Hi Faith,
Yes, but they CHOSE to get together and share their resources, and they did this only as a group among themselves, for EACH OTHER.
This was not government forcing them to do it and do it for people they didn't even know. To do that is against the spirit of this passage, and it is stealing.
It shouldn't even be in the discussion if I know the person the money goes to or not. As a christian, I simply give because it is the godly thing to do.
Christians do not know the homeless at the corner of the street, yet willfully give him money, because they are called to be a imitator of christ. Why then, are they reluctant to give to anyone else, anywhere ?
There is not even anything in that passage to require Christian believers to organize ourselves in that fashion, although it is a model we can follow among ourselves if we want to. I like the idea and wish I were among Christians who think that way. I think more Christians should live like that and not be so dependent on worldly systems such as socialism.
Are you saying that you would like more socialism inside christian communities, but are against such structures inside a country ?
But again, that's entirely different from a secular government's forcing it on the entire citizenry. Surely, again, it IS stealing to take from anyone who doesn't willingly offer it, to give to someone else.
What I'm trying to say is that the christian right in america, of all the cultural/religious groups in the entire US, should be the very first to be ready to give their money to people in need. I mean, they basically do it all the time, everywhere. Yet when it is asked of them by the government, they resist it, cry out against it. This is both inconsistent with their own attitudes in other situations, but also inconsistent with the teachings of the Bible.
There is no empathy in coercion. Empathy volunteers to give. There is only bitterness and resistance in coercion.
And I don't think capitalism is about greed, I think it is about people working freely to support themselves and produce goods and services and inventions and everything else people do when left to themselves to be creative in their work.
Socialism inhibits nothing in all this. Here in quebec, the same motivations drives every person in their work. In fact we have a reputation of being amongst the most imaginative people in the world. People invent, people create, people create goods and services and make profits.
Yet at the same time, these very same people, they pay to support social systems for the weak and the feeble, for the orphan and the widow. For the sick and the poor.
This is because the economics system is still capitalists. This gives the people the motivations to thrive in their work and pursue excellence.
Greed is just one human sin that poor people certainly have as well as rich, and Marxists have it as much or more than capitalists. The leaders of the Communist Party in Russia lived like the czars they had overthrown, while they murdered everyone who opposed them and the people stood in lines all day for bread that never came. That's Marxism at its rawest of course. We only have a modified Marxism.
I once heard a quote from an economics teacher saying ''capitalism works because people are greedy, and communism doesn't work because ... people are greedy''.
The fact is not what the greed of people does in each system. Greed, in any economic system, will produce bad results. The question is to ask which system encourages a greedy behavior.
I prefer doing the wrong thing by given, then by not giving.
If the government is asking the population to give more money to heal the sick, and the people refuse to do so. THe problem is with the population, not the government.
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