Proper 21/Pentecost 19/Ordinary Time 26
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
God's investment advice is to be generous in giving to others.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Jeremiah Buys A Field
At times, Jeremiah is a prophet of doom. At other times, he is a prophet of hope. In this portion of his book, his earlier prophecies of doom are beginning to come true. Rather than taking pleasure in these dire events, smugly saying to his neighbors, "I told you so." Jeremiah instead looks on the sufferings of God's people with compassion, and looks to the future with hope. He happens upon a concrete symbol, a visual parable that will communicate to the Judeans that, while the situation is desperate, there is still hope. A kinsman of Jeremiah comes to him, offering to sell him a farm field at Anathoth (v. 6). According to the law, Jeremiah has a sort of right of first refusal on this property, before it can go on the open market. The only problem is, the Babylonian army is at the gates, and the bottom has completely dropped out of the real-estate market. Everyone is selling, and no one is buying. As a public gesture of hope for the future, Jeremiah buys his kinsman's field. His action is similar to that taken by several large Wall Street investors in the fall of 1929, who purchased large blocks of nearly worthless stock in order to slow the falling stock-market prices. They succeeded in stopping the market's free-fall. Jeremiah's purchase of the field at Anathoth accomplishes the same thing, in a moral sense.
New Testament Lesson
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Contentment, Riches, And Fighting The Good Fight
Contentment. It is a word that has fallen singularly out of favor in our culture. Advertising is the engine that drives consumer demand, and its goal is to create hungers that are insatiable. 1 Timothy 6:6-8 observes, "there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these." This letter goes on to observe wisely, "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (v. 10). Note that it does not say (as many people think), "money is the root of all evil." It is the love of money that is the culprit -- and that idolatrous love is founded on a lack of contentment. Verses 17-19 provide specific instructions for rich Christians, that they may use their wealth in God's service. A second preaching theme within this passage is based on the first part of verse 12: "Fight the good fight of the faith...." The author of 1 Timothy has no illusions that Christian discipleship is sometimes a difficult struggle. The "righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness" extolled in the previous verse do not come easily.
The Gospel
Luke 16:19-31
The Parable Of The Rich Man And Lazarus
The details of this story are well known. There is a rich man, traditionally named Dives (or "wealthy," in the Latin of the Vulgate -- although the biblical text does not name him). There is also a poor man, named Lazarus. The two men know each other well, although they are not close. Dives walks by Lazarus each day of his life: for the poor man, his body covered with sores, sits as a panhandler outside the rich man's door. Both of them die. Lazarus ends up being "carried away by the angels to be with Abraham" (v. 22), while Dives is consigned to the flames of Hades. Somehow, Dives is able to look up and see Lazarus living in heavenly luxury, and he calls out to him to reach down and cool his parched tongue with a drop or two of water. Abraham responds on Lazarus' behalf, saying that will not be possible, because "between you and us a great chasm has been fixed" (v. 26). Dives then begs Abraham to send word to his still-living brothers of his eternal fate, so they may amend their ways -- but Abraham refuses. Dives' brothers already have Moses and the prophets to warn them of this fate, he explains. Well, what if someone came back from the dead to tell them, Dives asks? Not even that would convince them, says Moses (a statement that surely had much significance for the Christian church at a later date, in light of Jesus' resurrection). It remains a compelling story, even today. One of the best-known stories in our literature, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, is essentially a variation of the story of Dives -- although with a happier ending.
Preaching Possibilities
What most of us wouldn't give for some foolproof investment advice! It just so happens there's a place in the Bible where God hands out such advice. It's in the first letter to Timothy, where God tells us how to store up for ourselves "the treasure of a good foundation for the future" (6:19).
"A good foundation for the future" indeed sounds like a worthy goal. Certainly, any investment advisor in the secular marketplace would be pleased to offer a financial product that offered such an outcome. Yet of what does this future foundation consist? Stocks? Bonds? Real estate? Precious metals?
It consists in something very different than what most would expect: "there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment" (6:6). God's financial advice to us -- that word from above that's going to lead us into true happiness -- is not to increase our income, but rather to reduce our expectations! Furthermore, 1 Timothy instructs Christians "to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share" (6:18). Now that hardly sounds like the sort of hot tip to set Wall Street abuzz. But it's right there in the Bible, as plain as day.
God's investment advice is different from that of human beings. God's word to us -- as radical as it may sound -- is that the more we give away, the richer we become.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but it's the truth. Such a truth the prophet Jeremiah knows well -- and demonstrates with the coins in his own purse, as he famously buys himself a farm field, just days before the Babylonian armies overrun the place (Jeremiah 32:9).
It's hardly a real-estate investor's dream. The Babylonian armies are coming. As for Judah, its army is in a shambles, and its king a hopeless coward. Jerusalem, the capital, is defenseless: it's not so much whether the Babylonians will burst through the gates, as when.
Jeremiah has just spent the last several years of his life preaching doom and gloom and giving the people the uncompromising message that they'd better clean up their act before it's too late. For most gloom-and-doom types, the news that the nation's about to collapse into utter chaos and ruin would bring a certain sense of, shall we say, satisfaction. After years of carefully positioning himself, Jeremiah has finally arrived at that place where he can say, with absolute justification: "Told you so."
But that's not what Jeremiah does. He takes his silver shekels -- coins most other people would be busily sewing up inside the lining of their robes, just before heading for the hills -- and invests that money in real estate. He buys himself a farm field he's probably not going to be able to cultivate for a very long time -- perhaps never (not in his lifetime, anyway, if the Babylonians seize it).
But Jeremiah's investment adviser is God. And God is saying, "Look at the big picture. Don't hoard your money especially not in a time like this. Give it away! Use it to buy that seemingly worthless field, so the people may know that my prophet is confident that the days will surely come when they will once again return to the land I've marked out for them." Jeremiah could have held tightly to those precious coins, gripping them in his closed fist. Instead, he opens his hand, letting them spill out to do the work of God.
If God were an investment advisor, how would the Lord look upon our world of investments -- that vast, multi-billion-dollar Wall Street stocks-and-bonds world? The Lord would look upon that vast accumulation of capital -- the largest concentration of wealth the world has ever known -- but the Lord would see something different from what we typically see. God would see not so much accumulated wealth as accumulated power to do good works. God would see money not as an end in itself, but as a tool for loving others.
That's what the first letter to Timothy is saying when it advises Christians to "be rich" -- not in money, but "in good works" (v. 18). In our bank accounts, our investments, our real-estate assets, our pensions, is locked up a tremendous, untapped potentiality. Those aren't just dollars we're hanging onto: they're food, clothing, and shelter for brothers and sisters who have little or none of these things.
This is a deeply counter-cultural message: One that directly contradicts most other messages we hear in the media daily. Every television show we watch, every radio program we hear, every newspaper or magazine we read, is punctured -- every few minutes or every few paragraphs -- by a clever and creative appeal to spend more of our money on ourselves, so as to increase our own pleasure. Pile up those appeals to selfishness on one side of the scale, and pile up those that encourage altruism on the other, and it's not hard to see why generosity appears headed for extinction in our culture.
This great passage of scripture is calling us to a better way: to broaden our vision, to thank God for abundance -- and then to give, from that abundance, generously and gratefully. That is God's investment advice.
Prayer For The Day
Loving God,
we come to you in thanksgiving,
knowing that all that we are and all that we have
are gifts from you.
In faith and love, help us to do your will.
We are listening, Lord.
Speak your words of life into the depths of our souls,
that we may hear you clearly.
We offer you all the facets of our lives --
whether it be at home, at work, or at school --
that we may learn to be patient, merciful, generous, holy.
Give us wisdom to understand your will for us
and the fervor to carry out our good intentions.
Help us reach out to others as you have reached out to us. Amen.
To Illustrate
It's a common gambit in science-fiction stories: some people build a time machine, or uncover a rift in the space-time continuum, or stumble into a wormhole. Before they know it, they find themselves in the future. After walking around in the future for a little while -- tasting the future food, smelling the future flowers, patting a future dog on the head (just to make sure things are still fundamentally the same) -- they decide it's time to go back home. But before they leave the future, these time travelers look around for something to take back with them.
What will it be? What's the one thing they can bring back that will make the most difference for them, as they return to their former life?
Just to make things interesting, let's say their leap into the future is fairly short: just a week or two. If we were one of those time travelers, journeying a week into the future and back, what would we choose to bring back home with us?
There's one answer that may come immediately to mind: winning lottery numbers! That one tidbit of factual information, gleaned from the mysterious future, would be enough to transform our lives.
And that's not all it would transform. That small sequence of numbers, written on the back of the hand in ballpoint pen, would be enough to transform the most questionable of investments -- a lottery ticket -- into a rock-solid blue-chip asset.
That futuristic time-travel wouldn't even be required, though, if we had God for our investment adviser. God already knows the future. God could whisper to us those winning lottery numbers -- or at the very least, which big company's about to be bought out by another one, or what's going to happen to the price of oil next year. Armed with such precise, heavenly knowledge, we could convert every bit of salable property we own into cash, buy the right stocks, and make an absolute killing. We could do this with complete confidence, because if God were our investment advisor, how could we go possibly wrong?
God's investment advice, as it turns out, is of a very different order....
***
Remember, you are not handling your own property, but that destined for the necessities of the poor; if you dishonestly conceal or dilapidate it, you will be guilty of blood.
-- John Calvin, advising church officials in their management of funds given for the poor, in Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, iv, 6, www.reformed.org/books/institutes/books/book4/bk4ch04.html
***
The Greek word translated in this passage as "generosity" is koinonikos. That word sounds very similar to another familiar New Testament word: koinonia, or fellowship. The Greek words for generosity and for fellowship are very closely related. They have exactly the same root.
Generous people are those who know what it's like to live in fellowship with others. This means that the opposite of generosity is the kind of radical individualism (all too prevalent in contemporary society) that elevates personal property to an absolute right. The New Testament says, by contrast, that those who hold wealth never do so purely as individuals, but as individuals who are members of a community. If we fail to live as generous people, we are failing our communities -- both the local community of people we see every day, and those who share this planet with us, as members of the one global community.
***
In 1993 the Atlantic Monthly ran an article about water resources in the American West. Near the small town of Fowler, Kansas, there is a valley known as the Artesian Valley. The reason for the valley's name is the artesian wells, or springs, that are plentiful there. As one longtime resident describes it (or, at least, as he describes the ways things used to be): "There were hundreds of natural springs in this valley. If you drilled a well for your house, the natural water pressure was enough to go through your hot-water system and out the shower head."
The authors of this article explain that, back in the 1920s, there were marshes in the Artesian Valley of Kansas where cattle used to sink up to their bellies in mud. But no longer. The bogs and springs of years past are gone, and the inhabitants of the valley must dig ever deeper wells to bring up water. It's easy to see the reason for this from the air. Those who fly over this part of Kansas can see hundreds upon hundreds of green discs, each one surrounded by barren areas of brown. Each of the discs represents the area covered by a mobile irrigation system that circles around a central pivot. The more years these irrigation systems operate, the more the underground aquifer becomes depleted -- and the more difficult it becomes for all the farmers to draw the water they need.
The authors compare this midwestern agricultural valley with another valley that shares similar geographical characteristics: the region around the city of Valencia, in Spain:
... the waters of the River Turia are shared by some 15,000 farmers in an arrangement that dates back at least 550 years and probably longer. Each farmer, when his turn comes, takes as much water as he needs from the distributory canal and wastes none. He is discouraged from cheating -- watering out of turn -- merely by the watchful eyes of his neighbors above and below him on the canal. If they have a grievance, they can take it to the Tribunal de las Aguas, which meets on Thursday mornings outside the Apostles' door of the Cathedral of Valencia. Records dating back to the 1400s suggest that cheating is rare. The huerta of Valencia is a profitable region, growing at least two crops a year.
Two irrigation systems: one sustainable, equitable, and long-lived, the other a doomed free-for-all. Two case histories cited by political scientists who struggle to understand the persistent human failure to solve "common-pool resource problems." The only way to avoid abuse is self-restraint. And yet nobody knows how best to persuade the human race to exercise self-restraint.
-- Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low, Atlantic Monthly, September 1993
***
Generous people are rarely mentally ill. On the other hand, let us not be critical of our stingy friends. Remember, stinginess is an illness. Some don't dare give; they might run out. My dear friends, of course you are going to run out. You can't take it with you ... Ill individuals narrow their visions until they cease to see the multiplicity of opportunities.
-- Karl Menninger, psychiatrist
God's investment advice is to be generous in giving to others.
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Jeremiah Buys A Field
At times, Jeremiah is a prophet of doom. At other times, he is a prophet of hope. In this portion of his book, his earlier prophecies of doom are beginning to come true. Rather than taking pleasure in these dire events, smugly saying to his neighbors, "I told you so." Jeremiah instead looks on the sufferings of God's people with compassion, and looks to the future with hope. He happens upon a concrete symbol, a visual parable that will communicate to the Judeans that, while the situation is desperate, there is still hope. A kinsman of Jeremiah comes to him, offering to sell him a farm field at Anathoth (v. 6). According to the law, Jeremiah has a sort of right of first refusal on this property, before it can go on the open market. The only problem is, the Babylonian army is at the gates, and the bottom has completely dropped out of the real-estate market. Everyone is selling, and no one is buying. As a public gesture of hope for the future, Jeremiah buys his kinsman's field. His action is similar to that taken by several large Wall Street investors in the fall of 1929, who purchased large blocks of nearly worthless stock in order to slow the falling stock-market prices. They succeeded in stopping the market's free-fall. Jeremiah's purchase of the field at Anathoth accomplishes the same thing, in a moral sense.
New Testament Lesson
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Contentment, Riches, And Fighting The Good Fight
Contentment. It is a word that has fallen singularly out of favor in our culture. Advertising is the engine that drives consumer demand, and its goal is to create hungers that are insatiable. 1 Timothy 6:6-8 observes, "there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these." This letter goes on to observe wisely, "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (v. 10). Note that it does not say (as many people think), "money is the root of all evil." It is the love of money that is the culprit -- and that idolatrous love is founded on a lack of contentment. Verses 17-19 provide specific instructions for rich Christians, that they may use their wealth in God's service. A second preaching theme within this passage is based on the first part of verse 12: "Fight the good fight of the faith...." The author of 1 Timothy has no illusions that Christian discipleship is sometimes a difficult struggle. The "righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness" extolled in the previous verse do not come easily.
The Gospel
Luke 16:19-31
The Parable Of The Rich Man And Lazarus
The details of this story are well known. There is a rich man, traditionally named Dives (or "wealthy," in the Latin of the Vulgate -- although the biblical text does not name him). There is also a poor man, named Lazarus. The two men know each other well, although they are not close. Dives walks by Lazarus each day of his life: for the poor man, his body covered with sores, sits as a panhandler outside the rich man's door. Both of them die. Lazarus ends up being "carried away by the angels to be with Abraham" (v. 22), while Dives is consigned to the flames of Hades. Somehow, Dives is able to look up and see Lazarus living in heavenly luxury, and he calls out to him to reach down and cool his parched tongue with a drop or two of water. Abraham responds on Lazarus' behalf, saying that will not be possible, because "between you and us a great chasm has been fixed" (v. 26). Dives then begs Abraham to send word to his still-living brothers of his eternal fate, so they may amend their ways -- but Abraham refuses. Dives' brothers already have Moses and the prophets to warn them of this fate, he explains. Well, what if someone came back from the dead to tell them, Dives asks? Not even that would convince them, says Moses (a statement that surely had much significance for the Christian church at a later date, in light of Jesus' resurrection). It remains a compelling story, even today. One of the best-known stories in our literature, A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, is essentially a variation of the story of Dives -- although with a happier ending.
Preaching Possibilities
What most of us wouldn't give for some foolproof investment advice! It just so happens there's a place in the Bible where God hands out such advice. It's in the first letter to Timothy, where God tells us how to store up for ourselves "the treasure of a good foundation for the future" (6:19).
"A good foundation for the future" indeed sounds like a worthy goal. Certainly, any investment advisor in the secular marketplace would be pleased to offer a financial product that offered such an outcome. Yet of what does this future foundation consist? Stocks? Bonds? Real estate? Precious metals?
It consists in something very different than what most would expect: "there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment" (6:6). God's financial advice to us -- that word from above that's going to lead us into true happiness -- is not to increase our income, but rather to reduce our expectations! Furthermore, 1 Timothy instructs Christians "to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share" (6:18). Now that hardly sounds like the sort of hot tip to set Wall Street abuzz. But it's right there in the Bible, as plain as day.
God's investment advice is different from that of human beings. God's word to us -- as radical as it may sound -- is that the more we give away, the richer we become.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but it's the truth. Such a truth the prophet Jeremiah knows well -- and demonstrates with the coins in his own purse, as he famously buys himself a farm field, just days before the Babylonian armies overrun the place (Jeremiah 32:9).
It's hardly a real-estate investor's dream. The Babylonian armies are coming. As for Judah, its army is in a shambles, and its king a hopeless coward. Jerusalem, the capital, is defenseless: it's not so much whether the Babylonians will burst through the gates, as when.
Jeremiah has just spent the last several years of his life preaching doom and gloom and giving the people the uncompromising message that they'd better clean up their act before it's too late. For most gloom-and-doom types, the news that the nation's about to collapse into utter chaos and ruin would bring a certain sense of, shall we say, satisfaction. After years of carefully positioning himself, Jeremiah has finally arrived at that place where he can say, with absolute justification: "Told you so."
But that's not what Jeremiah does. He takes his silver shekels -- coins most other people would be busily sewing up inside the lining of their robes, just before heading for the hills -- and invests that money in real estate. He buys himself a farm field he's probably not going to be able to cultivate for a very long time -- perhaps never (not in his lifetime, anyway, if the Babylonians seize it).
But Jeremiah's investment adviser is God. And God is saying, "Look at the big picture. Don't hoard your money especially not in a time like this. Give it away! Use it to buy that seemingly worthless field, so the people may know that my prophet is confident that the days will surely come when they will once again return to the land I've marked out for them." Jeremiah could have held tightly to those precious coins, gripping them in his closed fist. Instead, he opens his hand, letting them spill out to do the work of God.
If God were an investment advisor, how would the Lord look upon our world of investments -- that vast, multi-billion-dollar Wall Street stocks-and-bonds world? The Lord would look upon that vast accumulation of capital -- the largest concentration of wealth the world has ever known -- but the Lord would see something different from what we typically see. God would see not so much accumulated wealth as accumulated power to do good works. God would see money not as an end in itself, but as a tool for loving others.
That's what the first letter to Timothy is saying when it advises Christians to "be rich" -- not in money, but "in good works" (v. 18). In our bank accounts, our investments, our real-estate assets, our pensions, is locked up a tremendous, untapped potentiality. Those aren't just dollars we're hanging onto: they're food, clothing, and shelter for brothers and sisters who have little or none of these things.
This is a deeply counter-cultural message: One that directly contradicts most other messages we hear in the media daily. Every television show we watch, every radio program we hear, every newspaper or magazine we read, is punctured -- every few minutes or every few paragraphs -- by a clever and creative appeal to spend more of our money on ourselves, so as to increase our own pleasure. Pile up those appeals to selfishness on one side of the scale, and pile up those that encourage altruism on the other, and it's not hard to see why generosity appears headed for extinction in our culture.
This great passage of scripture is calling us to a better way: to broaden our vision, to thank God for abundance -- and then to give, from that abundance, generously and gratefully. That is God's investment advice.
Prayer For The Day
Loving God,
we come to you in thanksgiving,
knowing that all that we are and all that we have
are gifts from you.
In faith and love, help us to do your will.
We are listening, Lord.
Speak your words of life into the depths of our souls,
that we may hear you clearly.
We offer you all the facets of our lives --
whether it be at home, at work, or at school --
that we may learn to be patient, merciful, generous, holy.
Give us wisdom to understand your will for us
and the fervor to carry out our good intentions.
Help us reach out to others as you have reached out to us. Amen.
To Illustrate
It's a common gambit in science-fiction stories: some people build a time machine, or uncover a rift in the space-time continuum, or stumble into a wormhole. Before they know it, they find themselves in the future. After walking around in the future for a little while -- tasting the future food, smelling the future flowers, patting a future dog on the head (just to make sure things are still fundamentally the same) -- they decide it's time to go back home. But before they leave the future, these time travelers look around for something to take back with them.
What will it be? What's the one thing they can bring back that will make the most difference for them, as they return to their former life?
Just to make things interesting, let's say their leap into the future is fairly short: just a week or two. If we were one of those time travelers, journeying a week into the future and back, what would we choose to bring back home with us?
There's one answer that may come immediately to mind: winning lottery numbers! That one tidbit of factual information, gleaned from the mysterious future, would be enough to transform our lives.
And that's not all it would transform. That small sequence of numbers, written on the back of the hand in ballpoint pen, would be enough to transform the most questionable of investments -- a lottery ticket -- into a rock-solid blue-chip asset.
That futuristic time-travel wouldn't even be required, though, if we had God for our investment adviser. God already knows the future. God could whisper to us those winning lottery numbers -- or at the very least, which big company's about to be bought out by another one, or what's going to happen to the price of oil next year. Armed with such precise, heavenly knowledge, we could convert every bit of salable property we own into cash, buy the right stocks, and make an absolute killing. We could do this with complete confidence, because if God were our investment advisor, how could we go possibly wrong?
God's investment advice, as it turns out, is of a very different order....
***
Remember, you are not handling your own property, but that destined for the necessities of the poor; if you dishonestly conceal or dilapidate it, you will be guilty of blood.
-- John Calvin, advising church officials in their management of funds given for the poor, in Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, iv, 6, www.reformed.org/books/institutes/books/book4/bk4ch04.html
***
The Greek word translated in this passage as "generosity" is koinonikos. That word sounds very similar to another familiar New Testament word: koinonia, or fellowship. The Greek words for generosity and for fellowship are very closely related. They have exactly the same root.
Generous people are those who know what it's like to live in fellowship with others. This means that the opposite of generosity is the kind of radical individualism (all too prevalent in contemporary society) that elevates personal property to an absolute right. The New Testament says, by contrast, that those who hold wealth never do so purely as individuals, but as individuals who are members of a community. If we fail to live as generous people, we are failing our communities -- both the local community of people we see every day, and those who share this planet with us, as members of the one global community.
***
In 1993 the Atlantic Monthly ran an article about water resources in the American West. Near the small town of Fowler, Kansas, there is a valley known as the Artesian Valley. The reason for the valley's name is the artesian wells, or springs, that are plentiful there. As one longtime resident describes it (or, at least, as he describes the ways things used to be): "There were hundreds of natural springs in this valley. If you drilled a well for your house, the natural water pressure was enough to go through your hot-water system and out the shower head."
The authors of this article explain that, back in the 1920s, there were marshes in the Artesian Valley of Kansas where cattle used to sink up to their bellies in mud. But no longer. The bogs and springs of years past are gone, and the inhabitants of the valley must dig ever deeper wells to bring up water. It's easy to see the reason for this from the air. Those who fly over this part of Kansas can see hundreds upon hundreds of green discs, each one surrounded by barren areas of brown. Each of the discs represents the area covered by a mobile irrigation system that circles around a central pivot. The more years these irrigation systems operate, the more the underground aquifer becomes depleted -- and the more difficult it becomes for all the farmers to draw the water they need.
The authors compare this midwestern agricultural valley with another valley that shares similar geographical characteristics: the region around the city of Valencia, in Spain:
... the waters of the River Turia are shared by some 15,000 farmers in an arrangement that dates back at least 550 years and probably longer. Each farmer, when his turn comes, takes as much water as he needs from the distributory canal and wastes none. He is discouraged from cheating -- watering out of turn -- merely by the watchful eyes of his neighbors above and below him on the canal. If they have a grievance, they can take it to the Tribunal de las Aguas, which meets on Thursday mornings outside the Apostles' door of the Cathedral of Valencia. Records dating back to the 1400s suggest that cheating is rare. The huerta of Valencia is a profitable region, growing at least two crops a year.
Two irrigation systems: one sustainable, equitable, and long-lived, the other a doomed free-for-all. Two case histories cited by political scientists who struggle to understand the persistent human failure to solve "common-pool resource problems." The only way to avoid abuse is self-restraint. And yet nobody knows how best to persuade the human race to exercise self-restraint.
-- Matt Ridley and Bobbi S. Low, Atlantic Monthly, September 1993
***
Generous people are rarely mentally ill. On the other hand, let us not be critical of our stingy friends. Remember, stinginess is an illness. Some don't dare give; they might run out. My dear friends, of course you are going to run out. You can't take it with you ... Ill individuals narrow their visions until they cease to see the multiplicity of opportunities.
-- Karl Menninger, psychiatrist
