My son, who is ten years old, is just starting to get into board games. Not long ago, he asked the question I have been dreading: can we play Monopoly?
Because he is my only child, I humored him. My strategy was to buy as many properties as possible and load them up with houses and hotels so that I would go bankrupt and be put out of my misery.
During my spending spree, though, I noticed details about Monopoly I hadn’t before.
The property values of Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues are very depressed compared to the rest of the board. I wondered about who might live in a comparable, real-world neighborhood.
As I placed houses and hotels on my properties, I didn’t run out of money as intended. I kept making more because the rent I charged was so high.
I thought about those displaced by gentrification or land development for tourism or commercialization. I reflected on the land itself as it is stripped for money-making purposes.
I usually like to win games, but this win didn’t feel right.
Even though it is not a new game, Monopoly is a sign of our times. Our world is increasingly dominated by economic policies catering to profit above human relationships and well-being.
Because corporations can pour vast amounts of money into elections, they hold sway over political leaders, the laws and regulations they try to pass, and the agreements our country enters into with other nations.
Because corporate executives are legally bound to maximize profits for their shareholders, they will shave expenses any way they can. This often includes making or using products that pollute the environment and harm humans, paying unlivable wages to workers, driving local shops out of business with big-box stores and privatizing public services and utilities so they control access to them.
Additionally, they ship industries that communities depend on overseas and develop land in ways that drive out residents and contribute to climate change.
In these circumstances, we cannot fully live into our call from God to love our neighbors and steward creation well. But we hang in there with all these realities.
We use shorthand and call it “globalization” because we (myself included) like cheap clothes and Java Chip Frappucinos, and we don’t know the sacrifices that go into making them.
We have been captivated by the promise of limitless economic growth that remains unrealized by most of us. We are in this situation because it is a lot of work to change how things are.
Playing real-life Monopoly is the real work, though.
Keeping a constant eye on your accounts.
Calculating how you can make more money.
Living in fear that the government will be overthrown by desperate people.
Dealing with the effects of extreme weather caused by construction and production.
This is no way to live.
The thread running through all these causes and effects of globalization is isolation. When our top priority is me and mine, we distance ourselves from others and God. But that is not how we are designed.
Together, all living beings make up a single body reflecting Christ’s image, with each part belonging to all the others. But that is not all. First Corinthians tells us that all life is connected and that the body’s positive regard should first be directed to the most marginalized members.
This belonging to one another is a far cry from a game where players of varying means are segregated into neighborhoods, each left alone to deal with the effects of globalization. Instead, it is a trajectory in which salvation is valuing one another and banding together to protect each other and overturn all the realities that deny the divine image in any of us.
So, let’s reimagine the Monopoly board as a body shape. Each property is connected to all the others through pathways like the circulatory system.
The health of one part depends on the health of the whole. After all, if there is a blocked artery, that will impact the heart. That will affect each blood cell.
As part of a system, each organ has an essential role. It both gives and receives help.
Not all profit goes to the largest organs, and not all charity goes to the smallest veins.
Isn’t this a more joyful image than the dread of playing a game? Consider all a diverse, unified body can do: love, heal, laugh, pray, hug, explore nature, march for change, lend a hand to someone who has tripped and fallen and so much more.
So, let’s flip over the table with the Monopoly board and instead focus on how we can rejoice together.
Rev. Laura Stephens-Reed is a Professional Certified Coach who helps clergy and congregations navigate transitions with faithfulness, curiosity, and hope.
