Socialism

I've been stewing on socialism lately. I have heard many Christians say that socialism is more biblical than capitalism. I can't disagree more. I believe socialism is evil; an invention of Satan himself.

In Acts we have the story of the early church during their first persecution. The Bible says "they had all things in common." This is often used to justify socialism in our government. This is a very incomplete view of this passage of scripture.

When Ananias and Sapphira brought part of the money from the sale of their land to Peter and tried to tell him it was the whole amount, Peter said "It was your land to begin with and you didn't have to sell it or bring ANY or the money to us, much less all of it. Why did you lie to God?" Clearly, this sharing things in common was not by order of the apostles, but by voluntary action of the Christians. In fact, Peter's statement confirms A and S's private property rights, something socialism violates.

God did make provision for charitable giving to the poor in the old testament. Land owners were to leave the corners of their fields unharvested so the poor could gather food. They were also to leave their entire fields unharvested every seven years for the same reason. Clearly God wants us to give to the poor.

But

God just as clearly spells out the action the government was to take in the case of murder, kidnapping, adultery, parent abuse, stealing, etc. What was the penalty for not giving to the poor? What penalty was the human government allowed to levy on a land owner who harvested his corners?

There wasn't one.

This was an area that was between God and the land owners. God, not government, punished the greedy.

Socialism is the name for a government where those humans in power take by force or threat of force (through tax court) the property (hard earned money, et al) of the citizens of the country in order to give it to those who did not work for it.

Now, I believe in giving to charity. But it is between me and God to give my hard earned money to who I believe God wants me to give it. If I feel lead to give my money to the homeless, great. Socialism is when the humans in government force me to give my money to THEIR favorite charity. They force me to give to educate the fatherless, for example, when my heart might be to give to teenage mothers. They force me to give to bail out companies who have made bad business decisions when I want to give to the hungry. There is nowhere in scripture that condones forcing others to give their property to your favorite cause.

In fact, the Law was heavy on protecting private property rights.

Now, let's see what system would encourage others to meet the needs of the poor.

How about a system that rewards someone for meeting other people's needs? An example I have used before is in the area of food. With eight children, we have quite a grocery bill here. We actually pay more in groceries than our mortgage payment every month (which I find hilarious!) Now, at most grocery stores we simply can't afford to buy enough food. It costs too much (especially since hubby's pay was cut by 20% last spring due to the economy). What are we to do? No problem. Wal-mart (that "evil capitalist institution") offers groceries at close to half of what the same things would cost us at a normal grocery store. By meeting our need for cheap food, they are rewarded with our business and our money (except for produce. We don't like wal-marts produce and go to a local grocer for that). Everybody wins.

Is this a perfect system? No. As long as you have humans involved, you can't have a perfect system. But capitalism is the closest you can come this side of glory.