To buy, or not to buy, that is the question
By Alston Ng
For the recent Methodist Welfare Services’ annual Hong Pao Donation Drive, I collected only two red packets from a group of about twenty children. One of which belonged to a little boy. On the back of the envelope, a child-like handwriting that spells - or, rather, misspells - his name was firmly pressed upon the line. Each letter of his name was carefully kept apart from the other, and, as signing off, he drew a misshapen smiley face, as though he were beaming through the envelope himself. In that envelope was enclosed 70 cents.
I’d like to think that the little boy’s contribution was a modern-day parallel of the story of the widow in Mk 12:41-44, in which her paltry contribution of two small copper coins earned Jesus’ praise: “out of her poverty (she) has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Here in Mark’s gospel is a picture of total commitment, a devotion which comes at the cost of all rational means for survival. The situation, of course, is far less dire for our young donor, but I’m nevertheless heartened by his heart for charity, his faith that 70 cents may mean something for someone.
Meanwhile, I had just spent some 30 dollars on a haircare product that I’ve somehow convinced myself that I needed. ‘It’s for my receding hairline’, I rationalized. But I wasn’t lying - a glassy sea of scalp emerged for both my brothers while they were in the mid- and late-20s; the countdown has already begun for me.
Not a sponsored post.
As I stood at the shopfront deliberating for what felt like hours, I was assailed, not by an overzealous and garrulous salesperson, but by memories of being mocked in my adolescence for my less-than-presentable mop of hair that grew unevenly and protruded at odd angles. I pushed back at the upwelling of unfamiliar and strange emotions and swam against the tide of hurt. Looking back down at the bottle of shampoo, I thought, “This will be my elixir.”
Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. The lie that I told myself was not so much about the condition of my hair, nor was it about the utility of the merchandise, but it was instead the idea that my wants are my needs. In every pragmatic sense of ‘getting about in the world’, this purchase was, for all intents and purposes, a fulfilment of a need. But in every critical sense necessary in questioning the pressures and passions of the world, it was anything but.
As was presciently theorized by postmodernists Deleuze and Guattari, Fincher’s revolutionary in Fight Club (1999) was a schizophrenic whose trenchant critique of modernity gave us this gem: “we are by-products of a lifestyle obsession… what concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear.”
But I know that my desire to fit in - to look my age, to appear presentable according to the standards of the world - is hardly justifiable, given that the $30 I spent pampering myself implied $30 less for someone else who needs it more. The notion of opportunity costs, it seems, is resolutely consigned to the rubbish bin by the zeitgeist of neoliberal capitalist individualism: since I earned the money, I have every right to it; there is nothing unethical to spending that money on myself.
Yet the moral quandary still nips at my heels: if I love my neighbour as myself, why should charity be reserved for the occasional dispensations of $2 to tissue-packet peddlers and Flag-Day volunteers? For the price of that bottle of shampoo, I would have, in fact, come close to sponsoring a child in Bolivia or Uganda or Burundi for a month, paying for clean water, nutrition, healthcare, education, protection, and even jobs for his/her parents.
In his parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus revealed his heart for the marginalised and disenfranchised, those who suffer and those kept out of sight:
“Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me… Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Mt 25:34-40).
Out of sight, but not out of mind. The world preaches a false gospel of individualism, retail ‘therapy’, and self-improvement, couched in a morally bankrupt ideology of ‘pragmatism’. Its well-lubricated machinery of social reproduction must be stopped, even if its contradictions were not already plainly evident. We should recognise that the gospel, while fundamentally oriented towards the salvation of souls, is hardly silent about social justice and the imperative of challenging the principalities and powers and authorities of this age.
For the meer sake of transparency: I do mean what I say.
But it is hardly my intention to scrutinize or criticize anybody’s expenses. Instead, I make only a simple proposition - not as a stipulation, but merely a suggestion - to all who wish to take Mk 12:31 seriously: take time not to consider your options, but to interrogate and deconstruct your desires, and for every dollar that is spent on a ‘want’, do so too to serve and help another. To that end, I have pledged $30 to Operation Hope Foundation (OHF), a Christian non-profit that does some good work serving the vulnerable and forgotten in countries like Nepal and Cambodia. Here’s an invitation to spend and to give in the same spirit.