Wednesday 26 May 2010

Can Christians really believe in Property?

The Christian perception of God (generally, not universally) is one that is all powerful, and creator and sustainer of the whole universe. there are also many verses that discuss that all things belong to God, we don't actually own them we are only left in charge of them. After all in genesis Adam and Eve are made stewards of the garden and told to "work and look after it".  That doesn't really suggest that they owned the garden, it still belonged to God, yet they were in charge.

This really seams to fly in contradiction to history and what such thinkers like Locke have to say about property, where he claims that property started to exist the first moment a man placed boundaries around a piece of land. And yet there doesn't seam to be any real theological backing for it.

When placed in the context of history and we see that Locke is speaking at a time when all property belongs to the king (as he is God's divine instrument on earth) and that Locke is justifying the removal of James the Second and seeking to protect people from further unjust rulers. Its also important to note that Locke's views benefited him greatly with his business in the Americas and the property that he "owned" there due to establishing perimeters around land that had traditionally been occupied by native Indians (though they had no concept of ownership of it).

So perhaps Locke's views may have been shaped out of self interest, does this mean that as Christians we shouldn't believe in Property or we should just try and treat our "property" as not really ours, but God's and use it as such? There is a distinct possibility that the Second option is actually harder than the first.

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