I picked it up again today, and finished a chapter titled Usury: A History of Gift Exchange, and I remembered that I wanted to write a blog about this chapter once I finished it. So, here goes.
To start off, The Gift doesn't immediately jump into the "Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World." I'm about half way through the book, and up to this point it has been about the history of gift-giving in different cultures and points in history. It's as much an anthropological study as it is a sociological one, and though that might sound really drab and I'm eager for the creativity and art part of the book, it's actually pretty interesting. Chapter 7 is particularly interesting to me because the author takes on the notion of gift exchange and usury (along with interest loans) from the law of Moses, Deuteronomy 23:19,20, which reads:
"Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess."
As Hyde says, "This double law, both a prohibition and a permission, seeks to organize the double situation of being a brotherood wandering among strangers." He goes on to explain that the gift-cycle is that those who are not in need within the group ought to give to those who are in need within the group, because the group as a whole feels the pang of the individual's needs. That "no member of the tribe be either more or less in touch with the necessities of life." This is a generosity with boundaries, though, as strangers are premited to be charged an interest because there is no assurance otherwise that the whatever is given would eventually return organically. Now, I know that this leaves a lot unsaid that the book addresses in previous chapters, such as the nature of the gift-cycle. What I primarily want to focus on is this law about usury, the nature of "the other," and how the history of the church defined its implementation; at least, how Hyde explains it.
This law from the Old Testament essentially makes it so that Gentiles are kept in the stranger status, and Jewish brothers as those within the group, creating specific boundaries for economics and commerce. This type of division between peoples is challenged greatly in the New Testament when Jesus comes into the picture and flips so many laws seemingly upside down. New Testament teaching proclaims that for those who follow Jesus, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28). Charging interest for the foreigner is questioned completely, because if all are brothers, who is the foreigner being charged? Boundaries are extended well beyond the Israelites because being considered one of God's people was extended beyond the Israelites. Regarding the topic of charging usury, Hyde explains that it was interpreted by early Christians to share all things and give freely to all -- as seen in the book of Acts. It would seem that this kind of compassion and open-handedness breaks down when Christianity gets wrapped up into the Roman Empire and even more broken down with the Reformation and beyond. Personal property, seperation of "worldly" laws and faith, and class divisions (the poor suffering the most) became more and more rigid as people tried to define who should be charged interest and rent, and who should not be. The spirit of Grace and Compassion towards strangers seems all but suffocated in the public sphere.
I find this chapter fascinating because so much of what the church fathers (like Luther and Calvin) have to say about the matter seems so far off from the way I've understood engaging the world around me as a Christian. The New Testament seems very clear to me in not expecting anything in return when someone owes you (especially if you know they cannot afford it), and at the very least not hold it over their head with an interest rate. Additionally, I've learned and believe that my Christian faith should inform everything that I do, whether I am dealing with Christians or dealing with non-Christians. Although Lewis Hyde is speaking pretty exclusively about the nature of tangible gifts and not the nature of faith, his use of "spirit" in this chapter is easily interchangable with the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gift of Salvation, the gift of God's love, compassion, and grace. Yet I see this exclusion of "the other" and tight grips on personal property play out every day around me and in Christian sub-culture bubbles, all of it fodder for zealous media stations and internet trolls. It's the kind of christianity that is self-concerned and thinks that God is an object that can be taken out of other things like school buildings and songs, leaving a den of sin behind it. It's the kind of christianity that builds giant buildings while kids in American cities aren't getting proper nutrition because the only time they really have a meal is once a day at school. A gift is offered with one hand but the other hand holds "the other" at a distance, making sure you don't get too close. While we all ought to be wise and I don't think we should pursue being taken advantage of, Christians are called to take care of the orphaned, the widow, and the poor, as well as each other. Not just by giving material "gifts" but also giving gifts of education, new skills, and so on.
But I digress. I wrestle with a slew of other things that make me out to be not as generous or compassionate or loving as I know Jesus would have me be. I am not completely unaware of the logs jammed into my own eyes, and there are times when I am very jaded and the opposite of compassionate and generous.
There is much more that I could write and end up quoting nearly the entire chapter, so I'll use the nice summary that Hyde implements:
" ... Our blood is a thing that distributes the breath throughout the body, a liquid that flows when it carries the inner air and hardens when it meets the outer air, a substance that moves freely to every part but is nonetheless contained, a healer that goes without restraint to any needy place in the body. It moves under pressure ... and inside its vessels the blood, the gift, is neither bought nor sold and it comes back forever.
The history of usury is the history of this blood. As we have seen, there are two shades of property, gift and commodity. ... The image of the Christian era would be the bleeding heart. The Christian can feel the spirit move inside all property. Everything on earth is a gift and God is the vessel. Our small bodies may be expanded; we need not confine the blood. If we only open the heart with faith, we will be lifted to a great circulation and the body that has been given up will be given back, reborn and freed from death. The boundaries of usury are to be broken wherever they are found so that the spirit may cover the world and vivify everything. The image of the Middle Ages is the expanding heart, and the deviant is the 'hardhearted' man. He is usually taken to be a Jew, the only man in town who feels no self-consciousness in limiting his generosity.
The Reformation brought the hard heart back into the Church. In a sense, the swing from gift to commodity recrossed its midpoint during these years, the high liveliness of the Renaissance. The church still affirmed the spirit of gift, but at the same time it made peace with the temporal world that limited that spirit as it [the church] grew in influence.
But the heart continued to harden. After the reformation the empires of commodity expanded without limit until soon all things -- from land and labor to erotic life, religion, and culture -- were bought and sold like shoes. It is now the age of the practical and self-made man, who, like the private eye in the movies, survives in the world by adopting the detatchment style of the alien; he lives in the spirit of usury, which is the spirit of boundaries and divisions.
The 'bleeding heart' is now the man of dubious mettle with an embarrassing inability to limit is compassion. Among the British in the Empire it was a virtue not to feel touched by the natives, and a man who 'went native' was quickly shipped home. ... Now the deviant is the heart that does not keep its own counsel and touches others with feeling, not reckoning. Gift exchange takes refuge in Sunday morning and the family. ...
In this century, the man with the bleeding heart is a sentimental fool because he has a feeling that can no longer find its form. Still, his sentimentality is appealing. ... In the empires of usury the sentimentality of the man with the soft heart calls to us because it speaks of what has been lost."
May all our hearts be softened by Christ.
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