Christians and Material Possessions

The Bible puts an emphasis on generosity and heavenly treasures rather than earthly ones. So how can we as Christians justify owning and enjoying material possessions? Greg explains:

Comments

[James]

What is often missed because so little was written about in the New Testament was just what the first century church was like regarding this issue of materialism and indeed what socioeconomic system they espoused during the early church. Greg points out that there was a lot of sharing and caring in the early church and this is no doubt the case. Some have speculated that it was some form of early socialistic system, but I think this is a mistake. It is not the case that it was in any way the kind of system that Marx envisioned later in history. It certainly was not that kind of repressive or oppressive system. It was certainly a system where free enterprise and private ownership was not something that was abandoned. No, what the early church practiced, was a charitocracy.
What is charitocracy? Well it was a socioeconomic system that Christianity made possible for without a truly charitable heart, such a thing is nothing more than another utopian dream gone bad. It is only a community that was regenerate that could participate in such a socioeconomic system. It is true that free enterprise and private ownership was very much a part of charitocracy, it distinguished itself as a unique system that shed the liabilities that come with other secular socioeconomic systems, that of allowing secularism to creep into the church. It is true that having all things in common was not something that was proscribed in the New Testament, but it would seem to me that it was such a natural system for the young church to adopt that to consider any other would seem to be completely out of the question for its members. There are some truths that are simply self-evident to a well-informed conscience.

[James]

That is to say that it was such a natural Christian response to love one another that to not respond charitably when a member was in need would be unthinkable. It was a natural arm of the Christian experience and without it, it Christianity would be a crippled body of Christ. While some remnants of charitocracy continues to exist in today’s church, validating my claims to its legitimacy over other systems such as communism and capitalism, much of the good of that system has been surrendered to the secular systems with the church making claims that they are the best possible. This simply is not the case. The argument can be made that the first century church did not always get it right and that is a legitimate claim, but that is not to say that they never got it right. Besides, such a claim could be coming from an arrogant assumption on our part that the 21st century church always gets it right and never wrong. Could it be that sometimes we need to approach this topic with hat in hand and proper humility instead of arrogance of an advanced society? Craig has stated himself that some aspects of socialism work well in a family and certainly we are talking about the family of God here, when we speak of the church and thus the aspects that resemble socialism in a charitocratic system, would be a perfect fit for the body of Christ, that is indeed the first family of the sovereign of the universe. There are certainly aspects of socialism in charitocracy, but they do not have a foundation of totalitarianistic utopia, but are grounded in loving charity made possible only through the love that God bestowed upon us as a church through Jesus Christ our savior. I offer this for your consideration with clarity and charity and I hope that it will be received in that spirit.