Was Jesus Really a Socialist? (Part 2: Torah and Natural Rights)

Recap

In Part 1 of “Was Jesus really a Socialist?” we considered more than the fluffy and emotionally satisfying notion that socialism means sharing and caring. Some Christian leaders with high IQs have fallen for this bumper sticker slogan, so don’t feel too bad if it got you.

Socialism as an idea for governing, from its inception in ancient Mesopotamia through to its most modern manifestations, always has the same core of ideas driving it and the same alluring lies buttering its path to destitution and oppression. That idea is government control over all production and distribution, and centralized planning for every aspect of the economy. They deny natural rights even while claiming to defend them and prove this by promising goods and service rights even while the capacity to sustain them drains away. The end is also the same. Decreasing efficiency, diminished functionality, disappearing incentives to labor, a steady move toward poverty, rapid increases in government force, mass arrests, show trials, mass murder, mass starvation, waves of purges of the “uncooperative.” Neither your life, your labor, your time, your wife, your children, nor your property is yours. It all belongs to the State “collective.” Of course, the state collective is never a neighbor… it is the tiering authorities who answer to the ultimate person or group in charge of managing the collective in the name of “the people.” So, in modern times, they love to throw around words like “democratic” and “republic.”

It is lies and propaganda first to last, but if you are an emotional thinker it is easy to respond emotionally rather than logically and rationally to such warm sentiments. For the Christian, these warm sentiments seem to coincide with Scripture’s own appeal to “care for the poor.”

Charity “Laws” in Torah

Does not Torah itself establish laws of charity?

Are there not gleaning laws in Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19-22, which tell land owners to reap only part of their fields leaving some portions for the poor to work for their own sustenance?

Aren’t there laws against charging the poor interest on loans in Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-37, and laws of debt forgiveness every seven years in Deuteronomy 15:1-11, and of land restoration every 50 years in the Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-17, 23-28?

Aren’t the tithes paid to the Levites to be stored locally every third year as relief for the fatherless and widow in Deuteronomy 14:28-29?

Does not God promise that there should be no poor among them om Deuteronomy 15:4? Do not Deuteronomy 15:7-8, Proverbs 19:17, and Isaiah 58:6-10 command generosity and compassion for the suffering poor? Does not Deuteronomy 15:11 say, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’”

Doesn’t Torah also take on the matter of “fair wages” in Deuteronomy 24:14-15, to be paid promptly in Leviticus 19:13?

The answer is of course, yes… that’s why I listed them.

Context & Nuanced Distinctions

But a thoughtful consideration of these commands in context also demands some attention to details, to nuances. These are radically different ideas and processes than those of socialism. They are the difference between giving the poor an opportunity to work for their own sustenance on someone else’s offered property as opposed to the arduous labor of those on permanent government support walking out to their mailboxes for their monthly check. It’s the difference between a person who puts a couch on their front lawn with a sign that says “Free!” and the government deciding that you don’t need two couches, taking one by force from your home and carrying it over to the family down the street and setting it in just the right place for them while they are passed out drunk in the kitchen.

Intentionally Offensive?

This last “for instance” was intentionally worded to offend those whose understanding of human nature defies the biblical depiction of the heart of man as corrupt and selfish, prone to take shortcuts and the path of least resistance. Who respond selfishly to almost every incentive around them. And this is why socialist systems of every stripe always go the same way. Where the humanist imagines a populace victimized by systems, the Scriptures recognize that people make their own trouble because of their corrupt and selfish hearts. Broken systems are nothing more than the human heart writ large. The dysfunctional in society are, more often than not, victims of their own ignorance and indolence than anything else… even in the face of oppressive systems.

Qualifications for Such Claims

I’ve worked with the homeless in a few different countries and several U.S. cities and have been involved with charitable work since childhood in various churches (This adds up to over 50 years of paying attention). I can tell you from firsthand experience that this is a far truer picture of reality than those imagining publicly-supported households as predominantly stable and honorable people hard up on their luck. Socialist-minded, government implemented public support programs are destructive in several ways. (See my articles:  Progressives Don’t Want to Help the Poor to escape Poverty—Entitlement Programs aren’t Charity or Charitable & Government Entitlement Programs are Psychologically Dysfunctional.)

If You Get People Wrong You Get Almost Everything Wrong

These same weak-souled pitiers (our third kind of socialist from the previous blog post) also fail to understand the real nature of man as anti-fragile. Fragile things break with rough handling. Non-fragile things are neither helped nor hurt by rough handling. Anti-fragile things however, thrive best with a bit of rough handling… like a cactus… like muscles.

Pity and “empathy” cause these softies to strive for all they are worth to relieve those they pity of personal responsibility, stress, and the pressure of need, even though the pressure of need is necessary for provoking the poor to lift themselves out of poverty, to emulate rather than envy the prosperous, and to walk in the personal responsibility of mature adulthood. So these tender-hearted folk rob the poor of those incentives in the name of charity (Something these Scriptures do not do) and trap them in their dysfunction.

Of course, socialists of the first and second type, know all this and do it anyway to accumulate desperate and dependent followers, thus votes, thus power.

Natural Rights Including Property Rights as Foundational

We also need to boast some perceptiveness about the foundational principles of life at work in all Torah commands—things like property rights & willing generosity & fractional-giving to local religious overseers as opposed to centralized government confiscation and redistribution of all production.

I know that nuance and subtly is not the forte of emotional thinkers, but such discernment is vital for distinguishing destructive policies of socialism in contradistinction to Biblical Torah commands.

Torah vs. “LAW”

Even saying Torah commands vs. Laws is important. It emphasizes the secondary relationship between Torah and the Law of the land as implemented by government systems. Torah gives divine commands only some of which are implementable in a governmental capacity. God judges hearts and sees into the soul of a man, knows his secret deeds and wishes. Government, however, must restrict itself to the provable and seen.

Consider Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, from which Jesus gets the two greatest commandments, Love God and Love your neighbor. No reasonable court would judge such matters… though kangaroo courts and show trials in socialist regimes pretend to do so regularly.

God Warned Us About the Corruption of Total Government

God warned Israel about establishing governments that take on supreme power, preaching a form of constitutionally limited government (Covenantal liberty of Torah rule), separation of powers (prophets, priests, judges, and rulers), checks and balances between them, in Deuteronomy 17 & 18.

He gets direct with them in 1 Samuel 8:10-18 warning them about the consequences of taking on kings who will not limit themselves to Torah Rule. These will appoint and demand and confiscate, not just their property, but they themselves, their wives, their children. This is all the difference between giving and taking, between the pretense of shepherding leaders and the reality of self-interested overlords.

Natural Rights, Good! Goods & Service Rights, Bad!

The first rule of society in Torah is “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Genesis 9:6) This is the seed of all natural rights, which are negative rights… what must not be done to one’s fellow man. These rights do not come from government; they come from God. These must not be confused with governmentally promised positive rights, taking by force from one in order to give what is confiscated to another who has not earned it.

So natural rights expand on that notion of man as Imago Dei to form the foundation of a free and beautiful society in Israel. It includes but is not limited to property rights, marriage rights, truth rights. (Exodus 20). There goes most of the work of socialist leaders… lying, taking, abusing, forcing, killing, enslaving.

Trajectory vs. Perfection in Israel

These natural rights, like all things, need a nuanced understanding as they are implemented practically in certain contexts of the ancient world, but they sit at the core as a trajectory of best practices. The West was built, however imperfectly, on these notions, though it took centuries to overcome the stubborn habits of the pagan world that dominated human societies for millennia. America broke free from many of these entanglements to create the greatest human civilization in world history in the fastest time. This foundation has been the target for attack since the beginning by those fool enough to dream socialist dreams, or wicked enough to prefer ruling over a burning garbage dump than being common in a paradise.

Tune in next time to consider why so many people think Jesus was a socialist.

~Andrew D. Sargent, PhD