It has become quite popular in many quarters of the Christian Left, from the “emerging conversation” to the old-fashioned New England liberalism of the mainstream denominations, to assert that the message of the Gospel isn’t primarily about personal salvation, saving faith, holy living, and the like, but instead is mostly about “the immanent kingdom,” the kingdom of God that is with us now, expressed primarily as concern for the poor, and (all too often) support for socialist-inspired approaches to “taking care of the poor.”\u00a0 The Gospel is portrayed (betrayed?) by these well-meaning folks as a reflection of the battle of the rich and the poor, with the poor being preferred by God, and the rich had just better watch out, or they might wind up going to the Hell that the Christian Left doesn’t really believe exists.<\/p>\n
There are a few problems with this:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0 For most of human history, almost everyone has been poor.\u00a0 There really haven’t BEEN very many “rich” people in any society until pretty recently.\u00a0 Are we to believe that the exhortations of Jesus and the Apostles to seek God and live holy lives were mostly aimed at the tiny minority of rich folk down through time?\u00a0 This interpretation of scripture makes it mostly about the rich\/poor dichotomy, and lets the poor mostly off the hook because their problems are the rich folks’ fault.\u00a0 Did Jesus come just to condemn the rich if they didn’t shape up and pay up?\u00a0 Or was His life, death and resurrection about a bit more than wealth redistribution?<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0 The “rich” in Jesus’ time were mostly not merely wealthy, but disposed of considerable political power, with the ability to directly control the lives of many people.\u00a0 There was one law for the rich, another for the poor, and that wasn’t just the de facto status of being able to hire better “attorneys,” but was literally the state of the law.\u00a0 A rich man could murder a poor man, and perhaps only pay a fine, while a poor man who murdered a rich man would be executed.\u00a0 Shoot, people were sometimes executed just for theft…\u00a0 or less.<\/p>\n
3)\u00a0 People in prison were mostly political prisoners, not mere felons.\u00a0 Felons were likely to be executed, not imprisoned, which cost too much.\u00a0 So visiting people in prison didn’t mean just visiting rightfully imprisoned criminals, it meant visiting people unjustly imprisoned for primarily political reasons.\u00a0 And note that visiting the prisoner was probably itself a risk, since it meant identifying publicly with someone who had piqued the rulers’ ire.\u00a0 Think Nelson Mandela, not Baby Face Nelson.<\/p>\n
4)\u00a0 Jesus and the Apostles simply talked way too much about personal living decisions, moral behavior, and living out of love to divert the center of the Gospel into “social justice.”\u00a0 The poor are as responsible for showing love to the rich, and each other, as the rich are to everyone else as well.\u00a0 The poor are not given license to demand anything from the rich, any more than the reverse.\u00a0 Remember, the “rich” meant the politically powerful, not just people with an upper-class lifestyle.\u00a0 The President of the United States does not have the legal power to do to any US citizen what “the rich young ruler” could probably have done to those in his sway.\u00a0 When Jesus said, “To be perfect, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and follow Me,” what He probably meant was mostly, “Give up your direct physical power over others and follow Me.”\u00a0 That was the reality in that time and place…\u00a0 indeed, in most times and places in human history.<\/p>\n
Having said all that, the “rich” do have a responsibility to do two things:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0 Give what they can and feel led by God to give, wisely placed to do the most good, consistent with meeting their responsibilities to others, which includes their families, the people who work for them, their customers (i.e., the people who benefit from their being economically productive), etc.<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0 Support public policies that will have the effect of improving the condition of the poor.\u00a0 But this has to be done wisely, too.\u00a0 Mere handouts mediated by the government have proven NOT to lift people out of poverty, as a group.\u00a0 Successful economies do, though, by providing opportunities that no government program can sustain over the long term.\u00a0 No program of government aid has ever done as much as a vibrant, free economy to lift people’s condition.<\/p>\n
Oddly, and to the contravention of the common leftist meme, many capitalists love big government programs, as long as they can get the contracts to service them.\u00a0 One of the biggest temptations of the rich is to use that power to push government programs that sound “caring” on the surface, and will result in the government sending money their way to carry out some aspect of the program.\u00a0 That’s why Washington DC is awash in lobbyists: precisely the rich, jockeying for a spot on the rail.\u00a0 If Washington DC wasn’t the fountain of government programs to “help the poor”, there’d be a lot fewer wealthy people and corporations there dipping into the river of money.<\/p>\n
The big medical providers have positively loved Medicare, even as they whine about its restrictions.\u00a0 The drug companies love the new prescription drug benefit that Bush added for Medicare recipients.\u00a0 Ditto the crocodile tears.\u00a0 Price supports and agriculture subsidies to rich farmers are another prime exhibit.\u00a0 All of these were sold “to protect the little guy” and yet the primary beneficiary is people who already had lots of money, enough to hire lobbyists, while the rest of us pay higher prices (the poor pay those higher prices, too) and<\/em> higher taxes because of those programs.<\/p>\n So: a big temptation of the rich is to use government programs (ostensibly to “help the poor”) to line their own pockets.\u00a0 But it’s hard to turn down free money, isn’t it?<\/p>\n The notion that the Gospel is primarily about “the kingdom on earth now,” particularly viewed throught the lense of class warfare, is simply not scriptural or historically grounded in either the facts on the ground at the time Jesus and the Apostles lived, or in events since.\u00a0 To wit:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 If Jesus had been primarily concerned about the economic condition of the poor and downtrodden, don’t you suppose He could have done just a little behind the scenes tweaking to the climate, the growing season, etc.?\u00a0 Couldn’t He have managed to cause the unscheduled diversion of several Roman galleys due to weather and unexplained large waves and winds, so that the poor and downtrodden of Palestine could have kept the fruit of their labor from the evil Roman overlords?\u00a0 Couldn’t he have arranged for Herod to fall down the palace steps and break his neck?<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0 All the welfare, relief and charity in ALL of human history (and I mean right up to the present) have not liberated as many people from poverty as free markets, free trade, and the division of labor.\u00a0 It’s a fact.\u00a0 You may not like it.\u00a0 Deal with it.\u00a0 If Jesus’ primary concern is for Christians to do what will have the most beneficial effect on the economic status of the poorest, then all Christians should be voting against<\/em> statism (which always and everywhere adds to total poverty, and acts as a leech on the economy) and for<\/em> more or less libertarian economic policy (which floats all boats).\u00a0\u00a0 This is, of course, the exact opposite of the tendencies of “rich\/poor class warfare” Christians, who seem always to vote for the state to victimize the poor by making them poorer.\u00a0 I’d like to believe it’s out of ignorance, but I’m not so sure.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0 Jesus simply never said He had come to impoverish the rich and enrich the poor, economically speaking.\u00a0 It is prooftexting of the highest order to twist His words into that interpretation, when His entire ministry and actions are taken in context.\u00a0 He died on the cross and rose again, but he didn’t write a self-help book, nor did he prescribe socialism as the ideal state.\u00a0 He did have a very great deal to say about the moral meaning of personal choices, made freely (both by rich and poor), and absolutely nothing to say in favor of the state forcing people to give to the poor at the point of a gun, which is the very thing most of the Christian Left votes for, feeling oh so spiritual and moral as they do it.<\/p>\n Oh, wait:\u00a0 I forgot, there is one scriptural reference detailing Jesus’ teaching that it’s good for the government to take money from people who earn it and give it to other people.\u00a0 It’s covered here<\/a>, in a post from before the election.<\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>