In 2021, Jeff Bezos spent four minutes in suborbital space. The brief flight cost him an estimated $5.5 billion, making it the kind of prodigal expenditure for which many scorn billionaires. In the undergraduate seminar I teach on wealth and poverty in Christian thought, I used his extraterrestrial jaunt as a warm-up example for an activity I call, How Much Is Too Much?
One of the early church’s most prevalent teachings on material wealth is that one’s surplus should be given to the poor. In fact, it belongs to the poor, because God made all things for the good of all people. Stated in modern theological terms, there is a “universal destination of goods.” Basil of Caesarea offers one of my favorite applications of this idea. Preaching amid a fourth-century famine, Basil excoriated rich Christians for thinking they had a right to keep their savings and their stores of grain:
“But whom do I treat unjustly,” you say, “by keeping what is my own?” Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? . . . It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all.
