In his provocative book, The Problem of Poverty (previously published as Christianity and the Class Struggle), Abraham Kuyper devotes a section to sketching how the church was influential in society at the time of its founding. Kuyper highlights how the church addressed the class conflict, economic oppression, and injustice which festered in the civil and cultural milieu of the first-century Roman Empire.
According to Kuyper, Christ founded the church to “triply influence the life of society” and address social injustice as follows (emphasis in original):
First, through the ministry of the Word, insofar as the Word constantly fought against greed for money, comforted the poor and oppressed, and in exchange for the suffering of the present time pointed to an endless glory.
Then, second, through an organized ministry of charity, which in the name of the Lord, as being the single owner of all goods, demanded community of goods to this extent, that in the circle of believers no man or woman was to be permitted to suffer want or to be without the necessary apparel.
And, third, by instituting the equality of brotherhood over against difference in rank and station, through abolishing all artificial demarcations between men, and by joining rich and poor in one holy food at the Lord’s Supper, in symbol of the unity which bound them together not only as “children of men,” but, more importantly, as those who have collapsed under the same guilt and have been saved by the same sacrifice in Christ.
This revolutionary sociology enacted in the life of the church inevitably caused ripples in the broader culture. For Kuyper, this is entirely fitting, because the church “was instituted so as not only to seek the eternal welfare of its followers, but also very definitely to remove social injustices.” Kuyper says that “the Church forsakes its principle when it is only concerned with heaven and does not relieve earthly need.”
Note carefully that Kuyper is not speaking merely of an inner change in individual Christians which may affect their personal conduct in the world. Rather, answering injustice belongs to the very organization, institution, and mission of the church: its social structure, communal life, and public witness and work.
Given Kuyper’s status as a seminal reformed theologian, his views on the role of the church in the world are significant and relevant for contemporary discussion. Kuyper certainly does not restrict the scope of the church’s mission to preaching or even individual conversion, but understands it as encompassing societal reformation.<>продвижение а оптимизация
Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, an English medical doctor/psychiatrist and essayist. He is quite the essayist. First-rate if you ask me, and he has greatly informed and influenced my understanding of the plight of the poor under a socialist regime.
I have been reading his collection of essays entitled, “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.” The front cover bears a recommendation by Thomas Sowell which states, “A classic for our times. It is as fundamental for understanding the world we live in as the three R’s.” If I wrote a book that Thomas Sowell viewed as fundamental, I would say so on the front cover, too. Dr. Daniels is a physician in England, and has served in inner-city hospitals and prisons in London and Sub-Saharan Africa. Wikipedia reports that he interviewed over 10,000 people who had attempted suicide as research for this book. Needless to say it is a sad book. It is sad because it relates stories of hopelessness and despair, brought on by murder, rape, theft, domestic abuse, child neglect, drug addiction, and drunkenness, which are all proliferated by the government’s attempts to fix everything. It is also sad because Dalrymple’s penetrating analysis falls woefully short of producing an answer to the problems. These people are not only caught in the downward spiral of the government’s social commode, but they continue to make wicked personal choices, which are no one’s fault but their own. They need the Light that shines in the darkness if they are to find the pathway out of despair.
However, this is not to say that Dalrymple’s analysis of the situation is fatally flawed. He is a “scientist,” and has collected the “data” from his lifetime of interviewing. Though failing to correctly abstract the Biblical “universal” problem at hand, he has correctly diagnosed many of the symptoms. Through Dalrymple’s essays, I am becoming increasingly convinced that it is not only outside the God-ordained duties of the civil government to legislate and oversee the redistribution of wealth for the supposed betterment of the poor, but also that, despite the best of intentions, this perpetual “help” from the government becomes a detriment to their personal and social well-being. Dalrymple has correctly identified this detriment as a petrification of their state of squalor by the creation of a world view that holds them captive.
Dalrymple relates that there is squalor in England, but it is not economic. It is spiritual, moral, and cultural. The transformation of the lower class into the lower caste, from which there is rarely an opportunity to escape, has been caused by a social welfare system that has inasmuch removed any fear of the possibility of hunger. From the dawn of time men and women have been driven to work, beg, borrow, or steal for the purpose of getting enough calories in order to make it to the next meal. Even the poorest of people in non-socialized countries have a telos, a purpose. Their purpose is to survive the day, and that purpose brings a certain amount of satisfaction when they accomplish it. Dalrymple’s essays remind us that without the chance of starvation, the poorest of society have their sole purpose removed. Instead of it being replaced by something profitable, they are left with boredom, which will eventually lead to crime, gluttony, drunkenness, illicit sexuality, and eventually despair. This kind of life destroys any real self-esteem, and “with no self-esteem, there is no chance of self-improvement.” This purposeless life leads many to regret being alive at all.
“That’s easy for a middle-class guy in America to say,” you might be thinking to yourself, “telling people to find their purpose and satisfaction in surviving the day.” Yeah, it does come across as harsh, but the reality of the matter, one that many refuse to accept is that you cannot legislate away poverty and you cannot ultimately sidestep your Creator. If He has created you in His image, and He has, then certain rules apply. Not just rules like the “thou shalt nots,” but the underlying fabric from which all of the positive laws spring. The two realities that God is, and God made us in His image.
There is a Messiah, who will set the world to rights. He delights in feeding the poor. In healing up the broken-hearted. In bringing joy to those who despair. In setting the prisoner free. In giving purpose to the hopeless. His name is Jesus, and next post, I will examine Dalrymple’s conclusions in the light of His Word.
Here’s a link to purchase this important work on Amazon:
Two weeks ago Phil Mickelson won the British Open. He received 1.43 million dollars in prize money. He was allowed to keep around $570,000. Who got the rest? England and the State of California where Phil Mickelson lives.
Let’s work this out for all those, who like me, are not great with math. Imagine you make $50,000 per year and the state takes 61%. What would that look like? You would bring home $19,500. Imagine you make $75,000 per year and the state took 61%. You would bring home $29,250. I think you get the picture. No average person would stand for the state taking 61% of their income. Some may complain that England is the one levying the taxes, not the U.S. But if you earned $50,000 on English soil would you be happy if the English took $22,500 (45%)? Would you be happy if your home state took 13.3% of your earnings every year before Medicare, Social Security, etc.? That would be $6,500 out of your $50,000 going to the state. In the U.S. the average federal tax on the top 1%, those households averaging 1.4 million, is 35.5%. So if you live in California and made $50,000 and were taxed at the same rate as Phil Mickelson, you would pay 13.3% in state taxes and 35.5% in federal taxes. You would be handing over $24,400 to the government and that does not include Social Security, Medicaid, or self-employment taxes. Would you stand for this? S0 why are we happy to let them to do it to others? Why do we think it is okay to take excessive amounts of money from men, who have lawfully earned it, just because they have more than others?
Before asking a few questions about excessive taxation, here is a quick primer on the poor and rich in Scripture.
As Christians, we know that those to whom much is given, much is required. Paul says in I Timothy 6:17-19 that the wealthy are to be rich in good works and not trust in their riches. The rich are to give more. We also understand that all Christians have an obligation to care for the poor. So wealthy Christians should give often and a lot, but they should give secretly (Matthew 6:1-4) and wisely.
In Exodus 30:15 the rich and the poor both give 1/2 a shekel. In Leviticus 14:21 the poor could give less than the rich, but this was not a percentage less. In other words, it wasn’t the rich offering 35% and the poor offering 3%. It was poor bringing less numerically because the poor had less numerically. The poor brought one male lamb (vs. 21) instead of the two male lambs and the one ewe lamb of the rich (vs. 10). Oppressing the poor was always forbidden. This is clear in the year of Jubilee instructions (Leviticus 25; see also Deuteronomy 15). The rich were supposed to provide ways for the poor to get food, such as not gleaning to the edges of the field or gathering fallen grapes (Leviticus 19:10 and 23:22). There does not appear to any civil penalty for not doing these things, but the Lord does hear the cry of the poor and will avenge them.
Throughout the OT the poor and the rich are to be treated with equity by the law. For example in Exodus 23:2-3 it is clear that poor and rich are both entitled to justice. Notice especially verse 3, which says we are not to show partiality to the poor. Leviticus 19:15 says something similar. The poor do not get special treatment in court. There is more about the poor in the prophets. In these texts there is no indication that the state should take more, percentage wise, from the rich simply because they have more and give it to the poor. So let me be clear. I am not saying the poor should be ignored. Nor am I a saying the rich have no obligation to do good deeds. What I am saying is the state does not have a Scriptural right to steal from the rich to give to the poor. Theft perpetuated by the government against the rich is still theft.
Christian pastors should encourage the wealthy among them to give with cheerful hearts to those who need it. But Christian pastors should also call excessive taxation what it is: codified theft. And they should say it from the pulpit. Finally, Christian pastors should encourage their congregation to ask, “Would you want someone doing that to you? Then why do you vote for men who do it to other people?”
Here are few more questions about excessive taxation.
Do we really believe that the state will be wiser with Phil’s $830, 000 than Phil would be? All around us is economic disaster fueled by the policies of the state (see Detroit) and yet the state wants us to trust them with more and more of our money. What would Phil have done with money? He would have invested it somewhere, which normally leads to jobs and economic prosperity for many. Does anyone actually believe that Phil’s money won’t be lost in endless cesspool of government programs that bear no fruit?
Do we believe it is okay to steal from someone simply because they have more? Envy is explicitly forbidden by Scripture (Mark 7:22, Romans 1:29, I Corinthians 13:4). And yet Christians often buy into the rhetoric that because the guy is driving a Porsche instead of a Ford Escort we can steal from him. Envy is what drives 99% of the efforts to increase taxes. They have more than they deserve and we are going to take it back. Christians must reject this way of thinking.
Do those who push higher taxes suffer from the higher taxes themselves? Often the answer to this is no. Both the poor and politicians often vote or push for higher taxes when they are not subject to. Just like Congress avoids the consequences of their own legislative decisions.
Do we really believe that the poor and weak among us are helped by receiving stolen funds? Has any government program for the poor actually produced less poor people? Why can we not look at the last 20 years of fiscal policy and see that it has not worked? Do we really believe the government, state or federal, actually cares about the poor?
Can we not see that these policies will eventually lead to more and more money being taken from everyone? Why stop with Phil Mickelson? Why not take Phil Smith’s money as well? Maybe we should tax the upper 25% at this rate instead of just the upper 1%.
Finally, those who get money back from the government during tax season, would you be willing to pay your share? There are numerous Americans who pay no Federal taxes at all. Often Christians rejoice when they get a refund, such as Earned Income Credit, etc. As Christians, we should be willing to pay taxes. We should not rejoice in the government taking more from the rich so I have to pay less.
In the end, excessive taxation of the rich is theft that creates less jobs, hurts the economy, destroys the desire to earn more, cultivates envy and class strife, oppresses the poor, and opposes the freedom that comes from God.<>как узнать pr страницы
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
