Peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Carrot sticks. A couple of homemade cookies. Small bag of barbecue potato chips. All in a brown lunch sack that, if I was lucky, wasn’t decorated by my stepmother with frilly flowers and cute eyes in the double o’s of my last name (Coon with eyes in the middle instead of the letters). This was my lunch for most of my elementary school days growing up in Delta Junction, Alaska. Right now, looking back, it was a pretty good lunch. My step mom had to make six lunches all together, and usually all of them would have some pretty funny decorations on the outside of the otherwise plain brown paper lunch sack. Looking back, I can appreciate the time it took to fix those lunches, and the amount of money it also took to provide the food--healthy food I might add--that went into those sack lunches.
Back when I was a kid I saw things a little differently than I do now.
In the eighties the boob tube, and the box office were full of shows and characters millions of kids idolized. Knight Rider, The A-Team, Transformers, GI Joe, and Indiana Jones were just a few of those very shows. Each of these awesome shows would often produce a lunch box. A low end box would be made of plastic and have a simple action scene on the front. For instance, a knight rider lunch box of this sort would have a mural of Michael Knight’s face on the front with KIT in the background. A high end lunch box would often be made of tin. The entire lunch box would have these almost three dimensional action scenes around the entire box. An Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom lunch box of this high end quality would sport pictures of brave Indiana Jones wielding a machete on the front, and other images from the movie on the sides. For a kid with a corny brown lunch sack, these amazing lunch boxes were something I longed for.
It wasn’t only the lunch boxes. A lot of the kids who came to school with the high end lunch boxes would also have some pretty good stuff inside. There potato chips would come in there own cool little mini bag instead of a sandwich bag like mine. The sandwich would have ham or bologna, not the peanut butter and jelly that sometimes became mushy by the time I got to it. Most of all, they’d have that thermos. Oh baby…that thermos. It matched the lunch box, and held anything from kool-aid to orange juice. And if it had hot soup in it, more than likely the kid was given an ultra special treat…the juice box! Yep, unlike my flavorless school milk, these kids would have either a hi-c or caprison juice.
The jealousy I had for these kids and there lunch boxes seems pretty absurd, but it’s also a pretty common human state of mind. He/she has, I want. No matter how good things are for you. One thing I’ve learned in my struggle to provide for my family is that there just simply isn’t enough money, and there never will be. There will always be things I see other people having that I want. Little do I recognize that while they have this stuff that I obsess about, they too are looking forward at a piece of riches that another person may have that they also do not.
I ultimately believe that if you want what another person has, you have to work for it. If I want that boat, or skis, or Indiana Jones lunch box, I better find a way to make it happen. I can’t simply expect theses things to be given to me. Heck, sometimes it’s probably better I concentrate in what I do need rather that what toys I long for, isn’t it? And maybe, just maybe, if I took a step back and took account of everything I do have, I’d be thankful for the many blessings I have been given. I have four wonderful daughters, a great wife, a van that I can drive with my family, an outstanding job, food in my pantry. I’m in pretty good shape, even if I don’t have that lunch box. If I looked back instead of forward, I’d recognize that there are some folks who long for what I have, and this life of mine is pretty damn sweet. I’m no fat cat, but things could be worse.
If wanting these things were bad enough, it get’s worse. Jealousy has a tragic way of getting quite nasty. There are many, and I’ll include myself at times, who feel resentment for those who have what they don’t. Somehow they are guilty in our eyes of actually possessing something we can not have. How dare they, right? Who the hell are they to have a four bedroom house? Who the hell are they to have that nice car? Who the hell are they to be so damn happy? Not realizing of course that the reason they’re so happy and the other guy isn’t is that the other guy is obsessing and hating that person who has that thing they think will bring them that happiness.
It’s not healthy, and what’s more is that this feeling is sinful. The Church teaches us that lust for what other people have--envy--is destructive and against God‘s will. This teaching can be found in the tenth commandment; You shall not covet. Envy leads to a hatred for those who have, and a joy for their failure. If this is a sin, than what does that say about those who incite these feelings on others? Class warfare anyone?
I suppose the question that’s been burning in my brain for these past couple of months is how can I, a man who wants to follow Christ, justify a class of people paying for expensive government programs that are supposed to ‘benefit’ me simply because they make a combined household income of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? I keep hearing that “Your taxes won’t raise, as a matter of fact you’ll see tax cuts. It’s only the wealthiest Americans who will see a tax increase.” as if I’m supposed to feel relieved that someone else is carrying the burden of massive dept for me. It’s ridicules that in order to justify spending, we have a government who has to vilify successful people. And it’s called populist for a reason. People around this nation are eating it up. Folks like the idea of the ‘rich’ getting their just deserts. After all, they have what few don’t.
Yeah, I can already hear the cries of justification. Cries about crooked bankers and wall street pimps who ignored their morality and lusted for greed so much it blew up the economy. About AIG officials getting million dollar bonuses. If that’s the argument in punishing someone--charity at the tip of a bayonet--I’m afraid I just can’t buy it. I can not, and will not, except that there are ‘classes’ of Americans who have more or less rights than another…poor or rich.
I never got that lunch box. The feelings of jealousy about who had what at the lunch table ended after about the fifth grade. Looking back I can appreciate what I did have. Some kids I grew up with didn’t even have a sack lunch. I guess being grateful for what you already have is a problem in this country. Used to be that you worked for dreams. Instead, folks nowadays are clamoring toward hope in a government absent of morality. A government not interested in what’s good for the people, but what makes the mob happy.
3 comments:
Very insightful post. So so true. I had that same realization when it dawned on me that I was always planning on the next thing to fix on my house. I realized I would never be content.
In one aspect, you are very blessed because you have a gaggle of girls. A reader on my blog once noted that simplicity (and poverty) happens with each child. We haven't been able to have those kids so we have had to force ourselves to make the changes that you have placed on you? Does that make sense?
On the other hand, Daniel, be careful. You need to read the parts about wealth in the Catechism and parts in the social encyclicals AND the parts from the Early Church Fathers on their teachings about wealth. Wealth is not private. It is communal, according to traditional Church teaching. And if the wealthy has money while a good chunk of people are starving or suffering because they lack, the wealthy is morally culpable for those who suffer. Those are scary teachings. Now, the question is whether the Government reassigns the wealth or if it is does via private initiative. The Church has always taught that these social safety nets are a must.
My main argument is not that it is or isn't just for a society to tax it's citizens fairly. The main thrust of my rambling is that this sense that we must rip away what others have out of spite is quite harmful and by Church teaching sinful.
I don't know if you've every been down on the lower end of the economic scales as I have, but if you were, you'd see that this attitude is prevalent. And there are those who wish power that will exploit those feelings for political gain. It's there, and it's damaging.
I suppose it would be like when Christ told the rich man that he would have to sell his wealth and give it to the poor in order to be inherit eternal life(Mark 10:17-30). He gave the young man an option. The young guy would have to give up his worldly possessions...his choice. Christ never told his followers to hate the rich man, mob him, and disperse all his things by force.
The rich (a term loose in definition these days) do have a responsibility toward the poor. We could argue back and forth for days what that involves. But could we both agree that a fixation on hating and coveting causes more harm than good?
"The chief and most excellent rule for the right use of money is one which the heathen philosophers indicated, but which the Church has traced out clearly, and has not only made known to men's minds, but has impressed upon their lives. It rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money, and another to have a right to use money as one pleases." -- Pope Leo XII, "Rerum Novarum", ¶19
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