Voluntary Redistribution

In the 1930s, Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union attempted to increase their economic production by developing a centralized bureaucracy that set prices of goods and services, as well as nationalizing all land. To help with food shortages in the cities, the communist government "encouraged" farmers to move to state-owned collectivized farms, and their livestock, land and crops would all become common property.

The same process was forced on the peasants by Mao Zedong and the Chinese communist government in the 1950s, which was known as The Great Leap Forward. Even within China today it is called "The Giant Leap Backwards." The effects of these collectivizations were disastrous.

In the Soviet Union alone, nearly 2 million farmers were sent to the Gulag (Soviet prison), and estimates have claimed 30-40 million died of starvation or were killed.

In China things were just as bad, and probably worse. Nearly the same numbers died from man made famine. In some of the hardest hit areas, there were some reports of cannibalism. Many of the starving resorted to eating the soil, not knowing that it would harden in their digestive tract and they would die possibly an even more horrific death. (On a side note, a very good and entertaining film on The Great Leap Forward, and Mao's Cultural Revolution is called To Live, I highly recommend it).

Stalin and Mao weren't exactly God fearing guys. Both were totalitarian dictators who were way past crazy. Their Great Leap Forward and 5-Year Plans were good ideas in the eyes of power hungry revolutionaries, and very bad ideas to those who could see that they were power hungry, maniacal quacks.

However. . . . .

What if everyone voluntarily redistributed their goods? What if everyone gave up the debt that was owed to them, gave a portion of their profit to the needy, and took strangers in as favored guests? We would be living out biblical principles! The year of the Jubilee! In Leviticus 25, Moses sets out the principles that God had given to him on Mount Sinai (Andy's paraphrase):

1) every 7 years do not plant crops, rely on God
2) every 50 years forgive debts
3) return to your original land and return any land that you own to it's original owner
4) if someone is in need, loan to him, or give to him, but do not take interest

This is a structural and governmental system set up by God in order to help everyone prosper. However, as most things with God, it is voluntary. Greed, bitterness, and deceit obviously set in, and the Israelites stopped following these laws, stopped collectively helping each other. Just as the church of Acts stopped pooling their money and collectivizing their possessions. However, just because these examples stopped doing it doesn't make it wrong. If anything, if people stopped doing it, you could easily argue that it WAS the right thing to do.

Don't mishear me here: I do not want to equate what happened in China or the Soviet Union (or Cambodia or Mozambique, etc. etc.) to anything from God. Communism, when forced on people through violence and tyranny is nothing more than evil. As many of my students have mentioned, "in theory, communism is a wonderful idea."

But. . . . . when it is voluntary, it IS from God.

I like to say we are voluntarily redistributing our goods, and hopefully yours. Not because we want to take some sort of St. Francis vow of poverty - far from it, God does not desire for us to be poor - forever. Rather, we know that we can take something like a bowl of soup, a smile and a conversation, things that our over-consumptive society finds such little value in, and it may restore someone's hope in Jesus. It may be the beginning of voluntary jubilee! It may be the yeast in dough, or a mustard seed in the wild, it may be the Kingdom of God quietly and subversively making it's way through our cities. What if everyone did it? Would it be called communism?