Food, Clothing, Shelter

In first grade, my teacher asked us to identify the most basic human needs. We just didn't get it, and she eventually had to supply the answers she wanted: food, clothing, shelter. Even at the time, this combination struck me as arbitray and perplexing. I wondered, for example, if you really needed clothing if you had shelter, and I suspected that if I were making do with just food, clothing, and shelter, I'd eventually happen across something else (Air? Parents? Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins?) that I might even be willing to trade for.

Of the three items on my teacher's list, I've been getting really into shelter lately. Actually, I think that's what the magazine business calls home-decorating publications--"shelter" mags--but I don't want to be too commercialized about it. It's just that I've been spending a lot of time settling into my house. And I've been trying to articulate the meaning that comes from inhabiting a home and imprinting yourself on it (and having it imprint on you), that is an alternative to both the marketing slogans that say we empower ourselves through shopping and to the idea that material things just shouldn't matter to us. Living in this house has imparted a spiritual sense of peace to me.

My gratitude for this sense of peace has made me think a lot about my relationship to material possessions. While I'm quite ardently oppposed to the idea that God wants to provide material riches for all believers (the "prosperity gospel"), I'm also not fully convinced that the Bible instructs us to live in poverty (which a lot of people seem to suspect it says, even while trying to avoid the implications of such a command), or that where we should begin as American Christians is to beatify poverty and feel guilt over our wealth. Of course, Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell all that he has and give it to the poor, and He tells His followers that He himself will have no place to lay His head. All that we have, it's clear, is His, and we should expect no better than He Himself received. But the Bible also recognizes the deep needs of people for physical sustenance, praises the Proverbs 31 woman for keeping her household well clothed, and memorializes various apostles for their hospitality toward the brothers and sisters who meet in their homes. And so rather than feeling overwhelmed by our wealth in the face of global poverty, I wonder if we should insist on deeper generosity, more incisive simplicity, more intentional stewardship--callings that are perhaps more ambiguous, but no less serious, than a vocation to poverty.

My starting point may be overly guilt-ridden because of the time I spent at Swarthmore, an immensely radical and endearingly impractical place, where owning anything was suspect. I'm glad that Swarthmore implanted a skepticism of vulgar acquisitiveness and consumerism in me. But I also grew up in a house that my parents had built with their own hands; the story I always tell to illustrate their labor is that when they were going to adopt me, they had to be fingerprinted. But my mother had literally worn her fingerprints off by working on the house. The house is inextricably connected with our family for me; they placed every timber, nailed every shingle, laid out every room, closet, and stair-step. In some ways, our commitment to the house is perhaps misplaced--it's ephemeral and will be destroyed with all the earth in the last days (or more likely, in the next few decades). But it's also a physical monument to my parents' work and love for each other.

At the same time, I remember this sobering--terrifying--line from Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he writes, "I tremble for my country, when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever." If I were a parent, and some of my children were rich, and others were starving, it would break my heart if the rich ones never thought of the poor ones, never contributed to their care or to the relief of their suffering. I don't think I would begrudge them their wealth, but I would want them to use it well.