In certain Christian circles there is a new buzz word, “intentional”, as in “intentional Christian community”, in which people live together and they hold things in common.  I once  lived in an intentional Christian community, before I got married.  Really, I’m a communist at heart, but my wife converted me to capitalism.  It’s all her fault.

The female of a given species is far more sinful in her orientation than the male.  I observe our two cats:  Both have had their sex organs permanently removed, but certain sexually specific characteristics remain.  Sam, our male cat is a good communist, owning nothing of his own, save the food he eats and the air he breathes.  Bailey, our female, is a rich capitalist pig-cat (no offense intended towards the animals called “pigs”).  The fact is I use the possessive pronoun in a very loose sense with our Bailey.  We don’t own her; she owns us would be closer to the truth; possessive is correct in the sense of our boss.  There is a saying, “Dogs have owners; cats have staff.”  With Bailey we are closer to the Greek douloi, “slaves”.  Bailey, the rich capitalist pig-cat, owns everything.  When we originally received Sam into the house we thought he would keep Bailey company — a kitten for her to play with and make her feel better about being kitten-less.  But she expressed her extreme displeasure at his presence; until one day she decided that she could use him as a punching bag.  I built a scratching post for her years ago. There is no question that that scratching post is Bailey’s.  She loves it and uses it daily.  So I built one for Sam, introduced him to it, but he seemed uninterested.  Then, he would use it always looking over his shoulder as though he were afraid of something–that something was Bailey.  Well it soon became clear that the second scratching post also belonged to our rich capitalist pig-cat, and she would whack Sam if she caught him using either of the scratching posts.  We notice also that Sam seems pretty nonchalant when it comes to kitty-cat visitors in our garden; he’s curious, he has a “I just want to get to know you” attitude.  Not Bailey–she gets her hackles up every time she detects a friendly visitor and will defend her capitalist empire with screeches, hisses and threats, with every ounce of her being.  “Give me liberty or give me death.”

When I was about to marry it soon became clear that we were not going to live out our days in our intentional Christian community because neither my fiancee nor any of the other fiancees, of the five of eight housemates who were engaged, wanted to live in intentional Christian community.  They all wanted a place of their own.  We tried to convince these women with every sort of persuasive argument that the intentional Christian community was more biblical and Christian, but the territorial instincts in the female of our own species are just too strong; it is comparable to the female of the cat species.  Our females don’t seem to like sharing:  the operative word is “my”, “mine”?  My house, my man, my car, my garden, my scratching post, mine!  That’s why they call it a “cat fight” when two females scuffle. The female has a strong nesting instinct and a need to carve out space, a place for raising babies, for which the man is a necessary evil.  So while we men would be happy to share everything we have, our food, our toys, our socks and underwear, women are utterly disgusted by such notions.  They want their own things.  The female doesn’t seem to want to share her space with anyone, especially with other females.  She wants a savings accounts too, from which she can draw unbiblical usury to provide security for her old age–I’m pretty sure that beer was invented by a man, and that the RRSP (registered retirement savings plan) was invented by a woman.   So it’s not my fault that I am a rich capitalist pig.  “The woman that you gave me” (Genesis 3.12), she made me do it.