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kk.. to be fair, i am stealing this from a friend. i take no credit for this... just thought i should post this as a RE: to the consertives wanting to rewrite the bible thread.... have fun with the Great wall of text



The title is to be fair, purposefully inflammatory. But I have heard this claim in one form or another throughout my life, and I am hearing it with increasing frequency in relation to the current push for social medicine. And although I disagree with those who promote Jesus as a figure for socialism, I am jealous of their talent for brevity. For in one idea they are able to demonstrate a profound ignorance of both government and religion. Unfortunately, the very real differences between the ideals of Jesus and those of the socialist have not helped to slow the spread of this popular but misguided way of thinking. Worse still I believe there is a trend within the church where believers are not able to articulate a refutation of the idea, and often are even persuaded by it. So I feel it necessary to put down on paper what I believe to the many chasms that exist between Christianity and socialism.

The argument typically goes like this: Jesus said to take care of the poor. Socialists say to take care of the poor. Jesus was therefore a socialist (or would at least support social programs). The massive leap in logic that has just taken place should be obvious. The line of thinking is similar to saying: A police officer works for money. A criminal works for money. A police officer and a criminal are the same thing. Although the officer and criminal both work for money, their motives and methods are so different that none of us have a problem distinguishing one as different from the other. Such is the case with Christianity and socialism. Although one of the expressed tenants of Christianity and socialism is to take care of the needy, the differences in motive and method are so great that the two become wholly different and incompatible things.

Before getting into these many differences it is important to set up some context, especially for anyone reading who is not familiar with early Christianity. Shortly after Jesus was executed the eleven remain apostles started preaching of the resurrection. The Bible records a brief period of time where Jesus did this himself after coming back to life, but I will do my best to stick with facts that non believers agree on or can easily verify. The Apostles spread Christianity through modern Israel and eventually with the addition of Paul Greece, South Eastern Europe, and eventually Italy. The best and most complete record of how the church was set up by the Apostles (presumably under instruction of Jesus while on Earth and then via the Holy Spirit if you are a believer) is the New Testament of the Bible. This is the text given the most authority when it comes to the functioning of the first Christian churches, and is generally supported by secular references from the period (again, leaving out the mentions of miracles and the resurrection).

The churches created by the Apostles were really a series of affiliated house churches; affiliated by their relationships and respect for the twelve Apostles. These churches ranged greatly in size, location, and some even in certain beliefs (an occurrence recorded frequently throughout the New Testament). However, their common origins and frequent communication with the Apostles created many general similarities with one another.

One of these similarities is, in my opinion, one of the greatest reasons the claim that Christianity supports socialism has been able to survive. The early Christian churches obeyed the various commandments of Jesus as they related to helping the poor through extremely generous giving administered by the local church leadership. The New Testament makes many references of the first Christians offering up their wealth whenever any had need. Financial support for fellow church members was an integral to part to how the first churches, presumably those closest to what Jesus would have wanted, functioned.

There are a couple popular misconceptions related to this giving. One is the idea that early Christians had no private property. This is simply not true. All property was private. It had to be given the church pool. And the withdrawing of funds from the church pool was not an automatic right, but a decision made by the church leadership. The Bible does make much mention of all property belonging to God. But it also makes mention of how property is entrusted to individuals and how they will be judged on stewardship of that property. These passages have been abused to mean that a Christian has no right to personal property. This was not the Jewish understanding of property rights or the Christian understanding. It cannot be stated enough that all gifting was voluntary. And in numerous passages both Jesus and the Apostles say that if you don’t give with the right attitude you should not give at all. Christian property rights were not and are not the same thing as socialist property rights were a man has no claim to material possessions, and the needy have claim on the possessions of others (This misconception is tied to the many differences which will be discussed later).

Some say early Christians lived on what they call communes. This is unsupported at best. Many of the early Christians were not open about their faith. Most of the first churches met in private homes and many of the participants were not necessarily boisterous about their religion. This would have jeopardized many things in their communities, most of which were not welcoming of Christians. To say that Christians ran or lived on anything that would be comparable to a commune is lacking in historical evidence, at least on any significant scale. And to think that there would be a large enough supply of Christians willing to do something as public as leave their normal lives to go live on these so called communes seems very unlikely. This perception may have started from New Testament reference to farm land being given to the church, and then that land being used for the congregation. But having a church run plot of land that was gifted by one of the members was not only common in Jewish culture (a significant if not majority of the first Christians were Jews) but doesn’t come anywhere close to living on a commune.

With at least a rudimentary background on the early church, the differences between Christians and Socialists become more obvious. The first difference I will discuss is one that non believers will have a hard time understanding or accepting. But the point of the article is to explain why Christians are not socialists, and this is what the Christian Bible teaches. The purpose of Christian giving which is done through a system administered by the church is to glorify God, and by doing so save lost souls. God did not create poverty, but he has allowed poverty and the miseries that come with it for many and complex reasons. One of these is so that he can use the Church to express his love to the lost, and that they might be drawn to him. Virtually every time the system of giving is mentioned in the New Testament, the writer reminds the church members that Gods love for the lost will be shown by their love for one another. Christians are not called to give to meet physical needs, but to meet spiritual needs. The physical needs are real, but they are of secondary importance to Jesus, the Apostles, and most Christians from the early days to now. The socialist system on the other hand is meant to meet only physical needs. It holds the sating of physical needs as the utmost in moral value and purpose. This is wholly contrary to Christian giving which is means to an end. For socialists the giving is the end. This may have originated in the fact that almost all of the great socialist thinkers, including Marx the original socialist, were very hostile towards religion and Christianity in particular. Not only was there no spiritual need for these thinkers to satisfy, but many of them explicitly meant to stamp out the perception of the spiritual by so satisfying physical needs that people would abandon superstitious beliefs they held to deal with their painful physical existence. So if a Christian were to give money to a socialist instead of his church, it is possible that the same poor person may be given the same help (It is doubtful from the many inherent failings of socialism, but I will try and keep the topic on religion). But in doing so not only would the Christian forfeit the opportunity to witness to the needy, which is of course the real reason for giving, but the Christian would steer the person to a community that is rooted in the ideology of fiercely anti Christian men.

Purpose is of course not the only difference. Many of the differences are rooted in more practical considerations. One of the biggest of these is who administers the funds held for the needy. In the system envisioned by Jesus the church leadership administers funds. For the socialist the funds are administered by a central government authority. An entire book could be written about the implications of the two systems, but I will try and highlight a few of the more important. Church leaders are much closer to those actually benefiting from the funds. This is useful both in allocating scarce resources as really needed, and preventing abuse. Abuse prevention is done both by the personal relationship the church leaders have with the individual and by the ability of the leaders to cut off recipients. The central government system is the exact opposite. The massive faceless pools of wealth make it easy for abuse to be perceived as victimless. And the political nature of those in charge of the massive fund means not only could they not successfully identify abusers, but there is a political disincentive to preventing abuse. This is especially the case in democratic socialist nations were the abusers have the ability to vote. These all contribute to the observable phenomenon that faith based organizations are significantly more efficient in the use of their resources for helping the poor than the federal government.

Very closely related to the administration is the size of the funds. The Christian communities in the Bible were rather small, maybe a few hundred people. This is nothing compared to the modern nation with hundreds of millions of citizens. The public funds in socialist government systems come from a vast faceless, and by perception victimless, population. Furthermore, it takes a very small amount of money from each individual in the nation in order to pool a large amount of wealth. This disincentives fighting abuse, because the cost of any one individual resisting is greater than the cost of the abuse itself. At the same time it makes it significantly easier to justify abuse, being that no one person is significantly hurt by it. However, this fundamental and obvious flaw in large scale resource pooling has throughout history given rise to so many small instances of abuse that collectively they threaten the system’s sustainability, if they don’t outright destroy it. But even when their collective effect is recognized the abuses are so well hidden, their origins so complexly masked by the massive size of the fund that eliminating them is impossible short of complete disillusionment of the fund. Large scale resource pools are then left with the choice of being destroyed because of their fundamental predisposition to abuse, or being dissolved in order to protect those citizens that are being abused. This makes large scale pooling extremely short term by nature, and unsustainable in any successful form. I suspect this is one of the many reasons (Practical and divine) that the system set in place by the Bible is meant for very small, functionally independent communities. So just as with the purpose, what may appear to be similar systems turn out to be in reality fundamentally opposed to one another.

The issue of system scope could be a subset of size. Certainly pooling resources for more purposes would require more resources and the pool size would increase, brining all of the problems associated with that. And this may be why the number of things “covered” so to speak by the church system is significantly less than those in socialist systems. Generally speaking, early Christians met each other’s basic physical needs such as food and shelter. Our own social programs in the United States cover food, many forms of shelter, education, job placement, transportation, healthcare, retirement, and even forms of entertainment such as public television and radio. And even where the systems do overlap such as food and shelter, the church system provides these on a temporary, emergency basis. Socialist systems provide these purposefully perpetually. It is in the interest of the system administrators, especially in democratic societies, to allow citizens to draw from the pool in perpetuity. But scope could also mean who is allowed to draw from the pool. Now there certainly were many exceptions to this rule because the early churches just like the church today do all they can to help everyone in the community. But the instances in the New Testament where Christians were making sure no one was in need that so often draw accusations of socialism were referring to how Christians took care of fellow Christians. This is tied to the purpose of the system which is to draw people to the Christian community evidenced by the many proclamations that others would know Jesus’ love for them by their love for each other. Again, this is not to say that early Christians did not give and give generously to people outside the church. But the passages about giving that get compared to socialism are all in the context of the church giving system that supports other Christians. God does not harbor the idealistic and naive notion that all physical needs can be met and all suffering can be relieved. Again he has not created it, but he is the one who allows such suffering. What he has done is command his followers to act as an example of how he provides for all spiritual needs through the church members taking care of each other’s physical needs.

Although the differences listed are significant (especially the purpose although I understand why that is often not accepted by non Christians) they leave out the biggest, most fundamental, and most important difference of all. The Christian church system is, was, and always has been one hundred percent voluntary. Membership in the church was voluntary. Giving as a member of the church was voluntary. Nothing was ever coerced or forced out of anyone. The socialist government system by nature cannot be voluntary, and is always coercive. The government enforces all its laws with the implied threat of force. If you do not obey, armed men in the form of police will come and punish you. Most of the time this is both appropriate and necessary. But when this implied threat is used to enforce something as subjective and personal as generosity it changes the situation completely. The implications of forced giving on abuse can never be overstated. Even if you could identify the abuse and even if you were motivated to resist it one is hopelessly dependent on the administrator of the fund. If the administrator wants to enforce the system, which they always do in one form or another, the individual is hopelessly tied to the theft. The difference between giving voluntarily and giving under the threat of physical punishment is so complete any other similarities in the systems are meaningless. It destroys freedom, choice, personal responsibility, and the spirit of generosity. The internal journey that leads one to voluntarily giving never takes place when giving is mandatory. Christians are often accused of forcing their morality on others. But Christians with only a few exceptions in thousand years of history have never forced anyone into anything. Socialists in only two hundred years of history have forced (literally) billions into their flawed and fundamentally enslaving system at the barrel of a gun. To say that Christianity and socialism are the same is to say that freedom and tyranny are the same.

Why then has the notion that Jesus would endorse socialism become so popular with non believers if it is so easily rejected? It is possible that many Christians are just simply not well enough versed in political philosophy. This could be for many reasons, some legitimate. The urgings of Jesus to focus on the next world over this one being one of those legitimate reasons. It is also possible that non believers honestly misunderstand Christianity. Many of the things mentioned are not common knowledge outside the Christian community, and a non believer probably doesn’t spend much time pondering the intricacies of a religion they don’t believe in.

It is also possible that the argument for Jesus endorsing socialism is rooted in personality more than policy. What is meant by this is that even if you understand the differences between church giving and government giving, a serious question remains. Would Jesus have tolerated socialism? And to be honest, the answer I come up with is possibly, maybe even probably. And it seems likely that non believers more familiar with Jesus’ general personality than his extremely complex teachings would come to the same conclusion. So then the argument goes something like this. You know that Jesus would have tolerated socialists/ism. Therefore Jesus endorses socialism. This is wholly incorrect and wholly unlike Jesus. There is an unstated conclusion from this line of thinking that socialism is good. But Jesus may have tolerated socialism precisely because it is not good. Jesus was tolerant of many evils at his own expense, the greatest being his own murder. If Jesus was willing to die in order to fulfill God’s law, I would think that he would be willing to sacrifice material things in order to remain submissive. Although Jesus was most certainly complex and there are accounts in the New Testament of him showing righteous fury at various things, including theft/money changing in the temple. What he would have done we today can only guess. But to say that Jesus’ perfect submissiveness is a tacit endorsement of evil is wholly offensive to Christians and a complete misunderstanding of Jesus.

Unfortunately for non believers Christians are not perfect like Jesus. And if someone commanded a Christian to sit quite while he was being robbed because Jesus would have he would soon find a very un-Jesus-like Christian to deal with. This is because the implied admission by the thief that I know what I am doing is evil but I am going to do it anyway rightfully inflames the Christians sense of right and wrong. And being imperfect a Christian is likely to act on their anger. If the non believer is then going to use Jesus’ submissive behavior as an argument for socialism he must return to the incorrect line of thinking where submission means endorsement.

Again, this is not how Jesus’ submissiveness works. And hopefully this discussion has revealed that in substance the things that Jesus advocated for are different and often fundamentally opposed to the things advocated by socialists.

Now in the context of our day and time, Jesus would not endorse social/government medicine. Jesus endorsed a system of giving that was administered by the church and which is fundamentally different from the government social program that universal health care requires. A simple answer to a very complex issue. Hopefully any believers reading this will be able to encompass some of my ideas and use them to elaborate on that answer. And for non believers, I hope that you can at least understand that Christians are not, are not required to be, and in most ways are opposed to socialists and social programs. You may obviously disagree, but I challenge you to see a difference in disagreeing with underlying assumptions about the world that make you disagree with Christianity in general, and disagreeing with the conclusion that the underlying Christian assumptions do not support socialism. I think many of the disagreements on the topic are actually people angry with the underlying assumptions and beliefs of Christianity more than people struggling with why Christians are opposed to social programs.

Yes he was a socialist. When you're the son of God, I suppose it works better than when you're the Father of the Hammer and Sickle

When did socialism become such a dirty word anyway?

Da Boss wrote:When did socialism become such a dirty word anyway?

4 Letters "USSR"

Edit: Nevermind.

wow... 4 responses in a few mins after posting.... way to READ the thing.

Youngblood.... wow... it is VERY clear you dident read it

I read half of it and decided I wanted to post.

Da Boss wrote:I read half of it and decided I wanted to post.

Q: how long dose it take a kid with A.D.D. to change a light bulb???

A: lets go ride bikes

Hey, at least I'm being honest. Guy that wrote that was too verbose.

Envy89 wrote:wow... 4 responses in a few mins after posting.... way to READ the thing.

Youngblood.... wow... it is VERY clear you dident read it

Caught me. I'll go read the whole thing and then reply with something resembling formulative thought.

Da Boss wrote:Hey, at least I'm being honest. Guy that wrote that was too verbose.

he has a habbit of just sitting down and writing term papers every once and a while...

If someone handed me that in, I'd ask them to reformulate it in more concise language.

The ADD joke had me chuckling, sorry for not contributing but wall of text crits and all that Im afraid.

Having braced myself and read the whole thing, I can now happily say "What a pile of ignorant tosh."
Whoever wrote that is not presenting an honest picture of socialism at all. It's terrible.
Really, really terrible. The stench of bias is so overwhelming as to render the argument meaningless.
I mean, I can argue against pretty much anything too, if I make up my own definition of it.

Da Boss wrote:Having braced myself and read the whole thing, I can now happily say "What a pile of ignorant tosh."
Whoever wrote that is not presenting an honest picture of socialism at all. It's terrible.
Really, really terrible. The stench of bias is so overwhelming as to render the argument meaningless.
I mean, I can argue against pretty much anything too, if I make up my own definition of it.

*removed by Envy to help keep this open and pervent flamwar*

Uh, you want to answer what I actually said, instead of the argument you wish I was making?
I never said socialism was perfect.
Personally, I favour a mixed economy, where some aspects are free market and others are state controlled.

Wikipedia says:

"Socialism is not a concrete philosophy of fixed doctrine and programme; its branches advocate a degree of social interventionism and economic rationalisation (usually in the form of economic planning), sometimes opposing each other.

A dividing feature of the socialist movement is the split between reformists and revolutionaries on how a socialist economy should be established. Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy."

There are some interesting ideas expressed here. I agree that socialism as a specific political system looks very different from what Jesus and the early church espoused. However, the early church had some very communistic (as in, sense of strong community) practices. At the end of Acts 4, the church is described as being of one heart and mind "and not one of them said that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common" (vs 32). Although the passage does go on to say that the proceeds from possession sales were given to the church leaders. Providing for a person's physical needs was an expectation (Matthew 6:1-4), this was the early church following that expectation. This was probably out of necessity also, considering that they weren't looked on to kindly by the government at the time.

I mean, seriously. If you're going to argue against something, you could AT LEAST look up what it IS first.
Cheers Killkrazy.

Modquisition on:

Politeness people or this thread will be closed quickly.

Was someone being impolite?

But there is a fundamental difference in a church taking in donations and deciding on who NEEDS the help... I.E. the guy who just lost his job, and needs help while he is out of work and looking for a new job.

and a governmental system that takes your money, and gives it out to those who claim they need help... yes, the guy you just lost his job and is looking for a new one will still get some help... but so will the guy who has been "unemployed" for 5 years.

You know... the people who go to wal-mart and pull out a massive wad of cash to buy video games, movies, smokes, and booze... then a city-link card to buy food with. Something I have seen more then a few times.

Da Boss wrote:Was someone being impolite?

Yes half of the posters on this thread. Don't push it. This could be an especially interesting topic. If you are going to post argue the merits without flippant comments or sarcasm.

Minorities can be discriminated against more easily if all social programs are left in the hands of religious groups. And of course, stalwart atheists would be denied help.

But that's not actually the point I was making either. I was making the point that what the guy writing the argument calls socialism is not what socialism is for a lot of people, it's a distorted strawman version.

As for people abusing the system- well, you know, no one has EVER abused the free market. No sir.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
No sarcasm!?
What am I gonna do now!

"You know... the people who go to wal-mart and pull out a massive wad of cash to buy video games, and movies, smokes, and booze... then a city-link card to buy food with. Something I have seen more then a few times."

The plural of anecdote is not data. (A tangent to our debate, but worth pointing out)

Envy89 wrote:But there is a fundamental difference in a church taking in donations and deciding on who NEEDS the help... I.E. the guy who just lost his job, and needs help while he is out of work and looking for a new job.

and a governmental system that takes your money, and gives it out to those who claim they need help... yes, the guy you just lost his job and is looking for a new one will still get some help... but so will the guy who has been "unemployed" for 5 years.

You know... the people who go to wal-mart and pull out a massive wad of cash to buy video games, movies, smokes, and booze... then a city-link card to buy food with. Something I have seen more then a few times.

Those people are in churches too. I've seen it. They typically go there after the government refuses.

Oh and by the way: I suppose I'm happy enough to admit that Jesus was not a socialist in the modern sense. That's cool. I still think he'd probably be in favour of socialism, if he was around today.

I've invited Dogma and Polonius to the discussion as well via PM. This might be interesting.

Hahahahah!
Must be a slow day at the office Fraz, you're making work for yourself, are you?

Another thing to note, at this time the "church" was little more than a group of like-believing people who met in houses to share stories and support each other (physically, emotionally, spiritually). I don't think that Jesus would be for socialism, but He probably wouldn't be rushing out to give his heavenly savings to Benny Hinn either.

Envy89 wrote:But there is a fundamental difference in a church taking in donations and deciding on who NEEDS the help... I.E. the guy who just lost his job, and needs help while he is out of work and looking for a new job.

and a governmental system that takes your money, and gives it out to those who claim they need help... yes, the guy you just lost his job and is looking for a new one will still get some help... but so will the guy who has been "unemployed" for 5 years.

You know... the people who go to wal-mart and pull out a massive wad of cash to buy video games, movies, smokes, and booze... then a city-link card to buy food with. Something I have seen more then a few times.

I don't know about the US. In the UK, social security payments are paid in return for filling in a lot of forms and being unemployed, having no money and that sort of thing generally.

It's not to say the system is perfect, or that there aren't cheats, but the basic principle is to check if people need money, not just hand it out to any Tom, Dick or Harry who rolls up and asks for it.

I assume the Church has some kind of checking to prevent freeloaders from grabbing all the alms.

There is another question of what needing money or alms means in modern society. For example, is a cooker an essential of life, a cooker, a TV, a car?