Deliberately Sloppy Accounting
The modern world makes it difficult, but I’m sure not impossible, to be faithful to the spirit of Leviticus 23:22.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God.”
As late as 1857, the French painter Jean-François Millet could paint, on a huge canvas (which, in his day, would be reserved for religious or mythological subjects only), three peasant women gleaning in the bountiful fields of rural France. His was a painting of real life, in contemporary France. The wealthy art-buying public of his day found the picture offensive, disturbing, and ugly. He finally sold it, for a pittance, to a foreigner.
Today it is one of the most valuable, famous, and iconic paintings in the world.
It is easy to like, now, because we don’t live in 19th-century France. We live in the computer age, where even little corner “bodega” groceries have computers that monitor inventory, sales, and precisely calculate profits. (I know; I work with a company that sells this type of machine. It’s called a POS.) We live in a society where software is tracking the keystrokes of slow typists, algorithms are telling package deliverers to cross a busy highway, on foot, with 80 pounds of cat litter, to “save time” and make more deliveries in the day (I know, I just put in such an order with an on-line retailer). Grocery supermarkets, where we get the food we live on, have to carefully calculate tiny profit margins, or they will not stay in business. Often, they will not open a store in a poor neighborhood, not because they are greedy, but because their tight business model simply would not operate a successful store.
The Bible seems to say contradictory things about property, accuracy, and efficiency. On the one hand, it is a serious and wicked sin to move a property line marker, especially of a widow, or orphan, who might not be able to fight back. It is an abomination to keep two sets of false weights: a heavy set when you are buying, and a light set when you are selling. Honest boundaries, honest measure, honest prices, are the rule.
On the other hand, in the Bible, we are encouraged to be deliberately sloppy in many cases. We are told to “lend” to the needy. Some “loan”! First of all, you can’t charge interest, because that would be profiting off their misfortune. Second, you should ignore the fact that they are not credit worthy, that this “loan” is structurally unsustainable, and is not likely to be paid back. And, third, you are supposed to completely ignore the calendar of loan-forgiveness dates and just “not notice” that this loan is going to be erased anyway.
Oh, and, of course, you should never ask to be repaid. If you take something valuable for security, that’s fine, as long as they can have it back to use whenever they need it. (Why bother? I don’t know.)
The Law of Moses requires you to be sloppy when harvesting crops. You must make a round turn, and leave stuff at the corners of the field. If you drop some produce, you are not allowed to pick it up. All of this sloppiness at the margins is for the protection of the, literally, “marginal,” who cannot survive if we insist on efficiency. And yet, efficiency, high yields, and increased production are the tools that have enabled all modern people, rich and poor, to have resources undreamed of in older times.
It would be easy to say, “Well, the Bible is just out of date.” (Hey, that argument worked great for sexual controversies). But I don’t seriously consider that an option.
There are no easy answers, but there is an approach: We must learn to tolerate and be considerate of inconvenient people. And we must pray for God’s grace to operate in others when it is we, ourselves, who are offensive, disturbing, and ugly. Des glaneuses is not only a portrait of other people. It is, if we are honest, a portrait of every one of us. When we show up where we are not wanted, don’t fit in, and take what was not really ever intended to help us, God says to all, “Let it slide. I love that person as much as I love you.”
—Fr. Eric
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