Stealing, Sharing, and Speaking the Truth

In his article, Producers, Consumers and Communers, Paul Louis Metzger makes some excellent points about how our primary identity should not be merely producers or consumers, but as a community of God’s love. I agree wholeheartedly. However, I think it may be an unrealistic argument to suggest that there is really a viable movement that would say that their identity is primarily as a producer or consumer. It would seem that the issue might be better framed biblically as Stealing, Sharing, and Speaking the Truth. The following is a brief response to that article.

Dr. Metzger cites the teaching of a well-known pastor encouraging men to become "producers." To this, I say "Amen!" for too many men and women today (of all generations) are completely self-absorbed consumers, and even those who style themselves as producers do so by objectifying others. Western culture is far too consumption-oriented...not just economically, but relationally. Everything seems to be about what we can get or enjoy with little consequence for how it affects others. However, to be a Christian man or woman involves repenting of such self-focused consumer thinking. We need to be better at producing but not at the expense of others. Instead what we produce should be for the benefit of others. Too many for too long have been like the consuming locusts of Joel 2. May what has been consumed by sin—whether personal selfishness, ethnic arrogance, or national power brokering—begin to be restored by the Holy Spirit working in and through God’s people in the world today.

Stealing

“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands (Eph. 4:28a)

We are, by nature of our very creatureliness, consumers. There is nothing wrong with that. Jesus taught that we can ask God for our daily bread without hesitation (Matthew 6). God shows his loving-kindness by providing for the needs of all his creatures be it man, ox, or bird. However, when we are focused primarily on our own wealth, comfort, power, and pleasure we steal from God and from others what is not rightfully ours. Paul writing to the Ephesians admonished them that the community of Christ-followers must be different as a result of Christ’s love.

The devil is a thief (John 10:10) and roars and ravages wherever he goes. Once we looked like that father...but we did not so learn Christ. We are to put off the old self and put on the new self in Christ (Eph. 4:20-24). The people of Christ cannot but grieve the Holy Spirit when they look (in word and deed) more like the thief than the Good Shepherd. So let us stop stealing and begin doing "honest work" that doesn't produce at the expense of others. 

Sharing

“…so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Eph. 4:28b)

It is important to note that the reason for laboring in the life of the former thief is not merely to be able to stop stealing to support oneself but to start sharing with those in need. We were not created to live alone in self-sufficient and sanitary sectors of the kingdom. We were made for community and all the relational interdependence that entails. We labor to produce so that we might share. However, sharing is not a one-way street. If we give to others like we are their savior without also receiving we are not functioning as a communer. If we only take what others offer we are not functioning in the love of Christ. No one in Christ doesn't have something that God has given them that needs to be used for the body to grow.

Speaking the Truth

The truth we need to speak to each other is that we need each other. No man is a rock or an island but we are all to function as essential parts in one common body. Our gifts are given not for personal power, popularity, or pleasure—they are given for the mutual building up of the communal body of Christ.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)

The truth is that such a community depends on us all being responsible enough to die to ourselves in order to serve each other and be humble enough to receive from each other what we are lacking. This is the love by which the body builds itself up. For us to be "communers" we must both labor in love to be "producers" and repent of the pride that might lead us to believe that we don't need to be "consumers" of what others provide.

Just saying’…in love of course!