I just finished re-reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  In one letter, the senior devil Screwtape instructs his subordinate Wormwood to encourage his “temptee” to have a sense of ownership.  He writes:

The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged.  The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell, and we must keep them doing so.

Screwtape discusses our sense of ownership of time.  We think and act like time is our own.  If someone or something intrudes on our time, we tend to get upset.  And yet Screwtape notes the reality that the time we have is clearly not ours.  God gives us so many hours to use.  It is not our time.  It is God’s time.  We are only stewards. 

As we think about this issue, we can go further.  We also seek to own things.  But “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1a).  Certainly in one sense we can own things, in that something may belong to me as opposed to you.  But in the greater scheme, it all belongs to God.  They are God’s things.  We are only stewards.

We seek to own our own bodies.  And certainly in one sense my body belongs to me; it is part of me.  But in another sense: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.  So glorify God in your body” (I Corinthians 6:19b-20).  By rights of creation and salvation, my body belongs to God.  Indeed all of me – my mind, my abilities, all of me belongs to God.  We are only stewards.

We seek to own people.  Not in the sense of slaves exactly, but in the sense of control.  But again, people belong to God, not us.  And here perhaps we come to the issue behind our desire to own things.  We want to control them.  If it is mine, I have the right to do what I want with it.  I can use my time, my stuff, my body, my family, my employees, my __________ in whatever way I choose.  And so we sin against God and people because we have bought into the deception that I have the right to act as I do because they are mine to do with as I please.  But if it all belongs to God?  The truth sets us free to be good stewards of our time, things, and bodies.  It sets us free to treat people as God’s image-bearers rather than our puppets.  It redirects all of life toward God. 

May God help us overcome the temptations and temptors that encourage us to cry out, “Mine!”  And may we look to the One who can truly claim ownership of all creation.