing and collecting of ‘things’.
He could have ...
Jesus pauses. The crowds look flabbergasted, and the frown on the face of the man who interrupted says everything. It’s not what they expected.
Jesus breaks the silence with a parable. It’s a clever piece of street theatre.[1] It’s a gifting of space and time. The escalating anxiety of entitlement and its insistence on gratification now can make it difficult to engage in honest self-critique. The telling of the parable lets people slow down long enough to process what is going on.
The parable starts with a line that everybody gets: ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.’ The line evokes the cultural memory of Job [2] and the commonly-held image of how God and life seem to favour the rich. It’s a hook that helps everyone enter the parable.
Everyone can name the beautiful … Everyone can name the celebrities … Everyone can name the rich … And everyone spends far too much energy, money and time comparing what we ‘have’ with the ‘lot’ of others. It’s what fuels our anxiety, it’s what inflates our expectations of entitlement, and it’s what drives the excesses of our over-consumption and our hoarding of surplus.[3] The Scriptures call it coveting.[4]
Jesus goes on to say that the man of the parable had a decision to make: ‘He thought to himself, “What shall I do?” ’
The man of the parable could have donated the extra crops to the local food bank. He could have cashed in the crops at the market and given bonuses to the employees who had laboured long days in the fields. He could have organised a community party and invited the neighbourhood to feast on what looks like the favour of God. Imagine the power of that witness! He could have gone to the local schools, and while the kids dined on the freshly harvested carrots, corn, figs and oats, the man could have passed on something of the ‘how to of effective gardening’, inspiring and teaching a new generation to dream and live generously. He could have even got creative, donned some kind of super-hero cape and in the secret of the night dropped food parcels on the doorsteps of people who had less than enough.
He could have. He didn’t.
Giving in to greed
Sadly, the man of the parable gave in to greed. He hoarded. He owned. The mantra of this man is: I, myself and what is mine. There is, in the excesses of entitlement, little room left for others. There is no energy, space or time left for neighbourliness.[5]
The pace of the parable slows: ‘I have no place to store my crops … This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’
We’re not that different, are we? We haven’t learnt much, have we? A cheeky atheistic marketing campaign in London carried this same sentiment: There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.
The excessive and inflated expectations of entitlement cause forgetfulness. There is a forgetting of God. There is a forgetting of how life is a gift. The excesses and luxuries we enjoy start to look a lot like ‘musts’; necessities that we ourselves have made possible. There is a forgetting of how we’re interdependent on others for most of what we ‘have’, for most of what we name ‘ours’, for most of what we possess and think we ‘own’.
Rob Bell says: ‘Moses spoke of the need to constantly tell the Exodus story, the one about rescue from slavery, “otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” ’
How does a person forget God? The answer we’ve seen again and again in Scriptures is that you forget God when you forget the people God cares about. Over and over God speaks of the widow, the orphan, and the refugee. This is how you remember God: you bless those who need it the most in the same way that God blessed you when you needed it most.’[6]
Jesus is solemn
The man who had everything and felt entitled to the excesses of everything is happily sitting on the sofa, drink in hand, eating some crisps and listening to some tunes, when suddenly everything goes pitch black. There’s a creaking noise. Is that a door opening?
Enter God.
The dogs, the locked gates and the security installed to preserve and protect what is ‘ours’ can’t keep God from interrupting. The man who isn’t called by a name in the parable is finally named.
‘You Fool!’ The name ‘fool’ evokes this time the memory of Nabal [7], a foolish man whose name literally meant ‘fool’. A man who insisted on getting without giving, hoarding without neighbourliness, increase without generosity, profiteering without sharing. He died trying to hold onto stuff.
The man in the parable who shares this name and these traits now shares the same fate. ‘You Fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.’
It’s not a happy Hollywood ending. It’s not meant to be. The ‘chasing and collecting’ of entitlements is fleeting, foolish and inevitably fatal (for ourselves, others and for the planet we share). The inflated expectations and excessive consumption of entitlement can never fully frame what is essential; they can never fully satisfy what you really need; and they can never fully tell you or me what is our place, what is our significance. There is a name for that framing story; we call it the Salvation Story or the Story of God.
By Malcolm Irwin
Endnotes
1. Walter Brueggemann, 2006, The Word that Re-Describes the World.
2. See Job 21:7-13.
3. On www.globalrichlist.com, I discovered that I’m the 734,285,882 richest person on the planet. Visit the site to see how you rate.
4. See Exodus 20:17 and Romans 13:9.
5. See Isaiah 5.8-10; Walter Brueggemann, ibid.
6. Rob Bell, 2008, Jesus Wants to Save Christians (see Proverbs 30:8-9).
7. See 1 Samuel 25. Walter Brueggemann, ibid.