leviticus, politics, and the year of jubilee

Redistributive change. It’s the latest charge from McCain against Barack Obama. It’s a claim that in this capitalist country when Obama referred to such ‘redistribution’ about the civil rights era that it was therefore taken out of context and he is called a socialist, Marxist, and a communist. It’s not a new tactic for the McCain campaign, since they have done their best to slander Obama since he became the presidential candidate for the Democrats, but it does bring an interesting subject to hand - redistribution.

Redistribution is a hard thing to think about as a white person in the U.S. Mainly, it is hard because white people today didn’t put people into slavery or almost obliterate an entire race, the tribes and people of the First Nations. It’s a thing of the past. Yet, there are still marks of slavery and genocide of tribes today. And those marks are continued because of systemic racism. Even if we were not a part of it, whites today continue to benefit from it.

Besides it being hard to think about, it is just plain hard to comprehend undertaking such a task. What kind of redistribution would it be? Would it be income redistribution or property redistribution, or both? Who would get it? And, how would you figure out who would get it? How much land or money would each individual or family get? If land is redistributed wouldn’t that then be taking land away from some people and money away from others? It just doesn’t seem a like a possibility in today’s world. No wonder these options have never really been explored in seriousness. No vast amount of people would give up their money or give back land that once belonged to someone else.

In all this though, let’s consider the year of jubilee. It’s out of Leviticus in the Bible. It was a radical idea in Biblical times and it is a radical idea today. Some of the key aspects of the jubilee year were that slaves were to be set free, everyone is to return to their own property (i.e. people who had been driven by poverty to sell it), and a Sabbath for the soil. It’s a call to love our neighbor, the earth, and God. It gives hope to the poor, freedom to the enslaved, and rest for the earth.

Whatever either candidate meant or said or did, God is calling us to a higher call to love the earth, love our neighbor, and love God.