Ok, now let’s deal with the
Scripture passages which supposedly support the Leftist position on this issue.
Does God care about the plight of the poor and needy? Of course he does. You
have to try hard to find a book of the Bible that doesn’t express his concern for “the least of these.” And as a direct result, he fully expects his people to be extremely generous in their giving to those in need. As supreme beneficiaries of his grace, mercy, kindness, patience, and blessings, it should taken as a given that his people will "pay it forward" by passing our temporal blessings on to others in need. But does he
care about income inequality per se? Does the goal of “income redistribution”
find any support in the Bible? I don’t think so, but today we’re going to look
at the passages which supposedly advocate it. I want to be as fair and open-minded
as I can.
First and foremost, there are the
commands in the Torah concerning the “Year of Jubilee,” found in Leviticus
25:8-34. Here’s a quick summary of what the Lord told his people. Every 50
years, the Israelites were to celebrate the Year of Jubilee. When this occured.
. .
·
All
debts were to be forgiven.
·
They
were not to sow or reap in their fields, giving the fields a “break.”
·
All
slaves (at least Jewish ones) were to be set free.
·
All
land is to be returned to its original family ownership.
It’s the last one that we concern
ourselves with today. Basically, if you “bought” land from someone, you didn’t
really purchase it: You rented it until the Jubilee. You couldn’t just buy up
land and buy up land and buy up land until you owned it all. Under the Law, in
the 50th year it all went back to the original family, supposedly
the family that first claimed it when Israel came in and took over the land
from the Canaanites.
There actually is a verse that
emphasizes this: Centuries later, Isaiah condemned
those who “add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and
you live alone in the land.”
But—and this is an incredibly
important but—this in no way advocates a sweeping
principle of “we need to redistribute income in order to make life more ‘fair.’”
Here are some counterpoints to consider:
·
The “land return program” only applied to land
outside walled cities. It didn’t apply at all to houses or real estate within the city. The Leviticus
passage is pretty explicit on this point.
·
It only applied to land, not to any other sort of
property.
It didn’t apply to boats or money or animals (which were a huge measure of
income).
Why didn’t it apply to any type of
property besides land? Because land—as opposed to other forms of property—is “zero
sum.” If you own X amount of land, then by definition everyone else has less land that they can own. Each Israelite was ideally supposed to
have a heritage/inheritance in the Promised Land that they could pass down to
their progeny. And there was only so
much of that to go around.
Just about any other sort of
property: animals, fruit trees, clothing, money, is not a zero-sum game. If I
have three fruit trees, those fruit trees do not keep you from
planting your own on your own property. If I have an income of X, that doesn’t
keep you poor. It doesn’t keep you from advancing yourself.
Land—by itself—is not income. You
can live on it, leave it fallow, or invest in it by planting crops or renting
it out. But the land itself has no automatic source of income like animals
would. So right off the bat this was not an income redistribution program, nor
does it express any interest on God’s part to make life more “fair” or
institute “economic justice.”
Let’s look another book which
Leftists love: Amos. He was a prophet sent to the northern kingdom of Israel
(as opposed to Judah in the south), and he condemned a lot of practices in ways
that at first blush look like a derogation of wealthy people for being wealthy.
He certainly doesn’t have anything really good to say about them.
But what specifically did he condemn
them for? Was it because they were wealthy? Let’s take a closer look at their
practices:
·
4:1
oppressing the poor, crushing the needy
·
5:11-15
oppressive tax system, corruption in the court system
·
8:5-6
cheating customers, "buying the poor. . .and needy."
Um, looking at this list, it doesn’t
look like any condemnation of the Free Market System or wealthy people. These
were wealthy people who were using their money to gain undue influence on government
officials in order to oppress those unable to defend themselves. And they outright cheated their customers,
which is just another form of stealing. That is not the Free Market System.
That’s “crony
capitalism.” The FMS paradigm--people making free exchanges to their mutual
benefit--is as close to what we’re seeing in Amos as an aluminum Christmas tree
is to a Spruce Pine that you chopped down in the forest. If a businessman gives
a bribe to a congressman in order to get a special deal or a tax break for his
company, that’s not the FMS!!!
Here’s what the study note on Isaiah
1:23 from the NET Bible has to say: “The rich oppressors
referred to in Isaiah and the other eighth century prophets were not rich
capitalists in the modern sense of the word. They were members of the royal
military and judicial bureaucracies in Israel and Judah. As these bureaucracies
grew, they acquired more and more land and gradually commandeered the economy
and legal system. At various administrative levels bribery and graft become
commonplace. The common people outside the urban administrative centers were
vulnerable to exploitation in such a system, especially those, like widows and
orphans, who had lost their family provider through death. Through confiscatory
taxation, conscription, excessive interest rates, and other oppressive
governmental measures and policies, they were gradually disenfranchised and
lost their landed property, and with it, their rights as citizens. The
socio-economic equilibrium envisioned in the law of Moses was radically disturbed.”
And by the way, the only sure-fire
way to minimize government corruption is to scale back the power that government
has in our daily lives. Nobody tries to bribe me. Why not? Because I have zero power over them. If government
didn’t stick its nose in the Free Market as much, if it was smaller and kept to
what it’s supposed to do instead of what it’s not, you’d have a lot less
corruption and crony capitalism. In a true FMS, the only way that Mr. X gets
wealthy is by making voluntary exchanges with other people to everyone’s mutual
benefit. If he introduces force, fraud, or theft, then either the law or the
FMS will punish him for it.
I know I keep harping on this, but I
think it bears repeating: Just off the top of my head, I can name some very
wealthy men in the Bible who were God-fearing and who were commended by the
Lord. In no way did he condemn them for their wealth. Never did he tell them
that they needed to equalize their income with everyone around them. If I knew
that the Lord said about me what he said
about Job, I’d be thrilled.
Again—I’m sorry for repeating
myself, but this is a real bugaboo of mine—to the degree that you’re concerned in the slightest about what person A
makes versus person B, you’re not thinking God’s thoughts after him. At best,
you’re confused and are displaying ignorance about what the Bible teaches. How
the Lord’s blessed person A versus how he’s blessed person B (especially if you’re
person B) is none of your darn business. If you have a desire to have a
better standard of living, then make sure money’s not an idol. If you’ve
determined that it’s not and that you have a good attitude towards your wealth,
then maybe improve your marketability.
What’s not acceptable is for you to be concerned—much less be obsessed—over
what some other person is making. For the life of me, I can’t really grasp why
this is considered acceptable among Christians who claim to honor God’s word.
The most charitable interpretation I can submit is biblical ignorance, so I’ll
stick with that. But the more they obsess over “income inequality,” the less
charitable I feel. If after reading this you’re still obsessing over what
someone else is making, then quite frankly I have to ask how you’re not
flouting the Tenth
Commandment, if not the Eighth.
If you feel like I’ve misrepresented
or misinterpreted Scripture, then please feel free to correct me in the
comments. As long as you’re civil and keep the discussion on what the Bible
actually says, I’ll print it and respond accordingly. I don’t claim to have all
the answers on stuff like this, but the old saying goes, “I gotta calls ‘em as
I sees ‘em.”
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