TIME AIN’T MONEY: PROVIDENCE AND SCARCITY

MARK MILLER through the gift of time and how we can participate in God providing for others by giving our own time.

There is no shortage of anxieties for many of us at Stanford. Among these anxieties, one stands out: a pledge to spend time well. However, thinking of time economically implies that time is scarce and produces anxiety. This chain of events is fitting of its capitalist origins and shows a lack of trust in God.[1] Instead of considering time as something spent, we ought to consider our time as something given. This allows us to see how God provides for us

We think of time economically. Consider what at first may appear to be a linguistic quirk: we use the word spend. We spend things like time or money as limited resources, trading the minimum necessary to maximize the attainment of some goal. Even when we devote time to good, healthy, or heavenly things, like study, relaxation, or worship, the way we devote that time can still have this economic flavor.

Words like spend, trade, resource, and optimize come from economics, revealing that we often think of time in an economic sense. However, capitalist economic principles like scarcity come into conflict with principles of Christian theology. At first it may seem strange to examine economic theory through a theological lens, but this is exactly how the founding principles of capitalism were discussed.[2] As an example, consider “Essay on the Principle of Population” written in 1798 by Thomas Malthus, an Anglican cleric. Malthus is best known for his stark predictions of overpopulation, but his idea of the fundamental scarcity of resources still makes up the bedrock of the capitalist worldview.

How did Malthus reconcile a scarce world with God’s blessing to be fruitful and multiply?[3] He gives his theological explanation:

“And, unless we wish to exalt the power of God at the expense of his goodness, ought we not to conclude, that even to the Great Creator, Almighty as he is, a certain process may be necessary in order to form beings with those exalted qualities of mind which will fit them for his high purposes?”[4]

Because of the evil in the world, Malthus did not consider God to be both all-good and all-powerful. He posited that from the very beginning, a process was necessary for us to become good. What is this process? Malthus answered in the following paragraph:

“The first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of the body. They are the first stimulants that rouse the brain of infant man into sentient activity … The savage would slumber forever under his tree, unless he were roused from his torpor by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold; and the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building himself a covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity.”[5]

In short, Malthus believed that scarcity and toil were necessary for us to become fit for God’s plan. This contradicts with the narrative of Genesis, where it is not until Adam and Eve dismiss God’s providence by eating the fruit of the tree that Adam is given the curse of toil, where work becomes difficult and wearisome.[6] To sum up, Malthus argued that God cannot provide for us, so we must do it ourselves. It should not surprise us, then, that as long as we believe in Malthus’ world of scarcity, we cannot believe in a God that provides.

Let us return to the question of spending time. By thinking of our time economically, we unwittingly bring in this poor theology, we find it difficult to trust God, which stirs up anxiety. We wonder, “What if what I'm doing now is a waste of time?”, “How should I use my time now to prepare for the future?”, and “Is this the most efficient use of my time?”

What did Malthus miss? In the Gospel of Luke, Christ speaks to his disciples about anxieties and scarcity through the parable of the rich fool. In the parable, a man is faced with an abundant harvest:

“And [the rich man] said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger ones; and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”[7]

The rich fool thinks like Malthus. It is easy to read this story and imagine that the rich fool’s problem is his relaxation. This is simply a re-reading into the Gospel the position of Malthus: specifically, to only see dissipation, waste, and vice in the ease and the merrymaking. We forget that to rest is divine.[8] If Malthus is right, God’s rebuke becomes confusing: why is the challenge that the fool’s goods will go to others? Rather, the trouble was the saving: the rich fool assumed the insufficiency of the created world. He did not give, but he stored instead. He selected to protect himself in some possible future instead of serving the present needs of his community. This is further emphasized in the next passage:

“And [Christ] said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!’”[9]

Christ challenges our mindset of scarcity with the truth of God’s providence. The images Christ uses place the first gift, the demonstration of God's providence, over the anxieties: life is certainly greater than food, and without the body, we have no reason for clothes. Our life and our bodies have been provided to us from our earliest days, yet we still have anxieties about the lesser things!

Note that God’s providence is not simply supernatural but also exists in the natural world. In fact, the examples Christ uses — the survival of ravens, the human body, new human life — are provided for through the workings of God’s creation. We participate in the order of God’s created world as we grow, pick, ship, stock, and prepare our food, as we store, pipe, and conserve our water, and as we consult, diagnose, and treat our bodily health. God “entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind” with the responsibility to provide for those under our care.[10]

Providence is indeed the answer to our problem of scarcity of time. Our time is certainly limited, but instead of thinking of time as scarce, we should think of it as dear. There is no shortage of Biblical references to time being beyond our grasp and within God’s. For example, the very next verse in Luke 12 reads translated from Greek, “Who by worrying can add an hour to his life?”[11] Our time is not our own, and it is dear because it is a gift from God.

By reframing our time as God’s gift, we find an answer for our anxiety. Who gives a gift wanting it to be a burden? It is only when we realize the gift is given in love and the ‘burden’ of time is self-imposed that we can let go of the anxiety time creates. Furthermore, we can become an image of God, the giver of good gifts[12], by giving our own time as fathers, mothers, spouses, friends, housemates, labmates, and classmates, and by receiving the time others give us, too.[13]

As we follow Christ and listen to his exhortation not to be anxious about our lives, it is tempting to remain in a moral or psychological mode, somehow separating where God works and where he doesn't. However, we have seen here how our economics can influence our theology! Shouldn't it be in reverse? Shaking off our presumption of scarcity and stepping into the warmth and light of God’s providence, let us not spend our time like money, but let us give our time just as God gave it to us. ❖

[1] This is an argument against capitalism, but this is not an argument in favor of some other currently-discussed -ism. Though I am not an expert in the various flavors of socialism and Marxism, it is clear enough that there is not significant disagreement about the presumption of scarcity. The only variations are what groups are competing, what will happen, and what ought to be done. Put simply, there are many other ways to envision the use of God’s creation than the two ideologies of the Cold War.

[2] For a longer discussion on which these paragraphs were based, see Barnes, “Adam Without Scarcity”. New Polity (Franciscan University of Steubenville). https://newpolity.com/blog/malthus.

[3] Genesis 1:28.

[4] Malthus, “Essay on the Principle of Population.” Chapter XVIII.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Genesis 3:17-19.

[7] Luke 12:18-20, RSV.

[8] Genesis 2:2-3.

[9] Luke 12:22-24, RSV.

[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 2402-2403, referencing Genesis 1:26-29.

[11] Luke 12:25.

[12] James 1:17.

[13] Matthew 7:11.

Mark Roman Miller is a PhD candidate working in the Computer Science and Communication departments on virtual reality, group behavior, and privacy. He was the president of the Graduate Catholic Student Association. Currently, he is reflecting on the notion that “theology is the queen of the sciences,” and so is curious to root computer science in good theology and anthropology.