From: aaiken@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Andrew C. Aiken)
Subject: Is God a Socialist?
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 16:59:36 GMT

I have read several recent posts which said that God is a Socialist.

Not surprisingly, the claim was made by Socialists.  They claimed to
know the economic Gospel, but made no arguments and no exegesis.

Let me begin with a definition:

Socialism is the state ownership of the means of production.  More 
specifically, it based upon the proposition that each citizen is 
entitled to the same amount of wealth.  If the achievement of this 
goal means economic leveling by way of taxation and social spending, then
so be it.  The Socialist considers his economic philosophy to be the
extension of democracy to the means of property distribution.

I do not mean this as a skewed definition, only one based upon the practice
and advocacy of Socialism in modern times.  The last line was taken from
Michael Harrington.

Now the Bible of course states (II Corinthians 9) that charity is the greatest
of all virtues.  But charity is voluntary;  that is, one is not charitable
unless one voluntarily  helps the sick or the poor.  The term "charity" does
connote generousity with one's wealth, but this is but a small part of the
true meaning of charity.  Charity is a state of the spirit to which humans
can only aspire.  
	There have always been good people and bad people, and today there
are those who are generous with what they have been lucky or skilled enough
to acquire, and there are those who are miserly.  But the imposition of an
involuntary system of "charity", by which the state takes from the rich man
his earnings, and gives a small fraction of the takings to the poor man 
(keeping the rest to feed itself), impoverishes the soul of both the rich
man and the poor man.  The rich man did not choose to give money to the state.
He may be predisposed to earnestly helping the poor,  but the gift is not
voluntary.  He goes to jail if he does not pay his taxes.  God has given us
freedom of choice:  if we do not (as individuals) help the poor, then we
shall be judged harshly for this.  But if the state is the instrument of
charity, then there is no voluntary exchange, no deliberate desire to do good.
	The poor man can get succor from the state, but he knows that the money
comes unwillingly from the pockets of others.  He may be materially better off
as a result, but his soul is not enriched, since God does not guide the state.
The state is human power, yet it creates no wealth, spiritual or material.  
Coercion can result in the material satisfaction of the masses, but what of
spiritual satisfaction, the thirst for which no Stalin could extinguish?
	Thus, I do not think it is proper to call God a Socialist.  Likewise,
it is not proper to say that He is not.  We can ratify or ignore our spiritual
obligations, but God does not endorse our puny human economic systems.  It is
the love of money, not money itself, that is the root of all evil, since to
love money, one must renounce the spiritual, and concentrate only upon the
material.  But to claim that men will be happy if only we provide for them
materially (as the Socialist states) is to fall into the same trap.   The
Socialist, by conceiving the transfer of wealth as being the social good,
loves money no less than the wicked miser.  
	


	Comments welcome.

Andrew Aiken

	
P.S. This is not to say that the state has no role in facilitating charity.
I believe that it does, but I deplore pure Socialism.  Pure capitalism is
not desirable either, but rather than proposing a "middle way" (welfare state),
I consider a system of "progressive capitalism" to be most conducive to 
voluntary charity.  Some of the New Deal and Great Society reforms were proper
and necessary, but others were ill-conceived, and we should not make monuments
of them.

P.P.S.  I have spoken here of the Christian God, of course, because it is my
own belief, and it is the religion that I know best.  I'd be interested in
hearing divergent views from believers in other religions.  
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