You present a really compelling vision here, and I don't think I disagree with any of your observations or even recommendations about ownership. I just bought a house.
However I can't shake the feeling that the perspective you are advocating for (and that resonates with me) conflicts with the perspective of the New Testament writers—and Jesus—with regard to owning things. They seem much more quick to recommend selling property than buying it.
I'm sure this is something you've thought about, so I'm curious if you have any recommended reading on the topic or if you plan to address it as part of this series. Perhaps the conflict is more seeming than serious, or perhaps there's a context difference that's critical. Either way, would love to hear your thoughts.
There is a significant difference between owning things and being owned by things, and the passages you're alluding to target the latter. The rich young ruler was told to sell everything because his property had him. The NT is addressing a heart problem, and heart problems don't resolve by changing your legal relationship to property. Owning less may just mean you have less to steward.
For all their yammering about the Christian charity of the NT church, the covetous philosophy of Socialists and the rentier philosophy of consumer-culture hedonists (natives of the Renter Economy) both reject personal ownership outright, but only when we own our resources can we legitimately be charitable with them.
Each time a grandchild married , we gave them something that was from the previous generation. It often needed some work but that added to the value for them. I had a 'sense of place ' shelf with something from both sides of the family and from our home .On our small property, Craig and I planted a tree , bush ,or veggies or the flowers that would come every year . I noticed in my reading yesterday that Abraham planted a grove even though at that time he was moving on. (Genesis 21:33.) Craig had a blog called A Pilgrim Shepherds Musing . On April 25, 2021 , he asked the question,"Can the pilgrim/soldier ever become a settler?" He had planned to answer in the next post which was never written. I am not sure of the time frame , but we found out that what was making us sick was mold and we were going have to move .He died 'unexpectedly'in his sleep in November, 2021 . I have had 4 different addresses since then and for the last 7 months live with family. It all has been hard but God is teaching me much while being in mourning and unsettled. Home is a beutiful word! Agree with you, Mr Foster, and grateful for this post and all your writings.
A great article as usual. Just a note on the Video Games point: while some modern games inivative and offer a superior experience, many retro games compete directly in today's market. Take Megaman, for example; Megaman 11 is a return to the classic series, but it's competing with the Megaman Classic Collection and Megaman X Classic Collection for sales. That's nearly 20 other similar games of similar quality available for much cheaper on modern platforms. This is why companies like Nintendo try to keep their older hardware and games out of production: they only want you to be able to play them legally through their currently available console, where you either have to purchase the modern iteration or pay a subscription service for access to their older games of their choosing on Switch. Not to mention that Nintendo can brick your Switch 2 remotely by cutting off access to its servers for violating its code of conduct, leaving you a system that can only play the games that were already on it with most physical media requiring some form of download to even load them up. And then all Steam games are just licensed access to the game, but Valve at least has the advantage of making them way cheaper than most other platforms.
So the point is correct but it's not necessarily a difference in quality between retro games and modern ones. There are great modern titles, but there are also classics that will forever hold up and novelties that will never be repeated just like all other forms of media. But it's not even a difference of owned vs rented media: you'll still get accused of piracy for downloading roms of games no one outside of retro collectors have access to because they aren't available on modern platforms or the copy you owned was destroyed. Technically the letter of the law expects digital backups to be destroyed at the sale, destruction, or loss of the physical media, so even the purchase of CDs/DVDs/Games was written into law to be a license for access to that media, not ownership of the physical item or what's present on it. All that to say, it has always been really complicated concerning what you own and don't own when it comes to Video Games specifically.
When I think of ownership, I think of the work involved. I have worked all my life on other peoples homes so I could support my own family. Difficult as construction life can be, it can be rewarding especially in a project well done. Elevating craftsmanship skills takes a life time. But as men if we are going to pass on something good, beautiful and true we must persevere in the pursuit of excellence. Nostalgia and the collection of cool things I get. Glorifying God through your fingertips as Doug Wilson say is our primary objective and some days are more difficult than others in this pursuit. We are definitely more connected to this world God made for us to take Dominion over when we own things and make them better. Thanks for reminder Brother. Hope the homestead is doing well
I confess I'm not hearing much theological argument here. I would have thought a better place to start is that we truly own nothing, because 'the earth is the LORD's and everything in it' (Ps 24:1). We do not even own our lives, for we were bought with a price. (1 Cor 6:19-20).
It therefore seems to me that the more Christian category is not ownership, but stewardship (e.g. 1 Peter 4:10). That still means we care about tangible things, yet not because we own them but because God does. After all, an obsession with ownership can make us think this world is our true home, forgetting that we are foreigners and exiles (1 Pet 2:11), with our true citizenship in heaven. (Phil 3:20).
28 “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. 29 But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.
I am really excited by this series. Aaron Renn also did an episode with Eric Brende on the urban productive household. I think frugality and aiming at more than just homesteading is the name of the game.
Microsoft (and Adobe) really lead the charge into the "Subscription Economy" model, and some of their software on "the cloud" is useful and even critical (or integrated critically) into certain sectors of work and life. Sharepoint and Teams are the most obvious examples. But to their credit, MS has maintained an offline, single-purchase edition of "MS Office" for those of us who refuse to submit to network intrusion as "the price one pays" to type up a memo or a spreadsheet.
So if LibreOffice or OpenOffice are unworkable options for whatever reason, the current offline build (available, but its own site buries it and steers you at every turn it can into the MS 365 subscription!) is Office 2024. Once in a while, you can even find a bargain-retailer offering it on sale.
You present a really compelling vision here, and I don't think I disagree with any of your observations or even recommendations about ownership. I just bought a house.
However I can't shake the feeling that the perspective you are advocating for (and that resonates with me) conflicts with the perspective of the New Testament writers—and Jesus—with regard to owning things. They seem much more quick to recommend selling property than buying it.
I'm sure this is something you've thought about, so I'm curious if you have any recommended reading on the topic or if you plan to address it as part of this series. Perhaps the conflict is more seeming than serious, or perhaps there's a context difference that's critical. Either way, would love to hear your thoughts.
There is a significant difference between owning things and being owned by things, and the passages you're alluding to target the latter. The rich young ruler was told to sell everything because his property had him. The NT is addressing a heart problem, and heart problems don't resolve by changing your legal relationship to property. Owning less may just mean you have less to steward.
For all their yammering about the Christian charity of the NT church, the covetous philosophy of Socialists and the rentier philosophy of consumer-culture hedonists (natives of the Renter Economy) both reject personal ownership outright, but only when we own our resources can we legitimately be charitable with them.
Each time a grandchild married , we gave them something that was from the previous generation. It often needed some work but that added to the value for them. I had a 'sense of place ' shelf with something from both sides of the family and from our home .On our small property, Craig and I planted a tree , bush ,or veggies or the flowers that would come every year . I noticed in my reading yesterday that Abraham planted a grove even though at that time he was moving on. (Genesis 21:33.) Craig had a blog called A Pilgrim Shepherds Musing . On April 25, 2021 , he asked the question,"Can the pilgrim/soldier ever become a settler?" He had planned to answer in the next post which was never written. I am not sure of the time frame , but we found out that what was making us sick was mold and we were going have to move .He died 'unexpectedly'in his sleep in November, 2021 . I have had 4 different addresses since then and for the last 7 months live with family. It all has been hard but God is teaching me much while being in mourning and unsettled. Home is a beutiful word! Agree with you, Mr Foster, and grateful for this post and all your writings.
Excellent article.
A great article as usual. Just a note on the Video Games point: while some modern games inivative and offer a superior experience, many retro games compete directly in today's market. Take Megaman, for example; Megaman 11 is a return to the classic series, but it's competing with the Megaman Classic Collection and Megaman X Classic Collection for sales. That's nearly 20 other similar games of similar quality available for much cheaper on modern platforms. This is why companies like Nintendo try to keep their older hardware and games out of production: they only want you to be able to play them legally through their currently available console, where you either have to purchase the modern iteration or pay a subscription service for access to their older games of their choosing on Switch. Not to mention that Nintendo can brick your Switch 2 remotely by cutting off access to its servers for violating its code of conduct, leaving you a system that can only play the games that were already on it with most physical media requiring some form of download to even load them up. And then all Steam games are just licensed access to the game, but Valve at least has the advantage of making them way cheaper than most other platforms.
So the point is correct but it's not necessarily a difference in quality between retro games and modern ones. There are great modern titles, but there are also classics that will forever hold up and novelties that will never be repeated just like all other forms of media. But it's not even a difference of owned vs rented media: you'll still get accused of piracy for downloading roms of games no one outside of retro collectors have access to because they aren't available on modern platforms or the copy you owned was destroyed. Technically the letter of the law expects digital backups to be destroyed at the sale, destruction, or loss of the physical media, so even the purchase of CDs/DVDs/Games was written into law to be a license for access to that media, not ownership of the physical item or what's present on it. All that to say, it has always been really complicated concerning what you own and don't own when it comes to Video Games specifically.
Another case of the "Rentership" model in digital media: Kindle E-books.
https://brianniemeier.substack.com/p/amazons-kindle-shutdown-proves-you
When I think of ownership, I think of the work involved. I have worked all my life on other peoples homes so I could support my own family. Difficult as construction life can be, it can be rewarding especially in a project well done. Elevating craftsmanship skills takes a life time. But as men if we are going to pass on something good, beautiful and true we must persevere in the pursuit of excellence. Nostalgia and the collection of cool things I get. Glorifying God through your fingertips as Doug Wilson say is our primary objective and some days are more difficult than others in this pursuit. We are definitely more connected to this world God made for us to take Dominion over when we own things and make them better. Thanks for reminder Brother. Hope the homestead is doing well
Fantastic
I confess I'm not hearing much theological argument here. I would have thought a better place to start is that we truly own nothing, because 'the earth is the LORD's and everything in it' (Ps 24:1). We do not even own our lives, for we were bought with a price. (1 Cor 6:19-20).
It therefore seems to me that the more Christian category is not ownership, but stewardship (e.g. 1 Peter 4:10). That still means we care about tangible things, yet not because we own them but because God does. After all, an obsession with ownership can make us think this world is our true home, forgetting that we are foreigners and exiles (1 Pet 2:11), with our true citizenship in heaven. (Phil 3:20).
Nah, we definitely own things.
28 “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. 29 But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.
We own things within this world, but steward them for/on behalf of the Creator who owns ourselves as well.
On the *human* scale/plane, our ownership is (or should be--property-taxes notwithstanding!) theoretically absolute.
I am really excited by this series. Aaron Renn also did an episode with Eric Brende on the urban productive household. I think frugality and aiming at more than just homesteading is the name of the game.
Yeah, I’ve never been a huge advocate for homesteading as a norm.
Microsoft (and Adobe) really lead the charge into the "Subscription Economy" model, and some of their software on "the cloud" is useful and even critical (or integrated critically) into certain sectors of work and life. Sharepoint and Teams are the most obvious examples. But to their credit, MS has maintained an offline, single-purchase edition of "MS Office" for those of us who refuse to submit to network intrusion as "the price one pays" to type up a memo or a spreadsheet.
So if LibreOffice or OpenOffice are unworkable options for whatever reason, the current offline build (available, but its own site buries it and steers you at every turn it can into the MS 365 subscription!) is Office 2024. Once in a while, you can even find a bargain-retailer offering it on sale.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/p/office-home-business-2024/cfq7ttc0pbm7
You said you help your church members in their home purchases? Can you elaborate on that?
The church community does its best to connect prospective buyers to sellers before they put houses on the market. Stuff like that.
Love this, thank you brother!