Why the Religious Left is Oxymoronic

Now the multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of his possessions were his own, but instead they held everything in common. – Acts 4:32

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. – Proverbs 14:12

I have heard it argued that the basic tenet of Communism – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – is derived from the Early Church as described in the Book of Acts. In a sense that is true, but the idea in this case, as in many others, has been twisted by man to suit his own ends.

Christianity is a revelation of the Divine Life available to man through Christ. The foundation of the Church is love – expressed by the New Testament’s commandeering of agape to describe the indescribable self-sacrificing love of God for man, and of the redeemed for one another. To understand this intellectually is one thing, these folks in the First Century Church knew this love by the Spirit, as it was shed abroad in their hearts. Yet, even this close to the origin of Christianity, there were those who missed the point. Ananias and Sapphira failed and died, not because they did not fully share their goods but because they were deceitful, seeking to gain advantage, regarding their gift as an investment with a return. Later, Paul warned the Thessalonians against those who refused to work and wanted to live on the labor of others.

There are two ways for holding “everything in common” to work. The first is by love; the second is by compulsion. While it may seem that forcing others to “do right” is a good idea, the consequences of such a course are deadly and disastrous. In the last century, people died by the millions as a result of such policies. To the extent that socialism is embraced, at the very least, economic vitality is sapped and individual liberty is sacrificed. We have to work, no longer for ourselves, our families, our descendents, but the “greater good”. The incentive, especially for those who do not know God, is gone. Some Christians may continue to do their best, viewing their efforts as being unto the Lord, but others will quickly begin to game the system, or seek to gain control of it.

The difference between trying to force the individual to work for the benefit of another and the laws against crimes like theft, assault, extortion, or murder should be evident to all but the most obtuse. When a person commits a crime, they deny the wronged person a positive good or benefit. If I break someone’s arm or steal their television, I deprive them of something that is rightfully theirs. Socialism is crime in reverse. The government deprives me of what is rightfully mine in order to give it to someone who has not earned it. Thus socialism reduces crime by eliminating the need for someone to steal in order to acquire the benefits of someone else’s hard work.

In the long run, whether you call it socialism, liberalism, progressivism, populism, or “compassionate conservatism”, the idea of government benevolence is nonsense and detrimental to the spirit. To foster dependence on an entity such as the federal government or upon men in positions of power is to deny the sovereignty and even the reality of God.

As those who know God, we are moved by the Spirit to be fearless in our generosity and our willingness to share with our brothers and sisters, and we are eager to provide even for those outside the faith. No legislation, doctrine, or human authority can compel this love within us. We are to give as we “purpose in our hearts”. Working and investing in a free market, capitalist economy is the best means of acquiring additional money that we can share with others. In such an environment, aside from the rare pathological miser, even those who simply accumulate and invest wealth benefit the poor by making more capital available for borrowing. Supply and demand, if allowed to operate in a free flux, will keep interest rates within a mutually beneficial range the vast majority of the time.

Christians are free to be as personally “socialist” as they choose and can afford to be. But there is no such thing as Christian Socialism at the government level. A “Christian Socialist” is a Collectivist using Christianity as camouflage to make compulsory generosity appear more palatable. I suppose they say ‘God bless you’ after sticking a gun in your face and forcing you to hand over your property.

We can follow Christ and do His will under any circumstances, any form of government, or any restrictions. We have our preferences. We will strive for the best.

In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not fear. What can man to do me? (Psalm 56:4)

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace. (James Madison – unsourced, via Wikiquote)

Weeds in the Wheat

I am not a dualist in the sense of believing that evil and good, roughly equivalent in power, are fighting it out in the world and the outcome is in doubt. Good is by its nature the absolute and evil the derivative. Good can never be conquered by evil, because evil cannot exist apart from Good. The more derived something is, the further it is from the ideal. This is the reason that when a carpenter or craftsman needs several pieces just alike, such as rafters, he cuts one pattern, puts a big ‘P’ on it and uses it to cut all the rest. Every deviation from the pattern introduces more errors and the deviations are multiplied.

This is probably some of the idea behind the noble savage myth. As a primitive man is closer to “nature” than the civilized man, he is less “derived”. The reason the myth fails the test of reality is that it’s not how close to the creation you are that makes you noble, it’s how close you are to the Creator. I have The Journals of Lewis and Clark sitting a few feet away on my bookshelf. Their first hand and generally fair accounts indicate that some American Indian tribes were composed of decent people, while others were a lot closer to the Devil than they were God.

Matthew 13:37-39a He replied, ‘The One who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; and the good seed – these are the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil ...

Jesus is speaking and explaining the meaning of the parable known traditionally as “The Wheat and the Tares”. Tares were weeds which initially bore a resemblance to the grain in the early stages. It does have a rather dualistic feel to it. Jesus sows His people into the world. The Devil sows his people. They battle is out for space in the field. The angels come in and throw all the bad seed into hell and take the good ones to heaven. Who knew the Devil had his own evil spawn available to for planting next door to me?

This parable is probably less troublesome to Calvinists who think there are a whole bunch of people whose reason for existence is to up the occupancy rate in hell. Why waste all that space? My free-will friends used to try to mitigate it by making the field the Church or the Kingdom. They turned it into a parable about how we should not judge anyone in the Body of Christ and just let God sort it all out in the end. Even if I were to agree that “judge not” means you shouldn’t defrock a pedophile priest, I would be uncomfortable using this parable to justify it. That interpretation does violence to the very words of Jesus when He says “the field is the world.” I get the impression that the Lord generally said what He meant and meant what He said.

While I’m not much of a Calvinist, the idea that some soulless bastards are roaming around definitely would explain some things. It has a certain appeal, though the down side is that just because they are soulless I don’t necessarily get to use them for target practice.

Yesterday, as the lovely QP tells us, the Supreme Court gave us a pretty good decision in Heller but the day before they had struck down the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty for child rape. I’m kind of with Charlie Daniels on this, as he says in “Simple Man” – “...just take them rascals out in the swamp. Put ‘em on their knees and tie ‘em to a stump. Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest.”

I think it was late last year, a county or two west of here, a nine-year-old girl disappeared. She was found after a week or so. Her little body had been dumped in a hole that led down to a cave. Her step-father and a friend of his were arrested. They had taken the girl while her mother was at work and, after raping her repeatedly, they strangled her because, as the step-father explained, “she knew who we was.” The death penalty is still applicable in their case, but it just doesn’t seem quite fair.

I’ve been shot, though – must I state it? – not killed. It can hurt a lot, but not lots and lots. A guy who coldly murders a clerk during a liquor store robbery can get the death penalty, and that seems reasonable. I’m all for kill ‘em and let God sort ‘em out when it comes to terrorists. That seems fair, too.

What seems fair in the case of these two worthless grab-bags of guano would be to take them to some nice, rocky, hard-packed bare ground on a very hot, sunny summer day. Strip them naked and stake them out on their backs at high noon. Let them stew for one and one-half to two hours. Next, very carefully and slowly slice open their bellies so their intestines are exposed. Finally, unleash a half-dozen or so very hungry Rottweilers.

I am the Martha Stewart of cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a good thing.

Yes, it’s cruel and only a sick mind could conjure up such an idea. But if we would do it consistently, it wouldn’t be unusual, and, as Mushroom’s Maxims point out – it’s cruel and unusual, not cruel or unusual. Thank you, George Boole.

Actually I would be quite satisfied if the perpetrators were executed by lethal injection swiftly rather than being allowed to sit on death row, growing old and wasting tax dollars on lunch meat and pointless appeals.

Apparently the Devil’s weeds will always be among us until the Kingdom does come. Most of them will never expose themselves as tares to society at large. They will fit in and become Hollywood celebrities, lawyers, politicians and professors. We can be confident that, in the end, they will be run through God’s big cream separator and dumped, since they are as tasteless as the blue-john we used to feed the hogs.