Heaven
Many Christians pray daily that God's will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven.
Do
we imagine heaven as operating with land
monopoly capitalism? Do the
rooms in the mansion each come with a rent bill based on the choiceness of
their location? Or do we dream of something better, more just? How
can we create heaven on earth, for everyone? If we don't seek to do that,
just what is it we are praying for?
Henry George: The Condition of
Labor — An Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
If when in speaking of the practical measures your Holiness proposes, I
did not note the moral injunctions that the Encyclical contains, it is not
because we do not think morality practical. On the contrary it seems to us
that in the teachings of morality is to be found the highest practicality,
and that the question, What is wise? may always safely be subordinated to
the question, What is right? But your Holiness in the Encyclical expressly
deprives the moral truths you state of all real bearing on the condition
of labor, just as the American people, by their legalization of chattel slavery,
used to deprive of all practical meaning the declaration they deem their
fundamental charter, and were accustomed to read solemnly on every national
anniversary. That declaration asserts that “We hold these truths to
be self-evident — that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But what did this truth mean
on the lips of men who asserted that one man was the rightful property of
another man who had bought him; who asserted that the slave was robbing the
master in running away, and that the man or the woman who helped the fugitive
to escape, or even gave him a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, was
an accessory to theft, on whose head the penalties of the state should be
visited?
Consider the moral teachings of the Encyclical:
- You tell us that God owes to man an inexhaustible storehouse which he
finds only in the land. Yet you support a system that denies to the great
majority of men all right of recourse to this storehouse.
- You tell us that the necessity of labor is a consequence of original
sin. Yet you support a system that exempts a privileged class from the
necessity for labor and enables them to shift their share and much more
than their share of labor on others.
- You tell us that God has not created us for the perishable and transitory
things of earth, but has given us this world as a place of exile and not
as our true country. Yet you tell us that some of the exiles have the exclusive
right of ownership in this place of common exile, so that they may compel
their fellow-exiles to pay them for sojourning here, and that this exclusive
ownership they may transfer to other exiles yet to come, with the same
right of excluding their fellows.
- You tell us that virtue is the common inheritance of all; that
all men are children of God the common Father; that all have the same
last end;
that all are redeemed by Jesus Christ; that the blessings of nature and
the gifts of grace belong in common to all, and that to all except the
unworthy is promised the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven! Yet in all
this and through all this you insist as a moral duty on the maintenance
of a system that makes the reservoir of all God’s material bounties
and blessings to man the exclusive property of a few of their number — you
give us equal rights in heaven, but deny us equal rights on earth!
It was said of a famous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States
made just before the civil war, in a fugitive-slave case, that “it
gave the law to the North and the nigger to the South.” It is thus
that your Encyclical gives the gospel to laborers and the earth to the landlords.
Is it really to be wondered at that there are those who sneeringly say, “The
priests are ready enough to give the poor an equal share in all that is out
of sight, but they take precious good care that the rich shall keep a tight
grip on all that is within sight”? ... read the whole letter
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George, a
themed collection of
excerpts from the writings of Henry George (with links to sources)
BUT is there not some line the recognition of which will enable us to say
with something like scientific precision that this man is rich and that man
is poor; some line of possession which will enable us truly to distinguish
between rich and poor in all places and conditions of society; a line of
the natural mean or normal possession, below which in varying degrees is
poverty, and above which in varying degrees is wealthiness? It seems to me
that there must be. And if we stop to think of it, we may see that there
is. If we set aside for the moment the narrower economic meaning of service,
by which direct service is conveniently distinguished from the indirect service
embodied in wealth, we may resolve all the things which directly or indirectly
satisfy human desire into one term service, just as we resolve fractions
into a common denominator. Now is there not a natural or normal line of the
possession or enjoyment of service? Clearly there is. It is that of equality
between giving and receiving. This is the equilibrium which Confucius expressed
in the golden word of his teaching that in English we translate into "reciprocity." Naturally
the services which a member of a human society is entitled to receive from
other members are the equivalents of those he renders to others. Here is
the normal line from which what we call wealthiness and what we call poverty
take their start. He who can command more service than he need render, is
rich. He is poor, who can command less service than he does render or is
willing to render: for in our civilization of today we must take note of
the monstrous fact that men willing to work cannot always find opportunity
to work. The one has more than he ought to have; the other has less. Rich
and poor are thus correlatives of each other; the existence of a class of
rich involves the existence of a class of poor, and the reverse; and abnormal
luxury on the one side and abnormal want on the other have a relation of
necessary sequence. To put this relation into terms of morals, the rich are
the robbers, since they are at least sharers in the proceeds of robbery;
and the poor are the robbed. This is the reason, I take it, why Christ, Who
was not really a man of such reckless speech as some Christians deem Him
to have been, always expressed sympathy with the poor and repugnance of the
rich. In His philosophy it was better even to be robbed than to rob. In the
kingdom of right doing which He preached, rich and poor would be impossible,
because rich and poor in the true sense are the results of wrong-doing. And
when He said, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven," He simply put in the
emphatic form of Eastern metaphor a statement of fact as coldly true as the
statement that two parallel lines can never meet. Injustice cannot live where
justice rules, and even if the man himself might get through, his riches — his
power of compelling service without rendering service — must of necessity
be left behind. If there can be no poor in the kingdom of heaven, clearly
there can be no rich. And so it is utterly impossible in this, or in any
other conceivable world, to abolish unjust poverty, without at the same time
abolishing unjust possessions. This is a hard word to the softly amiable
philanthropists, who, to speak metaphorically, would like to get on the good
side of God without angering the devil. But it is a true word nevertheless. — The
Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book II, Chapter 19, The Nature of Wealth: Moral Confusions as to Wealth • abridged:
Part II, Chapter 15, The Nature of Wealth: Moral Confusions as to Wealth
IT is the noblest cause in which any human being can possibly engage. What,
after all, is there in life as compared with a struggle like this? One thing,
and only one thing, is absolutely certain for every man and woman in this
hall, as it is to all else of human kind — that is death. What will
it profit us in a few years how much we have left? Is not the noblest and
the best use we can make of life to do something to make better and happier
the condition of those who come after us — by warning against injustice,
by the enlightenment of public opinion, by the doing all that we possibly
can do to break up the accursed system that degrades and embitters the lot
of so many?
We have a long fight and a hard fight before us. Possibly, probably, for many
of us, we may never see it come to success. But what of that? It is a privilege
to be engaged in such a struggle. This we may know, that it is but a part of
that great, world-wide, long-continued struggle in which the just and the good
of every age have been engaged; and that we, in taking part in it, are doing
something in our humble way to bring on earth the kingdom of God, to make the
conditions of life for those who come afterward, those which we trust will prevail
in heaven. — Thou Shalt Not Steal
WHAT, when our time comes, does it matter whether we have fared daintily or not,
whether we have worn soft raiment or not, whether we leave a great fortune or
nothing at all, whether we shall have reaped honors or been despised, have been
counted learned or ignorant — as compared with how we may have used that
talent which has been entrusted to us for the Master's service? What shall it
matter; when eyeballs glaze and ears grow dull, if out of the darkness may stretch
a hand, and into the silence may come a voice: —
Henry George: Thy Kingdom Come
(1889 speech)
Mr Abner Thomas, of New York, a
strict orthodox Presbyterian
— and the son of Rev Dr Thomas, author of a commentary on the
bible —wrote a little while ago an allegory. Dozing off in his
chair, he dreamt that he was ferried over the River of Death, and,
taking the straight and narrow way, came at last within sight of the
Golden City. A fine-looking old gentleman angel opened the wicket,
inquired his name, and let him in; warning him, at the same time,
that it would be better if he chose his company in heaven, and did
not associate with disreputable angels.
“What!” said the newcomer, in
astonishment: “Is
not this heaven?”
“Yes,” said the warden: “But
there are a lot of
tramp angels here now."
“How can that be?” asked Mr
Thomas. “I thought
everybody had plenty in heaven.”
“It used to be that way some time
ago,” said the
warden: “And if you wanted to get your harp polished or your
wings combed, you had to do it yourself. But matters have changed
since we adopted the same kind of property regulations in heaven as
you have in civilised countries on earth, and we find it a great
improvement, at least for the better class.”
Then the warden told the newcomer
that he had better decide
where he was going to board.
“I don’t want to board anywhere,”
said Thomas:
“I would much rather go over to that beautiful green knoll and
lie down.”
“I would not advise you to do
so,” said the warden:
“The angel who owns that knoll does not like to encourage
trespassing. Some centuries ago, as I told you, we introduced the
system of private property into the soil of heaven. So we divided the
land up. It is all private property now.”
“I hope I was considered in that
division?” said
Thomas.
“No,” said the warden: “You were
not; but if you
go to work, and are saving, you can easily earn enough in a couple of
centuries to buy yourself a nice piece. You get a pair of wings free
as you come in, and you will have no difficulty in hypothecating them
for a few days board until you find work. But I should advise you to
be quick about it, as our population is constantly increasing, and
there is a great surplus of labour. Tramp angels are, in fact,
becoming quite a nuisance.”
“What shall I go to work at?”
asked Thomas.
“Our principal industries are the
making of harps and
crowns and the growing of flowers,” responded the warden:
“But there any many opportunities for employment in personal
service.”
“I love flowers,” said Thomas. “I
will go to work
growing them, There is a beautiful piece of land over there that
nobody seems to be using. I will go to work on that.”
“You can’t do that,” said the
warden. “That
property belongs to one of our most far-sighted angels who has got
very rich by the advance of land values, and who is holding that
piece for a rise. You will have to buy it or rent it before you can
work on it, and you can’t do that yet.”
The story goes on to describe how
the roads of heaven, the
streets of the New Jerusalem, were filled with disconsolate tramp
angels, who had pawned their wings, and were outcasts in Heaven
itself.
You laugh, and it is ridiculous.
But there is a moral in it that
is worth serious thought. Is it not ridiculous to imagine the
application to God’s heaven of the same rules of division that
we apply to God’s earth, even while we pray that His will may be
done on earth as it is done in Heaven?
Really, if we could imagine it,
it is impossible to think of
heaven treated as we treat this earth, without seeing that, no matter
how salubrious were its air, no matter how bright the light that
filled it, no matter how magnificent its vegetable growth, there
would be poverty, and suffering, and a division of classes in heaven
itself, if heaven were parcelled out as we have parceled out the
earth. And, conversely, if people were to act towards each other as
we must suppose the inhabitants of heaven to do, would not this earth
be a very heaven? ... Read the whole speech
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