Differing mandates
Re: “A defense of the left” (MH, Nov. 1)
November 21, 2006
Andy Derksen
I mostly agree with Sarah Endacott’s assertion that “Christians need to approach left-wing politics with an open mind and thoughtfulness instead of immediately dismissing it because of a few policies” (“A defense of the left,” Nov. 1).
Endacott is right to say that leftism overlaps Christianity in areas “such as charity, justice, fairness, and recognition of human dignity,” but it does not follow that all Christian values necessarily have a place in the structuring of government. Regarding charity specifically, the two most fundamental questions are: (1) From whom should charity arise? and (2) Does the government have a moral obligation to extend charity?
It seems to me that, based on Romans 13:1-4 and other passages, the most God expects of secular government is to maintain law and order. Anything else is gratis. This does not mean it’s positively “wrong” for a government to, for example, establish and oversee a healthcare system. It simply means that we have no moral grounds to demand any services beyond law and order.
Yet Endacott appears to make just such a demand, when she insists that “it is next to impossible to read the Bible and deny the legitimacy of what the left has to teach us about economic structure. . . . [S]afeguarding the poor is a common teaching in the Bible.” It is indeed a common teaching—but not one applied to secular governments. In the Old Testament era, Israel was a theocratic state, and theologically a partial model of the Church. As such, God’s demand that they care for the poor is equivalent to His demand that Christians likewise help the poor.
So what we have here are two different mandates for two different institutions. We have no right to expect the government or the populace at large to fulfill the Church’s mandate. Indeed, the larger the government, and the more it controls and oversees, the less inclined are citizens, including Christians, to perform charitable deeds on their own because we expect the state to do it.
Does an individual have the moral right to seize one person’s assets in order to give aid to another? No. Why do we assume that the state or society at large has the right to commandeer private resources to help those in need?
The Bible calls for compassion; socialism calls for coercion.
Now you go...
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