Ownership and Virtue
June 14, 2009 Posted by Aaron Snell
My family and I have been on vacation this week doing the cross-country road trip thing. My two boys, ages 3 and 5, are really great travelers, which makes these trips surprisingly fun. One of the things that a trip like this does, however, is bring out the occasional sibling tensions. We try to el
iminate some of this by structure - for instance, though we have a DVD player in our van, we use a system to regulate its use that utilizes beans. The boys each earn beans for good behavior, and when one of them reaches ten beans he may choose a movie, thus providing motivation to behave well, spacing out movie-watching so we’re not doing that all the time, and avoiding squabbles over whose turn it is to pick a movie and what that movie will be.
Some sibling squabbles, however, just can’t be avoided, and many of them revolve around personal possessions. The refrain of, “Dad, he took my _______” is pretty common, and I often (both at home and more noticeably on these trips) have to reinforce the concept of personal property. Usually this involves my younger son wanting to play with a toy that belongs to my older son, my older son saying no, my younger son crying because he wants it, and my wife and I affirming that my older son has the right to let or not let his brother play with his things.
Though of course we encourage our kids to share, and praise them when they do, I occasionally have felt unsettled about our approach to this whole thing and have wondered if we are in fact reinforcing a healthy and holy attitude towards material possessions in our children. It was after just such an exchange, as the empty desert miles were rolling under our tires, that I began to reflect on the whole issue, and came to a realization.
It is neither unhealthy nor ungodly to teach your children to respect the personal property of others, or to be aware of their right to their own. And here’s why: a firm understanding of the concept of ownership is a necessary precondition for one to possess the virtue of generosity. It is the only context in which being generous has any real meaning. One cannot give or share what one does not first possess, at least not in any virtuous sense, for the giving assumes that the giver is making a personal sacrifice in order to share what they possess with another. I would not be cultivating the virtue of a generous heart in my children if I told them that particular things didn’t really belong to anybody, or if they didn’t need to respect another’s ownership. It is necessary that they have these concepts in order for them to become the generous people we hope they will be, and hence instilling these values in my children is a moral thing for me to do as a parent. Moreover, our society functions upon these values, and to not instill them would cripple my children’s ability to interact positively with the people around them. I have known children who were not taught the boundaries between their possessions and others’, and the result is socially disastrous.
This has implications for our understanding of the basis for virtue in a society (like ours) that respects the individual’s right to personal property. This is not a selfish liability in capitalism, as it is sometimes portrayed, but rather the grounds upon which one can build the virtue of generosity. It may seem counterintuitive on its face, but an emphasis on ownership must be the foundation upon which a society that values generosity is built. It calls in to question claims to virtue and moral high ground of the redistributive tendency of the left.
Some would say that the concept of individual property rights is a Western, modernist Enlightenment idea, but this is a mistake. It is quite Scriptural, and can be clearly seen in Acts 5 in the account of Ananias and Sapphira. It was not a failure to give the whole amount earned from the sale of their property that brought God’s wrath upon them, but the fact that they secretly kept some back and lied about it:
1But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, 2and kept back some of the price for himself, with his wife’s full knowledge, and bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles’ feet. 3But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? 4While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” 5And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last; and great fear came over all who heard of it. [emphasis added]
If they had been forthright about it, they would have been free to give as much or as little as they wanted without retribution, and this is based on the recognition that their property was in a meaningful sense their own.
So as a Christian father who is trying to cultivate generosity in my children (and if you can learn to be generous with your sibling, you can be generous with anyone), I must reinforce the notion that an individual’s ownership of property is in a certain sense sacrosanct and inviolable, teaching them on the one hand that an owner’s right over his property is to be respected, and on the other hand that it is pleasing to God and virtuous to give what is ours to others. It is not wrong for me, or for our society, to value this.
Related posts:
- The Virtue of Pride
- ETS/EPS 2009
- Tax Madness
- Your Best Life Then
- ETS 1: Wayne Grudem on Poverty and Wealth
Posted in Aaron's Posts, Culture, Ethics, Philosophy, The Christian Life
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