Friday, February 11, 2005
(9:13 AM) | Anonymous:
Ownership, property and St Paul.
As I mentioned in one of the Comments, I was burgled earlier on in the week, and my laptop was stolen. I don't consider that the machine itself was of great worth in itself. It was merely a tool that helped me to perform my work (which consists, mostly, of attending lectures). I hope I would have given the computer away if anybody had asked for it, although I'd have taken my work off it first. All in all, I'm missing about 100+ lectures from this term and last, and also some personal thoughts. (It's rather alarming to know that one's personal thoughts are somewhere out there in the world, available to anybody who just happens upon a stolen lap-top. I'm hoping that they'll format the drive and that will be that.) The great thing about having stolen my lecture notes is that, a) I probably would never have referred back to most of them anyway, and b) the disciplined attendance at the lectures is of more value in the end than the sum total of the lecture notes. It seems to me that to steal property, even intellectual property, is nothing compared to the attempt to steal character.What has been interesting is the number of responses I've had, and the responses people expect me to have given. Should I be unsurprised that a great many people seem to put burglary on a par with rape, at least if the language they use is anything to go by. "Did you feel violated?" "Did they make a mess?" "Do you wander into the house, and wonder if there's anybody there?" "Did they take much?" It's the question of violation that I found most interesting.
I don't feel violated because I try not to view my property as an extension of me. It seems to me that theft matters most when people view their property as an extension of their bodies, which it is not. I'm not talking about theft of the essentials, food and clothes etc. (which I suspect ought to be put in a different category), but of "extra" or "luxury" items. I'm not afraid that the thieves will return because we don't have much in the house of worth, and what they took was it. What annoys me most, (and is probably me attempting to be more virtuous than I really would be,) is that I'd have given them the laptop, and dinner, if they'd stayed long enough.
I don't feel violated because the house in which I live is shared space... I expect others to be in my room (although mostly when I'm there), and would not have a problem with people using my room when I'm out. That they entered without permission is only akin to the annoyance I feel when somebody else is in the bathroom or somebody has noisy friends around. Again, maybe if they'd have made more mess or stolen items, I'd be more upset, but I suspect that genuinely viewing property as "on loan", "temporary" and "of little value compared to character" helps matters. I'm not saying that I have no concept of "private property", just that I want to continue to hold that concept very loosely.
So far, my views on "crime" have not changed. This pleases me because throughout my life, an annoying number of people have told me that "I'll feel different" if I'm ever the victim of crime. I don't feel different. I don't think prison sentences for property theft ought to be long. I don't think prison works, except in the very small number of cases in which somebody is a danger to others, and then it only "works" in the sense that it protects society for a short amount of time. It certainly doesn't deter. I used (and probably do still) to subscribe to the "radical" views on prison of Nils Christie. I feel sorry for my burglars that they've probably not had the opportunity to study, and that lack of education has probably contributed to their careers. On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe they're desperate academics trying to find a way to fund their way through PhDs... But, somehow, I doubt it, since I think that time in the academic environment (at least in the theological environment) shapes people to realise that the best ideas are shared ideas. They're not owned privately, but held in common. They're not "individually acquired", but "communally inspired". That's why the classroom matters to me more than the library. I think it's the space for shared reflection and discipleship. And this kind of thought is easily transferred across to the Eucharist. The Eucharist is about not having a "personal Jesus", but a very very public Jesus. You just can't have Him to yourself. There's nothing to own. It's about shared food and drink, and sitting next to smelly, ordinary people. In fact, I suspect that my thoughts on property were generated through reflection on the Eucharist. Since Jesus can't be owned, He also can't be stolen. We offer this sacrifice, since Christ offered the same sacrifice, and through our offering, we become one body. There's nothing to steal, but there's a lot of hospitality to miss.
Thus, the burglary seems to me to have been a failed exercise at hospitality. My response (perhaps drawn from Adam& co's thoughts on reading groups) is this:
We have to learn to be more open to the entrance of strangers in our lives.
We will cook more meals, and eat together without worrying about who bought what.
We will share more books, and ideas, without being so concerned about intellectual copyright.
We will lend money without interest.
We will be more hospitable to the type of people who are likely to have been involved with theft.
We will bake more cakes for the world's consumption. (This is very important. There was once a sect (the Collyridians) that got shut down for sacrificing cakes to the BVM. Maybe that's going a bit too far, but I kind of thought the idea was fun.)
So, where am I going with all this?
On the blog recently, we've all been having heated discussions on the apostle Paul, and more particularly, who can lay claim to him, and his ideas. If my logic above is unflawed, my response is that you can all have him. The Church does not own Paul. We don't need to own Paul because we share in the Body of which he is a part. The Christian community (or any community) do not have to take on board the ideas of random American (or whatever) scholars, just because somebody uses (or misuses) the tradition. Indeed, didn't Adam demonstrate that some time ago with thoughts about Joseph Smith? I don't suppose Smith's followers will take Adam seriously (they might get more than they bargained for), but that doesn't stop Adam using Joseph Smith as an example. But look at the language being used in reference to Paul: "you can't have him". There's nothing to have and nothing to own. You're welcome to the entire canon of Scripture, as far as I'm concerned, because the text doesn't matter - it doesn't live - without the community who read it. If philosophers want to take advantage of Paul and use him to their own ends, then I have no problem with that. We all keep writing and talking in order to understand what it means to hear the (w)ord "truth".
However, as usual, I want to dispute with Anthony. I see the Word of God, that is, Christ Jesus to be that by which all else is interpreted. I cannot hold, having written what I wrote above, that the Word of God has no bearing on the political lives of people. I'm intrigued by the idea of Church "not holding the whole truth". I don't know that I know what that means outside of Christ, and thus there's a sense in which I'm willing to let it go. On the other hand, images of "holding" truth, much like property need to be dispensed with. We don't so much "hold" it or "own it" as "share it through eating and drinking". We exist in its face, like somebody who gate crashes a party, only to find that they've not known about their invitation. Truth, whatever that is, will be shared.
I don't see why "the end being calculable" is a problem. I further fail to see why the Church's politics are not radical or "just a thought experiment". I'm afraid I don't buy that at all. If the Church's politics do cease being radical, it might be because they've become assumed, ie. everybody has wanted to "own" a bit of the pie, and make it "theirs", rather than through the realisation that politics is shared. Through their attempted ownership of "truth", people risk manipulating the character of community.
This post was also going to mention the preface to Mary Douglas's "Implicit Meanings" (1999), and the book that someone wrote on "Sex and the home", and also Proverbs 31, but I forgot to write down what I was going to say when I went to sleep, so it just hasn't made it...
