Stephen Ojapah MSP
Vanity of Vanities, says Qoheleth, all things are vanity! What profit has man from all the labour which he toils at under the sun? One generation passes and another comes but the world forever stays. The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises. All rivers go to the sea yet never does the sea become full. To the rivers where they go, the rivers keep on going (Ecclesiastes 1:2-7).
Qoheleth lived at a time when people like the Greeks and the Phoenicians brought about an intermingling of cultures in the Ancient Near East. Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, one of those who reflected profoundly on the problems of life and the abrupt end to human worries. The thoughts of Epicurus were heavily inclined towards a materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology and hedonistic ethics. As far as he was concerned, the basic constituents of the world are atoms flying through an empty space. Epicurus viewed all natural phenomena in atomic terms. The philosophy of Epicurus found a ready acceptance among some Jewish sages. The author of Ecclesiastes was one of those sages who combined their Jewish faith with Greek philosophy in their reflections on human existence. He was a professional teacher of wisdom. He agonised about the world with all its difficulties and perplexities.
One of his major preoccupations was human greed and the senselessness of material acquisitions of which a person may never have sufficient time to enjoy them. At the heart of the problem lies insatiable human greed that enslaves the human soul. A greedy soul is never happy. And the source of that unhappiness is the continuous pursuit of material possessions which leaves a person without peace of mind and serenity of spirit. Jesus once told his disciples to guard against avarice: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:5).
The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy narrates the story about the corrupting power of greed in his classic, How Much Land Does a Man Need? It is a story set against the background of Russian Serfdom. The Russian feudal economy was based on agrarian principles and serfs were required by law to work the lands that their lords owned. The conditions for peasants were poor—their exhaustive work was meant for the profit of their lords. Serfs could be bought and sold. They had very limited property and personal rights. Serfdom was abolished in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II who is widely praised for freeing the 23 million serfs. Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does A Man Need? Was written twenty-five years after the abolition of serfdom. The was was cast after the laws were changed to allow peasants to their land which. Tolstoy’s story explores some of the reverberations of those reforms.
Pahom is the principal character of the story. His worry was to own as much as land he could possibly he get. He reasoned that with enough land, he would not fear the Devil. The Devil overhears this and decides to test him. An opportunity for Pahom to acquire land arrives, and he takes it. At the beginning of the story, a woman comes from town to visit her younger sister in the country. They debate whether country life or city life is better. The younger sister says that in the country, there is no chance of husbands being tempted by the devil. Her husband, Pahom, agrees. He reflects that peasants are too busy in their work to be tempted since their only problem is the insufficiency of land. The peasants were convinced that all the problems would be solved once they had enough land to farm. It was by means of that worry about getting enough land that the Devil who was in the kitchen decided to test Pahom.
Soon, a local landowner decides to sell her land, and Pahom and the other peasants of the Commune attempt to buy it together as communal land. When the Devil “sow[s] discord among them,” they instead break the land up and buy individual plots. At first, Pahom is delighted with his land, but as he gains more success, he becomes increasingly disgruntled when other peasants trespass on his land and his neighbours’ livestock wander in. The people of the commune greatly resent Pahom for his fines. When a traveling peasant from beyond the Volga River informs Pahom that land is better and plentiful in the area, Pahom investigates and eventually moves there with his family. With three times the land he had before, Pahom is initially content. But he does not have the right land to grow wheat, as he had before, and thus has to compete with other farmers and peasants to rent land and must cart the wheat he grows long distances. He begins to desire “freehold land” so that his land will all be together—and every land will be all his own alone.
When Pahom hears that another landowner is in financial difficulty, he begins arrangements to buy his land for cheap a price. However, before the deal is settled, a stranger comes to him and tells him that the Bashkirs, a group of people in a neighboring country, are selling their excellent land at extremely cheap prices, provided that the purchasers bring gifts. Moved by his greed, Pahom again goes to investigate. The Bashkir leaders are charmed by Pahom’s gifts to them, and they tell him that they will sell their land to him based on how much land he could lay claim on, for just a thousand rubles. Pahom is skeptical of this unconventional offer, but the Bashkirs assure him that the deal is sound. All he needed to do was to walk around the land that he wanted in one day, and all the land would be his at the end of the day. If he doesn’t make it back by sundown, however, the land and money will be forfeited.
Pahom believes that he could walk thirty-five miles in a day. He decides he will make a circuit of the area. He imagines how can sell or rent some of the land to others and make a profit. The condition remains that he must return to the exact point from where he started, or the sale is off. Pahom dies in his insatiable greed for land. Nigeria is full of many Pahoms who are never satisfied with their many possessions often acquired at the detriment of the country and its poor people. A recent video of a former Nigerian senator showcasing his wealth, brings home this lesson. His possessions included hundreds of watches, hundreds of shoes, hundreds of clothes. All of these he may never use before death comes knocking at the door of his soul. The Psalmist says, “man in his riches lacks wisdom”. Greed is incurable until it ultimately leads a person to the grave. To paraphrase both Gandhi and Mother Teresa, the world can take care of all our needs but there is never enough for all our greed.
Fr Stephen Ojapah is a priest of the Missionary Society of St Paul. He is equally the director for Interreligious Dialogue and Ecumenism for the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, a member of IDFP. He is also a KAICIID Fellow. (omeizaojapah85@gmail.com)