the aussie dream

there was an interesting essay in monday's sydney morning herald about how renters have been left out of the 'great australian dream'. the author cites statistics that show that while the price of homes has soared, the distribution of wealth has become more and more in favour of those who already own their homes. one obvious contributing factor is the decreasing availability of space to build new homes in the major cities (where most of the jobs are), while immigration (both from overseas and from rural areas) incessantly drives up demand for housing. another factor is australia's negative-gearing laws which favour property investment, so that once you have 'liquidity' in a home it is not difficult to "make money from money." it's an equation that favours the 'haves' and makes it increasingly difficult for the have-nots to get a foot in the door. personally speaking, i think it’s immoral, but it seems hell with freeze over before either of the major political parties does anything about it. as the article says, nothing has been mentioned during this election campaign about assisting renters or making houses more affordable. it's either in the too-hard basket or that constituency is not considered important enough to pander to – after all, in australia, the rate of home ownership is a whopping 80%, compared to, say, 43% in germany, which has laws that give greater protection of renters' rights. i'm surprised that Labor, at least, hasn’t pointed out how disastrously counter-productive the Liberal government's first home-buyers grant has been, by pushing more buyers into an already over-crowded market, driving up prices even more, not to mention the fools-gold promise of ownership for the many who wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise, and who, after being handed their slice of the dream, found that they couldn't keep up the payments and ended up in a worse position than before.

deep breath. rant over. the real reason i brought this up was to explore the subject of renting vs. home ownership from a 'christian' point of view, because i believe this is an issue in which believers can, and maybe even should, stand out from the crowd.

it's not new to say that ownership in general, and property ownership in particular, is an illusion. nobody on this earth ever owns anything that is external to themselves. the most that can be said is that we take care of something for a while, until it either passes into the care of someone else or decays (or we send it to a place where we hope it decays, though it might take many hundreds of years, as in the case of most plastics).

not surprisingly, jesus wasn't big on ownership. in fact, he seemed to do all he can to discourage it, telling people to do strange things like sell all they had and give the money to the poor. i suspect that a lot of the time this was rhetorical (though not always, as in the story of the rich young ruler in luke 18), a way of highlighting the contrast between the attitude of the world and the attitude that a disciple should have, of not holding onto things and not trusting in money or possessions to give a sense of security, but to trust in god instead, the giver of all good and perfect gifts who clothes the lilies of the field in such beauty.

but, i hear you say, jesus also taught us to be good stewards, so he must have thought that owning stuff was ok. that's true, but jesus was a realist and he knew that, until his kingdom is fully established, there will always be a need to own things because, human nature being what it is, without some ownership the strong would too easily exploit the weak. but he still taught his disciples time and time again that living in the kingdom, which was and is a present reality for those who believe in him, means not holding onto anything, trusting instead in god for everything.

i should make it clear at this point that i don't believe owning a home is inherently sinful, and in fact my wife and i have a mortgage (though it sits uneasily with me, not just for the obvious nose-to-the-grindstone reasons, and we've started to reconsider). but i do believe that it is a relic, necessary or financially prudent though it may be, of the world that is passing away and that it will have no place in the kingdom. but then again, neither will renting...

as i said before, i think this issue is a perfect opportunity for christians to display to those who aren't believers that their values are different, informed by the kingdom not by the world. but while it's often easy to see the problem, the solution is rarely as clear. i'm also convinced that getting prescriptive is an error, no matter how attractive, because it's just replacing the old law for a new one. imagination and creative thinking are called for, as in all aspects of living in a kingdom that is here but not yet fully realised.

the principle, though, is that we as believers don't subscribe to 'the dream' and don't live as if we do. the dream isn't just about owning a home, though. it has more to do with having a place that we can turn into our own little kingdom, where we have control over what happens, where we can basically do what we like (as long as we can hide it from the authorities if it's illegal), where we decide who comes and goes. it's the old feudal lord syndrome (aka FDS, or maybe it's FDE – feudal lord envy) in modern dress. no peasants or any other riff-raff allowed, thank you very much. how different this is to the kingdom values of openness, other-centredness and hospitality to all without condition or favour? how can living by these values become evident in our day to day lives?

another obvious issue is the hold that possessions have on their owners, the greater the value the greater the hold. would it be possible to be indifferent if your home was suddenly destroyed by a freak event, to see such an event as basically irrelevant to your well-being and quality of life? would it be easier if the home was in mt druitt or double bay? as in the case of wealth (and who in australia, especially among us non-aboriginals, is not wealthy by world standards), the having is not evil, but the temptations to greed, materialism and idolatry it lets in the door are enough for all but the extremely foolhardy to want to be free of it.

i don't have any easy answers, but its seems clear to me that on the issue of home ownership, we as believers have the opportunity and responsibility to show that we don't blindly follow the values and dreams of those around us. we need to work out, as individuals and groups in our particular situations and circumstances, what it means to challenge and subvert this rarely-questioned ideal of our society, to make it glaringly obvious, like a city on a hill, that we live by a different set of values, because we have a deeper and more real citizenship, that of the kingdom of jesus.

many apologies if this all sounded too much like a sermon...