This Is Our City

R McKinney- you have still not answered whether the definitions of socialism are wrong. You have still not responded to current church teachings on the role of government. You both choose simply to discount or ignore whenever contradicts your beliefs, in the Bible and elsewhere. You choose to focus on what I have said out of context and continually restate points countered before. Whether you 'win' this exchange or not, God knows your hearts and what you truly value and where you devote your energies to; and from these posts it is clear that is private property, profit and free market capitalism. Which is sad, because you could be devoting your energies to the establishment of God's kingdom instead of a worldly economic system.

Catholicism's flirtation with Marx was short. Liberal Protestant denominations still promote Marxism. But free markets and private property have been the historical position of Christianity. Those who deny it are inventing new theology equivalent to any heresy.

God created private property so that mankind could flourish. All societies that have held property in common have endured massive starvation. China lost 30 million to starvation in the 1960's. The Torah confirms God's sanctification of private property and Jesus affirmed it when he endorsed the Torah. As Rick wrote, the NT Church held property in high esteem, along with charity because charity does not exist without property. The Catholic church endorsed free markets and private property until it absorbed Marxist teachings in the 19th century. There are many Catholics who are Marxists. Liberation theology is Marxist Catholicism. Today, many Catholics, such as those at the Acton Institute, see Catholic social teaching as free market and private property oriented based on declarations by the most recent Popes.

The early church contributed voluntarily, and personally to the needs of homeless saints. It was not coercive, it was not dependent on an intstituitional re-distribution of wealth, taxing or tithing. Peter reaffirmed the rights of private property ownership to the early church “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?” The early church did not share its resources with all the poor of Jerusalem, only the believing poor in the church and only with strict standards. Single widows (not men) without family over 60 were given free food. As Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 5:16 “If a woman who is a believer has relatives who are widows, she must take care of them and not put the responsibility on the church. Then the church can care for the widows who are truly alone.” I don’t “love” private property or capital. Curiously I would rather have your property, free food, free housing and i would prefer not to work for it. But, as the Bible teaches, that is irresponsible sin.

@ R Dalbey: Your interpretation is your interpretation, biased on your belief in private property, profit, free markets and capitalism. In the Kingdom, there will be no economic systems, only people relating to one another in love through the Holy Spirit (as in the early Christian community recorded in Acts). Genesis 1, 15: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it." Notice what God did not say- "give him possession of it". All notions of ownership are human conventions, and human conventions alone.

You really want to base an economic system on the Garden of Eden? “There was no private property in the garden of Eden?” Of course, there was only one married couple in the garden of Eden. When there was more than one family, God established private property rules and theft was a violation. Those principles are reiterated over and over in scripture. Jesus says “in my house are many mansions”, “I go to prepare a place for you”. As it says in Revelation 20 and Isaiah, during the millenium there are private houses, private ownership, cities, business enterprise. That is what humans do. Nor is everyone in heaven equal. There are varying rewards, varying treasure. You have plenty of theories but I would rather stick with what the Bible actually teaches.

@R Dalbey: Read my comments again. You distort what I said and selectively pick out scriptures to support your beliefs.

Oh, so you have some wisdom that abrogates private properety? The 10 commandments are no longer valid (though shalt not steal)? The perfect wife in Proverbs 31 should not accrue capirtal and speculate in land? Peter establishes the right of private property in Acts 5, “While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?” As 1st Timothy says, it is the LOVE of money, not money itself that is the problem. Hermit, have you sold all you own? Do you have any private possessions? Are you living on charity?

@ RMcK: Why are you restating Salamanca, while ignoring Church teaching since Salamanca (and my earlier response and reference)? Have you even read Church teachings since Salamanca? As to a 'free market capitalist Eden', you may have not used the words, but your posts of the past have indicated that man's economic problems are primarily caused by government intervention (socialism) and that installing 'free markets' will recitify that. Am I 'wrong' in this? I am still waiting for your response as to whether Samuelson and the web reference earlier are also 'wrong' in their definations of socialism. You really should pray over 1 Timothy 6:10: and it is time for others to share.

Are we Christians of the New Testament or are we warmed over Israelites following the Talmud?

God's will for mankind regarding property after the fall was revealed in the Torah: thou shalt not steal. No one believes in a 'free market capitalist Eden'. Hermit has to fight a straw man because he can't stand up to the real thing. As the Godly scholars of Salamanca determined, based on the Word of God, God sanctified private property in the Torah and the only just market is a free market.

God's will for man is revealed in Genesis- the garden of Eden. There was no private property in Eden. Ever since Eden, the world has been affected by the 'fall'. All the 'economics' recorded since then are of man after the 'fall'. All things are only restored 'in Christ'; that includes man's relation to the world of material goods. There is no salvation outside of Christ; of man's submitting to God's will and being guided by the Holy Spirit. There is no salvation to man's material ills, the product of his fallen nature, in any economic system. The ideal of a 'free market capitalist Eden' is an illusion- as is a 'socialist's workers paradise'. As to the economics of a fallen world, refer to my previous post on the Kingdom of God and read Catholic social teaching.

Continuing the theme of honest Bible interpretation, how should we handle the Torah commands regarding the poor? If we are going to obey part of the law, Paul says we should keep all of it and the Torah requires the death penalty for violating the Sabbath. If we apply Torah law directly today and allow the state to force wealth redistribution, then we should allow the state to execute Sabbath offenders, adulterers and homosexuals. Wise Church scholars separated the roles of religion and state. The Church is responsible for the poor and for religion. The state is responsible for civil law. In addition, Jubilee and Sabbath year debt forgiveness involved no wealth redistribution. The Torah specifies that all sales of property and loans (except those to the poor) should be pro-rated based on the amount of time to Jubilee and the Sabbath year. In other words, the Torah doesn’t allow sales of land as we know it today, but what we would call long-term leases.

@RMcK: Current church teaching affirms that government has more than a role of 'night watchman'. Read 'Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret' by DeBerri, Hug et al 4th ed. 2003. The Bible itself affirms the role of government in economics beyond 'night watchman'. Read Genesis 41:46-57; Joseph "in the service of Pharaoh King of Egypt" [the 'government' of that day] gathered up grain in storehouses which was then 'sold to the Egyptians' during a time of famine. The Torah itself limits 'free markets' through the practice of the Jubilee year and the requirement that the edges of the fields be left for the poor, who weren't required to 'earn' it.

@RMcK: First, you have not responded to my earlier post. Are Samuelson and the internet source also 'wrong' in their definitions of socialism? Does quoting from them also prove, along with what I have just written that I am a 'socialist'?

Christians need to consider that the majority of the population is not Christian; they are not subject to the principles for godly living to which Christians subject themselves. To force non-Christians to act like Christians is absurd.

Some people want to make Jesus a policy wonk. The lack they natural fear that Christians should have of putting words in God's mouth. Jesus had very little to say about state policy. When the church has the right to arrest and try criminals then I'll concede that the state has the authority to do the church's job. To treat the Bible honestly and not put words in Jesus' mouth, one has to examine the context. In context, all of Jesus' teaching referred to the way believer should act; they were not government policy and to claim they are is simply dishonest. Of course Christians are to share their wealth, but that says nothing about what the state should do. Church scholars determined centuries ago that the role of the state is that of a night watchman. Attempting to do anything more infringes on the role of the Church and the family. Attempting to collect taxes for anything more is theft. As as CT has pointed out, free markets help the poor more than charity.

@ R Dalbey: It is your thought that is complicated and confused by 'this world'. "My kingdom is not of this world." Jesus did not call for a democratic, free market economy in response to the Roman empire. He did not call for the establishment of any worldly institution or system. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". Why did he say that? "23 But when the man heard this he became sad, for he was very rich."24 When Jesus saw this, he said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God!25 In fact, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” Luke 8:23-25(NLT) We are called to announce and enter the Kingdom NOW. And the 'economics' of the kingdom? Acts 4: 32-37

Rome did not found a socialist state where everyone was equal. There was a great disparity in Roman society. Caesar’s taxes paid for huge standing armies that commited genocide and invaded countries like Israel. Taxes paid for crucifixions. Taxes paid for Nero’s palace, coliseums and other public works projects. Are you saying because Jesus said to pay your taxes that somehow He was advocating an equal distribution of wealth? The poor in Rome and in Israel were taken care of by personal charity and family, not by the government. In Proverbs 31 the perfect wife is a venture capitalist who speculates in real estate and has a retail business.The early church took care of Christian widows only with demonstrable faith who were over 60 and had no living relatives. They did not put the poor of Jerusalem on the dole. I hardly know how to respond you are so confused.

Sorry about the @RMcK confusion earlier. Let me amend my last statement: Jesus is clear about the redistribution of wealth in the parable of Lazarus and his statement, "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's". As a Christian, you are not to be amassing wealth (gather not into barns) but proclaiming the Kingdom with the life you lead. If the government chooses to distribute your worldly wealth to the poor, why should you have a problem with that? Further, "14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." James 2:14-17 (ESV) Perhaps if Christians had given and shared with one another, rather than trying to 'get ahead', there would be no need for government programs?

Hermit, how can you say Jesus is “Clear” about re-distribution of wealth in the lazarus parable? You could just as well say Lazarus was spared an eternity in hell by remaining poor. You are attempting to find economic theory in a parable that is about justice for the faith-filled poor and judgement on the impious, extraordinarily selfish rich man. The moral of the story is not that the government needs to confiscate evryone’s income and re-distribute it, but that the Rich man ought to personally, voluntarily share some portion of his goods with a man who had none. That is called charity, a much lauded value in Jewish culture, not Marxism.

My comment was to Roger McKinney. Jesus was very clear about the redistribution of wealth in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.

Hermit, I think you have me confused with someone else. I said when we reinterpret Jesus parables to mean building a utopian political system on this earth, when we re-cast biblical spiritual revival as a coercive equal re-distribution of wealth, that our faith resembles marxism. Ms Hogeweide has given up on prayer for spiritual revival, as she says, and instead has become a militant, sign-making, sloganeering advocate of coercive re-distribution of wealth and like Strelnikov in Dr. Zhivago or Tom Joad. Jesus told Peter to put down his sword, “my Kingdom is not of this earth”. But there will always be Simon the Zealots among us who disreagrd His words. The 1 percent and the 99% is an arbitrary, destructive fantasy.

The Occupy movement's theme, 'People before profit', can sum up Jesus' attitude in the gospel and the New Testament as a whole. The Tea party only seems to want less government as its theme; but when individuals and businesses act to place material gain first, and ignore the human/environmental consequences of those actions, the government has a legitimate right to intervene. Those interventions include environmental regulations (cleaning up the Hudson River and superfund sites), workplace safety standards, and minimum wages. Government intervention is not properly speaking 'socialism'; Christians who believe that government action is necessary are not 'socialist's. The Tea Party is right in saying that at times government can be misdirected and burdensome. With seven billion humans worldwide, we need to protect our planet from destruction. Most economies worldwide are now a blend of both socialistic and free market.

@ RMcK: You are quick to call people 'socialists' and decry 'socialist propaganda'. In a past blog, you claimed government ownership of the means of production was "not socialism but communism." When I quoted from Webster's dictionary, you claimed Webster's was 'wrong', and that quoting from Webster's 'proved' I was a socialist. In the basic text 'Economics' by Samuelson and Nordhaus (12th ed. p.770), states socialist philosophy is characterized by "Government ownership of productive resources." "While the word 'socialism' is sometimes used interchangeably with 'communism',...communism is an extreme form of socialism". (http://www.diffen.com/difference/Communism vs Socialism) Are these sources also 'wrong'? People who question free market capitalism are not all 'socialists'.

Good article. Reminds me of the oft forgotten or misunderstood words of Katharine Lee Bates in "America, The Beautiful": "Confirm thy soul in self-control; [confirm] thy liberty in law." The less self-control there is in a society (be it with the rich or the poor) the more laws we will be saddled with. The more self-control we practice, the fewer the laws. Both the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they ignore, misunderstand, or misapply. We need liberty and we need laws, as Bates implies, to maintain that liberty. This article puts it well.

I am disturbed by this whole comparison of Occupy and Tea Party. Both movements can only be compared in that they are both a result of rebellion against government and corporations. The Tea Aprty wants less government and more liberty and Occupy wants the government to take care of them and redistribute wealth. To be honest true revival cannot come through either way because it is rebellion and God willl not honor rebellion. Revival can only come by repentance of sin and taking responsibilty for your own actions. Then and only then can we please God through service to others. We are created to do good works but the only way to do good works that pleases God is to be saved by grace through faith. Most of Occupy is made up of socialists and anarchists. Not Christian values. The Tea Party is made up of people who are striving to hang on to their stuff and want the government to leave them alone. They tend to be isolationists and individualist which again are not Christian values.

The first thing the Founders did was NOT the Bill of Rights. Coming out of the Articles of Confederation, Madison and the others were trying to create a strong central government, so the CONSTITUTION was the first thing. The Bill of Rights was the second thought, after it was clear the strong government got people like Patrick Henry worried.

Dear Rick Dalby, Your phrase: "This reinterpretation of Jesus message is a Marxist/Leninist fantasy." is a classic, thank you. All these social gospel first, Christ second, apologists are really becoming overbearing. It is obvious that anyone who gives the minimum space to this issue is already antichrist. Christianity Today has gone far beyond "minimum space" for so long that no question remains about their position.

Jason, I asked where in the gospels did Jesus fill the hungry with the good things of this world, clothes, money, a supply of free food, transportation and clean drinking water? My point is He is talking about the water of life, the bread of life, The answer you gave me from Matthew 25 is not something Jesus did. Read any commentary on Matthew 25. Jesus is not talking about feeding the world or saying you will go to hell if you do not visit prisons. He is answering a question the disciples asked about the signs of the end times and He is talking about giving aid to persecuted believers “one of the least of these, my brothers”. As He says a few chapters earlier, “my brothers are those who do the will of God”. Matthew 24 and 25 is all about the dire state of the end times, the relentless persecution of believers and His coming. As Jesus said to Paul, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?"

With the majority of writers for CT being feminist, the great magazine I used to know and learn from is gone. This article is so much swill and rubbish. To say that I am disappointed with your recent publications would really be euphemistic.

Jason, Shane Claiborne and Jim Wallis have co-authored books.

@Robert McKinney The blog post you reference is clearly written by Shane Claiborne, not Jim Wallis. A reasonable interpretation of the removal is that someone higher up at Sojourners disagreed with Shane Claiborne's offending paragraph and removed it from the blog. @Jim Dalbey "Where in the gospels did Jesus fill the hungry with the good things of this world, clothes, money, a supply of free food, transportation and clean drinking water?" Matthew 25: "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'"

"He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty" (Luke 1). She caught the vision of revival that Jesus had when he proclaimed in his first sermon: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor" (Luke 4). So revival is now all about the redistribution of wealth? Where in the gospels did Jesus fill the hungry with the good things of this world, clothes, money, a supply of free food, transportation and clean drinking water? Or did He say that “the kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking” or “don’t worry about what you shall wear” and “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again”. What did Jesus say when the disciples complained that a woman had poured perfume over Him worth a years wages and could have been sold giving the money to the poor? “The poor you will always have with you”. This reinterpretation of Jesus message is a Marxist/leninist fantasy.

This article is the biggest bunch of baloney I have ever read. This idea of "balancing the budget" on the backs of the poor is such a propaganda laden statement it has little bearing in reality. Let's get honest. We now live in a society where those that get are equal to those that give. Nearly 50% pay no taxes. The top 1% pay well over half. It is an unsustainable reality. I suggest reading the book TOXIC CHARITY. We are creating a society of lazy bozoz, that want free stuff, but don't want freedom. IF A MAN DOES NOT WORK HE SHALL NOT EAT. What Sojourners want is an all-knowing government to be the caretaker of us all. Look at the recent health care law. It is going to cost TWICE as much. Who is going to pay for it. WALLIS, WE ARE OUT OF MONEY!!! The government is NOT the solution! Never has been. Lisa Harper needs to take a course in economics and how poverty is REALLY gotten rid of.

Jason, if you go to the sourjourner site and search for "gospel of scarcity" you will get this : "Jubilee on Wall Street: Reimagining God's Vision in Action Originally Posted: 08/31/2011 - 4:39pm | Type: Blog " it was a I cried because it was a reminder that we still have a choice. We can live by the gospel of scarcity or we can live by the gospel of abundance. We can live as if life is a crap shoot or we can live ..." But if you follow the link to the article that sentence isn't there. There is a missing paragraph in the article. The sentence may have been there and the web manager erased it. But I have seen the phrases "gospel of scarcity" and "gospel of abundance" in Wallis' books too. You have to read a lot of Wallis to get what he means by those phrases, which I have and I think my explanations are accurate. However, Wallis seems to be ashamed of the phrases now. He hasn't changed his mind. He is very much opposed to the science of economics and makes that very clear.

Jason, I got them directly from his web site years ago. Maybe he is embarrassed by those words and is trying to hide his socialism.

"Of course Wallis, founder of Sojourners, demands that people abandon the “gospel of scarcity” (his term for economic science) and embrace the “gospel of abundance” (his euphemism for socialism)." Do you have a source for Wallis's statement (or your parenthetical interpretations)? A Google search turns up nothing.

Passion is fine, but to paraphrase Paul, zeal should be tempered by knowledge. I realize that most people care about emotions and nothing else, but that only belies their assumption that no objective truth is possible. The science of economics contains many important truths about how to help the poor that no amount of passion will erase, such as destroying the wealthy will only make everyone poorer without helping the poor. Of course Wallis, founder of Sojourners, demands that people abandon the “gospel of scarcity” (his term for economic science) and embrace the “gospel of abundance” (his euphemism for socialism).

Very simplistic and biased discussion of the differences between the two 'movements'. It's not hard to tell where the author's sympathies lie.