The Dream of Home Ownership

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The dream of home ownership is not just the American dream, or the Australian dream. Some may think this way, they may look at the vast swaths of history and at the fact that many people have not achieved this dream, and therefore see it as a modern pretension of capitalism, or a result of modern prosperity. But it is not that at all. It is a Biblical dream which is throughout the word of God, and infused in the heart of every man and woman, in one way or another. We read in Micah 4:1-5,  

1 It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
²     and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,^[a]
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
³ He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
⁴ but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
⁵ For all the peoples walk
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
    forever and ever."

The reference to every man under his vine and fig tree, is a reference to the idea in Scripture that God's covenant people would all enjoy their own bit of land, their own home, their own produce, if they lived as God called them to live. But this aspiration is there apart from this promise. Indeed, it is promised, because God knows that human beings desire a place to call home, a place of their own. 

As Christians were are not necessarily promised this will be fulfilled in this life. But some societies have managed to attain this aspiration to one degree or another across history. From the reforms of Solon in Sparta, who increased home ownership among Spartan men. To the agrarian laws of Rome that ensured each Roman man, at least for a time, had a similar share in the land of its people. All the way up to the modern nations of America and Australia, where any man, and a whole lot of women, who worked hard could afford to own a home in their lifetime. This aspirtation has been consistent in the human mind, and common in humanity's experience, though not as common as it should be. 

We may not be promised to achieve this in this life, and we know that we have a home being prepared for us in heaven (John 14...), but a society which helps many people achieve this is in large measure a blessed society. And a society which then loses this is a cursed society. Modern America and Australia have lost this. It is now not a given that a hard working man can buy a home, because his neighbour has 2, 3, 4 or more, and the foreigner owns a few too. 

"Woe unto those that add home unto home, until there is no room left in the land." Isaiah 5:8 

The dream of home ownership is a good thing. If we had good national leaders they would being making this a possibility for all again a priority.