“Ecumenical Advocacy” for the poor?
April 2, 2008 by Laura | Trackback URI
From FrontPage Magazine:
“Do good to those who hate you,” Schirch advised. “It’s the smart thing to do,” she said. “Not just the right thing.” But the Founder of Christianity, whom she was presumably quoting, did not deliver the Sermon on the Mount as a civil policy statement. Nor did He demand of civil states the same behavior he asked of individuals. The Apostle Paul even specified that God ordained civil governments to avenge and punish wicked deeds. The modern Religious Left, while chronically denouncing conservative religionists as “fundamentalists,” itself proof texts a limited number of favored Scriptures to make political points divorced from wider Christian teachings about statecraft.
Schirch’s assumption that global strife and terrorism are the inevitable consequence of American greed and profiteering is a favorite theme for the secular and Religious Left, neither of which accepts traditional Christian understandings of human sinfulness. Instead, the secular and Religious Left believe people to be innately good but corrupted or provoked to wrath by unjust “systems” that are predictably identified with capitalism, patriarchy, Western Civilization, and especially the United States. That the American economy is itself the economic engine that helps to uplift tens of millions around the world out of chronic poverty is a point that always escapes them. That terrorism is primarily a product of often irrational human hatred and base resentment is a possibility that the Religious Left would prefer not to consider. Combating hatred in human hearts requires spiritual warfare by churches and often material warfare by civil states.
… “Christians have a definition of security that is unstated by politicians,” Kinamon pronounced, according to the NCC news service. “Security is never won through unilateral defense. The security of one is inseparable from the welfare of others. U.S. security is dependent not on force but on addressing the injustices” that he believes breed resentment and terror. “Those who guarantee their own security at the expense of others will find they have even less security.” Like Schirch, Kinnamon assumed that the U.S. only employs military force so it can continue to gobble up the world’s goods disproportionately.The NCC chief even enthused: “We’re not leftists. We’re much more radical than that.” No doubt he is right.
The bible is not, however, anti-capitalist:
Invest your money in foreign trade, and one of these days you will make a profit. Put your investments in several places—many places even—because you never know what kind of bad luck you are going to have in this world. No matter which direction a tree falls, it will lie where it fell. When the clouds are full, it rains. If you wait until the wind and the weather are just right, you will never plant anything and never harvest anything. God made everything, and you can no more understand what he does than you understand how new life begins in the womb of a pregnant woman. Do your planting in the morning and in the evening, too. You never know whether it will all grow well or whether one planting will do better than the other.
(Ecclesiastes 11:1-6)
There are hundreds of verses advising to us do business honorably and in a God-glorifying way, and additionally to be generous with the profits. But within those guidelines, according to the bible, business is GOOD. And there is ample evidence that it is the best way to help the poor; this is also very consistent with biblical teaching. If people really want to help the poor, promoting capitalism, which is within biblical guidelines and is proven to work would be not just the right thing to do, but the smart thing.
I had forgotten all about that.
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