Jul 18, 2022
What ought I to spend on myself? The early Christians had all things in common. Apparently. At least some of them. Did this mean “None of them ‘owned’ land in a technical sense” or “They sat loose to what they had” or “They all cleaned their teeth with the same twig”? Probably it meant different things for different communities. Jesus surely didn’t mean for us to live as most Americans do — our own misery is proof enough of that — but he also probably didn’t intend for communal life to become a rigidly defined purity test either. That just doesn’t seem his MO. On the other hand, the good and the true and the beautiful are one, so you could very coherently ask yourself, about any forgivably “selfish” decision you make, not “Am I bad for doing this” but “What greater condition of blessedness (that I am not yet able to imagine) am I cutting myself out of?”