A Pandemic of Scarcity
What’s your email inbox look like these days? Mine is currently full of messages from every company I have ever subscribed to receive emails from—Everybody from Chick-fil-A to Bed, Bath, and Beyond has a statement to make about COVID-19. Every bank, store, and institution is trying to comfort their customers, trying to assuage the fears so many feel right now. It’s laughable how many emails I’m getting about it. But the truth is, they are responding to a very real fear that is currently paralyzing our nation. And it’s nothing new—That quiet, subtle fear that has always gripped us has once again come to the surface. Walter Brueggemann calls it “The myth of scarcity.” We have lived for so long with the nagging fear that there isn’t enough to go around. It’s a fear that has often seized the people of God.
Everything in Scripture, from start to finish, tells the story of God’s plenty. But humanity introduces the lie of scarcity into the story. This becomes most obvious when they find themselves in the wilderness. In Exodus 16, one of humanity’s first responses to the wilderness is this fear, this belief that there isn’t enough. The people complain to Moses that their life was better in Egypt. You know, as slaves. Because at least the eating was good. In response, God rains down Manna and quail from heaven. Unbelievable. If you read the passage, what is undeniably evident from this experience is that everyone of God’s people had enough. Some collected much, some collected little, and yet they all had exactly what they needed. Nothing more and nothing less. Those who continued to live according to the lie gathered extra, but it all spoiled overnight. God’s story is one defined by his abundance, his plenty. There is always enough.
Yet everyday we see a new meme about the hoarding mentality that characterizes our present cultural moment. To the standard panic list of bread, eggs, and milk, we have now added toilet paper. Keep in mind most of the world doesn’t use the stuff. Consider it—There are few things which have shaped America more than this perceived need for extra. What most people mean when they speak of the American Dream could be summed up with three words: More, more, and more. It’s what drives us to throw more into our cart than we really need, because, what if? It’s what sends us out to the grocery store more often than is necessary, and more than the medical community is advising us is safe. The lie that there won’t be enough.
Throughout the days leading up to the news of COVID-19 I have continually been reminded of Psalm 37:25-26. “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are always generous and lend freely, their children will be a blessing.” Generosity seems to be the first thing to go in these days of perceived scarcity. We take more than we need, and as Jesus’ parable called it, we “fill the storehouse.” We shut out those around us—it’s every man for himself. Yet it’s all a lie.
When Paul found himself confronting a difficult situation where believers in Jerusalem were suffering and going without, he encouraged believers in Corinth to be defined by generosity. As he encouraged them to give, he said this: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich.” We are rich. The paradigm of this world is scarcity, but the paradigm of the Gospel of the Kingdom is abundance. Either the perceived scarcity we wrestle with is a lie, or the Gospel is a lie. May the generosity of God define us in these days when everyone around us is grabbing for more. May we be a people who believe the truth of God’s abundance, a people who trust that God made himself poor to reveal his abundance to us, and a people willing to loose our grip on our abundance so that those around us might also have.