Kindle Notes & Highlights
Poverty is not coincidental with human societies but rather the product of a conspiracy of the powerful to retain their benefits and status.
Conversely, the church must voice its resistance to the devastation of the commons in the interest of private security and, eventually, opulence.
Public life costs, but we cannot live without it. Privatization will not provide what we need for our common well-being.
Thus, the church—the Christian congregation—unlike the world is a community that gives and gives up in response to the needs of others, propelled by the example of self-giving that Jesus carried to extremity. Thus, the habit of the church in giving and in self-giving is a quite countercultural habit, for the way of the world is to acquire, to hoard, and to accumulate to monopoly—so “bigger barns” and “storehouse cities.” But not the church!
