I remember watching Crocodile Dundee some years back, as Paul Hogan mentioned the on-going arguments between white Australians and the Aboriginals. "It's like two fleas arguing about who owns the dog they live on!" he commented. Remembering this suddenly as I sat on my porcelain inspiration stool the other day, got me thinking about a lot of other issues that all stem from this same beginning.
Living with us here in our home (well, the garden anyway) there are five chickens (yes, that's right - we 'adopted' one the other day). I've been guilty in the past of using phrases such as "I've got five chickens" or "I own five chickens". Is that really the case though? As a university student about a hundred years ago, I flicked mindlessly through the UCLan prospectus, searching for something more juicy than Management, and stumbled across a BSc (Hons) in Animal Husbandry. I remember laughing raucously in the college library, with scenes of a tuxedo'd man holding the trotter of a pig in a wedding dress, or some other equally bizarre sight. It took a while before someone explained to me that far from being some sort of dating agency for inter-special relationships, the course was actually about helping students to learn how to look after animal more skilfully.
All of this caused those repentant stirs within, and I felt a real need to examine my relationship to money, possessions and the whole idea of 'ownership'. I know this whole discussion is somewhat thwarted by the fact that I rent my house, rather than 'owning' it, but please just bear with me.... According to British law, if I own the land on which my house is built, I own the air above it and the ground beneath it - all the way down to the fiery centre of the earth. But on a practical level, all I've really bought is the day-to-day use of the surface area within my legal boundaries. I will probably know who I bought it from, but who sold it to them and who sold it to them first? Who was the very first person to look at Summerfield Avenue, for example, and say "I'm going to lay claim to that stretch there, and I'm going to build a few houses on it which I'll sell to other people"? And who was it that first told that man that he had any right to do so.
In accountancy terms, I learned that an asset is something which the company retains in its possession with the intent of gaining some form of economic benefit from it in the future. So that's why people 'own' things, but it still doesn't explain how it all works. Let's say for example that you and I go for a walk to the South Pole... When we arrive there, I tell you that I will allow you to put up your tent over there, and I point to a generous spot. But what right do I have to tell you where you can and can't sleep? Who put the snow there in the first place? Who made the hills, rivers, plains, fields and forests in the first place? Personally, I believe it is all the work of a genius Creator, for whom everything has a purpose and for which everything has a plan. The whole idea of 'ownership' becomes void when you consider that He made it (quite literally) and by His grace, allows us to be alive on it. It would seem somewhat presumptuous to suggest that any one of us should have any more right to use a piece of it for his benefit than anyone else does.
With that in mind, I don't consider that in real terms I actually own anything: the house, the land, the car, the chickens etc. They are all merely assets, over which I have a stewardship for the moment. As such, I need to organise my energies and resources to ensure that I take good care of them, and husband them. If you like, they are not my chickens: I'm just looking after them for God! And yet we are festooned with a population of grabbers and collectors, who are obsessed with 'owning' hordes of useless inanimate objects. They know they can't take it with them when they die, but they buy more of it on eBay just on the off-chance that 'they' are wrong. They look for personal identity somewhere hidden within the piles of stuff, rather than by clearing away the detritus and debris inside their own hearts.
I read a joke once in the Reader's Digest which I think will finish this off nicely. A group of scientists pluck up the courage to speak to God: "It's bad news for you, Lord. I'm afraid we don;t need you any more. You see, we can take of this soil and make a man, to the exact specifications that you did: eyes, nose, mouth, muscles, everything. We don't need you any more, you may as well just go," they announced boldly. God thinks for a while, then answers them simply "Go and play with your own soil!"
Living with us here in our home (well, the garden anyway) there are five chickens (yes, that's right - we 'adopted' one the other day). I've been guilty in the past of using phrases such as "I've got five chickens" or "I own five chickens". Is that really the case though? As a university student about a hundred years ago, I flicked mindlessly through the UCLan prospectus, searching for something more juicy than Management, and stumbled across a BSc (Hons) in Animal Husbandry. I remember laughing raucously in the college library, with scenes of a tuxedo'd man holding the trotter of a pig in a wedding dress, or some other equally bizarre sight. It took a while before someone explained to me that far from being some sort of dating agency for inter-special relationships, the course was actually about helping students to learn how to look after animal more skilfully.
All of this caused those repentant stirs within, and I felt a real need to examine my relationship to money, possessions and the whole idea of 'ownership'. I know this whole discussion is somewhat thwarted by the fact that I rent my house, rather than 'owning' it, but please just bear with me.... According to British law, if I own the land on which my house is built, I own the air above it and the ground beneath it - all the way down to the fiery centre of the earth. But on a practical level, all I've really bought is the day-to-day use of the surface area within my legal boundaries. I will probably know who I bought it from, but who sold it to them and who sold it to them first? Who was the very first person to look at Summerfield Avenue, for example, and say "I'm going to lay claim to that stretch there, and I'm going to build a few houses on it which I'll sell to other people"? And who was it that first told that man that he had any right to do so.
In accountancy terms, I learned that an asset is something which the company retains in its possession with the intent of gaining some form of economic benefit from it in the future. So that's why people 'own' things, but it still doesn't explain how it all works. Let's say for example that you and I go for a walk to the South Pole... When we arrive there, I tell you that I will allow you to put up your tent over there, and I point to a generous spot. But what right do I have to tell you where you can and can't sleep? Who put the snow there in the first place? Who made the hills, rivers, plains, fields and forests in the first place? Personally, I believe it is all the work of a genius Creator, for whom everything has a purpose and for which everything has a plan. The whole idea of 'ownership' becomes void when you consider that He made it (quite literally) and by His grace, allows us to be alive on it. It would seem somewhat presumptuous to suggest that any one of us should have any more right to use a piece of it for his benefit than anyone else does.
With that in mind, I don't consider that in real terms I actually own anything: the house, the land, the car, the chickens etc. They are all merely assets, over which I have a stewardship for the moment. As such, I need to organise my energies and resources to ensure that I take good care of them, and husband them. If you like, they are not my chickens: I'm just looking after them for God! And yet we are festooned with a population of grabbers and collectors, who are obsessed with 'owning' hordes of useless inanimate objects. They know they can't take it with them when they die, but they buy more of it on eBay just on the off-chance that 'they' are wrong. They look for personal identity somewhere hidden within the piles of stuff, rather than by clearing away the detritus and debris inside their own hearts.
I read a joke once in the Reader's Digest which I think will finish this off nicely. A group of scientists pluck up the courage to speak to God: "It's bad news for you, Lord. I'm afraid we don;t need you any more. You see, we can take of this soil and make a man, to the exact specifications that you did: eyes, nose, mouth, muscles, everything. We don't need you any more, you may as well just go," they announced boldly. God thinks for a while, then answers them simply "Go and play with your own soil!"
