a carefree society part 1

"People in rural communities used to take care of each other. If someone's barn burned down, the entire community would turn out for a barn raising. Everyone would work at an assigned job: some doing the site preparation, some doing the heavy constructions, others cooking and watching the children. Before long, a new barn would stand where the old one had burned down.

The most important feature of the barn raising was that everyone would chip in something, so that no one would have to suffer a large and uncompensated loss...."*

Today, insurance companies have taken the place of barn raising. Instead of contributing labour or materials when someone's barn burns down, we pay an insurance premium to some sterile corporation. Instead of asking our neighbours for help when we suffer an unexpected loss, we file an insurance claim and receive money.

In one case, we depend on the market system, on the insurance company contracts. In the other case, we are called to depend on each other, on community and we ourselves are called to care for our neighbours.

Insurance companies have made us more carefree, but they have also deprived us of opportunities to care.


*Getting a Grip on your Money by William Wood (not that great a book actually--- I have issues with it-- it is very practical about how to manage your money but fails to address the Biblical tensions and concepts that should underly our spending and saving)
** recommended reading: The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits by John McKnight