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"God isn’t a Republican or a Democrat," a friend in my men’s prayer group said to me a while ago after temporarily posting his Republican political preference on his Facebook profile. This young friend uses Facebook primarily to evangelize on behalf of Christ, and was annoyed by a bunch of complaints from Democratic friends about how the Republicans opposed Christian principles such as favoring war and social justice.
"You’re right," I jokingly replied. "God’s not a Republican or a Democrat. But He might be a libertarian," But then I corrected myself and added, "Of course, I’m only half kidding about that."
My friend reminded me of a conversation I had a short while earlier with a different Catholic friend after "World Food Day," who told me that Catholic social teaching included the doctrine that food, clothing and shelter were inalienable "rights." As a Catholic myself, I know that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference claim that "All people have a right to life and a right to secure the basic necessities of life (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, a safe environment, and economic security)." In practice, the U.S. Catholic bishops have backed government taxation and force as the means of providing those "rights."
I disagreed with my second friend, saying that there’s nothing in traditional Catholic teaching (i.e., pre-Vatican II) that says if a person refuses to work for his food that he should have a right to eat his fill. To the contrary, I cited St. Paul’s command about people who don’t work shouldn’t eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10-12):
"When we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat. We hear that some are conducting themselves among you in a disorderly way, by not keeping busy but minding the business of others. Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and to eat their own food."
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I explained to my friend that St. Paul understood one cannot describe a material good as a "right," other than a right to what you’ve produced (which accounts for "Thou shall not steal" and "Thou shall not covet"), since creating unearned material rights imposes a type of slavery on the persons who are obligated to provide those material goods. And if there’s a social mechanism for providing those goods as "rights," such as government, rights can only be provided through the violence of a barrel of a gun.
But my “World Food Day” friend rejected St. Paul’s teaching. I mentioned that latter conversation to a third Catholic friend of mine, who responded: "Well, St. Paul was a bit crazy. He also said wives should obey their husbands. You’ve got to understand that St. Paul’s was a patriarchal society. Had it been a matriarchal society, he would have said the reverse."
The ignorance astounded me.
Paul’s commands about marriage are a perfect example of Christian teaching, though perhaps among his most misunderstood teachings. In Ephesians (5:20-25), St. Paul instructs:
"Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body. As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her…"
St. Paul gives one set of instructions to wives, and another set of instructions to husbands. They are differently worded, but they essentially say the same thing, that each person in the marriage is told to serve the other. Neither is told they have the right to boss the other around. St. Paul’s instructions impose a personal moral burden, but his instructions are based on freedom … not authority! In St. Paul’s world, nobody has the right to demand anything from anyone else, even if individuals are called to serve each other. What and how much you give is based upon your own conscience, not the violence of the state.
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In the same way Jesus talked about voluntary giving, not government socialism. He imposed individual moral burdens, not social burdens. Probably the best example of that teaching is the story of the Good Samaritan from Luke’s Gospel (10:30-35). Responding to a scholar in the law,
"Jesus said ‘A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead.
A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side.
But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight.
He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him.
The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’
‘Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?’
He answered, ‘The one who treated him with mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’"
Note that Jesus didn’t say that society or government should have provided him the care he needed. Rather, he instructed the scholar to pay out of his own pocket as the Good Samaritan had. It was an individualistic charge, a personal burden for mercy and charity. In this story, of course, the Rabbis and Levites may very well have been government employees, as they had been at various times throughout Biblical history.
The Bible and long Catholic social experience is a story about individual moral burdens and property rights, not social obligations and government handouts, despite what a few Catholic bishops and liberal Protestant ministers may say today. Christianity and Judaism are arguably the most individualistic of all religions. The Bible devotes two of the ten commandments to property rights issues, and many of the other commandments deal with protecting what traditionalists would call natural law, the inalienable rights of individuals. When it comes to government and social burdens, Christianity and Judaism warn that government can be a substitute for God himself. In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites begged Samuel for a king, which God granted with the warning that they would be burdened by high taxes and their sons dying in foreign wars for their blasphemy for wanting a king other than Yahweh.
I’m not a theologian, so I can’t say for sure that God is a voluntarist and libertarian. But He sure sounds like one to me.
February 3, 2010
