Scarcity vs. Abundance: Moving Beyond Dualism to "Enough" (original) (raw)

Scarcity and abundance work together as a positive feedback loop, driving one another in an ever-increasing frenzy for “more,” creating an ever-widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” as some gather an abundance and others are left with scarcity. The Bible’s wisdom literature presents us with a similar point, seeing danger in both scarcity and abundance and thus praying, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need” (see Proverbs 30:7-9, NRSV). When we are at peace with enough, on the other hand, we don’t have to be afraid of not-enough; we don’t have to hoard more than enough. When we experience “enough,” we can rest, trust, relax, share, and live into an awareness of our true needs. We can seek and embody God’s Kingdom fully, free from worry and fear. This is what the church looks like in Acts, as the earliest Christ-followers live communally, share meals, and sell everything, pool their resources, and care for those marginalized by society. In at least three spheres of society: psychological, relational, and ecological, our dualistic anxiety around scarcity and abundance is reaping unhealthy harvests. This paper uses these three spheres as lenses to discuss scarcity, abundance, and enough: their impact on relationships through liberation pedagogy, postmodern philosophy, and feminist critique; the impact of our drive for abundance on the ecological realm; and the psychology of the Western worldview regarding shame, scarcity, abundance, and enough. Christ’s call to the church to embody his essence, and the interconnectivity in the recognition of other-as-differentiated-same in feminist thought, forms the conclusion.