REDISTRIBUTING THE REDISTRIBUTION (OF THE DISTRIBUTION) OF WEALTH . . . A BIBLICAL MANDATE

It may have begin with Michele Obama’s comment about “cutting the pie more fairly.” It gained momentum with Barach Obama’s conversation with Joe the Plumber, about a more level playing field. “Now he wants to redistribute wealth!” Rush shouted. “See, we were right all along, he’s a Marxist,” blustered Sean Hannity. “Hear this, Mrs. Obama,” responded Glenn Beck, his eyes steeled, as he leaned toward the camera, “you keep your hands off my piece of the pie!” I, too, share a passionate concern about wealth redistribution – the one that occurred from the mid-70’s to the present! I want to “redistribute the re-distribution,” and I’ll look through a biblical lens.

From the end of WWII to the mid-70’s a “rising tide lifted all (well, almost all) boats” – robust macroeconomic trends realized at the micro-level.  At differing trajectories all segments of the U.S. economy, most households across the socioeconomic spectrum shared in expanding prosperity, experiencing financial gain.  The gap between rich and poor actually narrowed.  But from 1975 to the present that trend dramatically changed – a rapid and massive wealth re-distribution.

It is early to “numb out” in the face of statistics, forgetting that human faces peer from beneath the data.  The rich/poor divide has widened at a staggering rate, increasing threefold over the last thirty years.  Across that span annual income increased just 2% for 90% of us, while the top 1% increased 57%, with that top 1% now controlling wealth equal to the lower 80% combined.  One in six of our children are poor and 37 million of us live below the poverty line, while CEO-to-worker income ratio expanded from 43-1 in 1975 to 344-1 in 2008.  A chief executive, who once had to work ten days to match a worker’s annual income, can leave the office by mid-afternoon on any given day to match that worker’s yearly salary.

Speaking closer to home, perhaps uncomfortable so: if I have assets of $2,200 (my current checking account balance), I position in the global population’s top 50%; assets of $61,000 (the equity in my home) the top 10%.  I went to www.globalrichlist.com and punched in my annual income (pension, Social Security and investment income), a modest total compared to most people I know, to discover that I am in the .93 percentile globally and the top 1.7 percentile in the U.S.

The redistribution has already occurred!  

Beneath policies and strategies – “positions” be they ideological, political or economic, philosophical or theological – are basic values and principles, a prevailing ideal, a sense of what is right and just.  As a progressive Christian I look to the Bible for guidance.  I would suggest that a foundational, pervasive, definitional dynamic is (re)distribution of wealth (land, resources, nutrition and housing, education and health care).  This theme is central, dominant and at the core of the biblical vision of life on the planet.  Space here just to bullet a few:

• The lengthy sojourn in the wilderness called the Exodus coaxed the Hebrews to abandon the economics of “too much” with an economics of “enough,” the provision of manna the daily lesson, and a plan for equitable distribution of the Promised Land by tribe and family, profiled in the Book of Numbers, a “distribution plan.”
• As if God knew growing inequalities were inevitable across a generation or two, “redistribution strategies” are outlined in detail, every seventh year a Sabbath Year and every fiftieth a Jubilee Year, with sweeping instructions for re-distribution of wealth.
• Scholars suggest that in Jesus inaugural sermon, declaring “the acceptable year of the Lord,” may well have been re-instating the lapsed Sabbath and Jubilee observances.
• More recent study asserts that Jesus overturning of the money-changers tables was a symbolic “overturning” of the economic system that advantaged the already rich on the backs of the poor.
• St. Paul’s most focused description of “charity” (2 Corinthians 8 & 9) might be better named a teaching about “justice,” generosity grounded in a theology of re-distribution.

How to craft and implement just and timely “redistribution plans” can be a matter for crisp and vigorous public debate, but whether to address this matter, from a biblical perspective, is not an option but a mandate.