(Guestpost from Drew)
We can fight socialism best by teaching Christians to despise all authority apart from the Bible. After all, the Bible is the Word of God. It offers eternal life to those who believe its gospel, and overabundant life to those who wisely heed its teachings.
By emphasizing biblical authority, I am not advocating worldwide revolution or the rejection of all hierarchy. We should, however, pressure those in authority over us to make sure their power actually derives from God’s Word – and not from their own minds.
In Colossians 2:8:23, for example, Paul loudly proclaims the importance of human freedom. He warns us against slavery to hollow philosophy. Extrabiblical philosophies abound in the world, sometimes insightful and sometimes silly. But any philosophy can go terribly wrong when it tries to impose its rules on other people:
Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? (Colossians 2:20-21)
After all, what is liberalism, except one big hollow, legalistic philosophy? As a hollow philosophy of extrabiblical rules, it subjugates its adherents and sometimes even entire societies.
The next time a liberal — Christian or otherwise – tries to convince you that you morally owe 50% of your wealth to the poor, just laugh at him and tell him that you died with Christ and will no longer submit to his pagan wisdom. See his response. Liberalism is all about rules, but almost none of them can be found in the Bible. God had plenty of opportunity to voice his support for socialist ideals; he even founded a country once, called Israel. Strangely enough, he did not turn it into a communism (See, e.g., 1 Samuel 8:9,11,15,17).
The Judges
Comically, liberals claim not just that you owe other people 50% (or more) of your wealth – but also that you morally owe your support for an authoritative government, which will help/coerce you into performing your “moral duty.”
Liberals basically assume that God (or whoever) requires humans to give up most of their wealth. Then, they assume that God (or whatever) does not believe in free will – so the liberals establish a godlike government to enforce their rules. The liberal thinker usually considers himself spiritual, or even godly, because he submits to so many rules.
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Colossians 2:23)
We can see from liberalism today that the unregenerate mind longs for slavery. (In fact, all moral systems apart from the Bible tend to result in slavery.) Deep down, most people have a gut feeling that they don’t deserve God’s love. As a result of their guilt, they produce various kinds of moralistic schemes to help themselves feel more righteous. In Islam, for example, you see women covering their entire bodies. In Hinduism, you see people worshipping cows.
In liberalism, you see activists flagellating themselves with carbon taxes, and doing their best to forcibly distribute “charity” to the poor. (They do these “works of righteousness” partly to make up for all the babies they’ve murdered via abortion.)
But once you accept the truth of the gospel — that Jesus personified the only truly righteous law, and then died to pay all your debts – you gain the ability to rise above the nonsense.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 2:13-15)
There remains no more need for holy cows or burkas or animal sacrifices or carbon taxes. Sadly, not all Christians read their Bibles enough to grasp their liberty fully, but let us rise above Christian mediocrity! The Word of Truth can set us free.
*cough*
Most of the movement towards socialism that I’ve seen in my life time is straight from selective quoting of the KJV– variations on “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I’m sure other versions of the Bible would be highly useful, as well, despite the traditional hostility of open socialists to religion.
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I know what you mean, but it’s because people are largely ignorant of the Bible as a whole. If you remember my last post on this topic (http://pursuingholiness.com/2009/05/godless-slavery/), I mentioned that “love” apart from God’s law is essentially gnosticism. All pagan religions pretend that they’re loving, but the mere warm emotion separated from biblical principles is an abomination. Homosexuality is just one obvious example. It seems loving on the surface, but it actually perverts true love.
When Jesus told his followers to love their neighbor, he stated his reasoning: In a general way, that one command summed up all the other commands. (And it’s actually a quote from Leviticus 19:18). But it wasn’t meant to replace the other commands, just to shed light on them and hilight the motivation that should accompany them.
And even logically, “Love your neighbor as yourself” should actually undermine liberalism. Who among us would morally require the government to rob others in order to make us rich? Socialism doesn’t really promote equality, but only self-hatred. Their idea is more like, “Love your neighbor MORE than yourself,” or perhaps “Love the government with all your heart and soul and mind.”
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Ah, but they don’t want it to make folks rich, it’s in the “feed the hungry, cloth the naked, house the homeless” sense of loving them. Generally, there’s a lot “people are so rich it’s immoral, and all these people are in need, so it’s only moral that some of what they really don’t need be given to the folks who are poor and dying!” (I’m sorry, I can’t phrase the argument very fairly, because I have rather strong views about folks owning their effort– same way I can’t get behind healthcare being a “right,” or someone having a “right” to food I’m cooking, or the money in my pocket.)
Basically, much as homosexuality takes the natural, good, reproductive urge and turns it to selfish pleasure, socialism takes the virtue of charity and removes the will to help others— in the name of being more effective, usually.
It’s worth noting that folks also argue that homosexuality is argued for by some Bible-only Christians, generally on the same basis for why we are allowed to eat pork. (highly simplified to try to avoid thread high jacking)
Christian Socialism isn’t anything new, although it seems to pop up in a lot of forms.
A major problem with sola scriptura is that it is so easily twisted– and there’s no way to argue that the way someone is reading it is wrong without appealing to something else, outside. Any quotes that contradict what they want to read will be read differently and into a whole ‘nother form.
Humans are amazing creatures– like the commentluv post up above, for example: a brick with a race-based message is thrown through the window of a four year old’s bedroom, late at night. Police are saying it’s not a hate crime because there’s no evidence that the family was targeted because of their race……
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But adding additional sources of authority doesn’t really solve the problem. For example, a socialist could easily find some flawed bishop or early church father (or dead Protestant reformer) and then take a quote out of context from him instead of the Bible. Given that church leaders are flawed, you might even find a quote from someone that’s false *in* context.
I agree that it’s wise to hear the opinions from people around you in church, and also the opinions of historical thinkers. For example, you often see Laura and me arguing for traditions established by John Locke and the Founding Fathers. The people who think they know everything just by reading the Bible themselves often tend to go off and start cults; God made us a community. He even distributes different spiritual gifts to different people to force us to work together (1 Corinthians 12:29-30).
But when people in church are giving you their opinions, it’s important to make sure they’re actually citing scripture. (John Locke cited scripture in his writings all the time.) I constantly hear Christians — even preachers — citing moralistic, extrabiblical principles as if they were God’s commands. E.g., lately I’ve heard several people condemn the idea of flying American flags in church, even though the Bible says nothing bad about it.
The heretics who argue for homosexuality from the Bible are a sad joke. Unfortunately, we’re always gonna have some fools who just go off the deep end, and that’s what excommunication is for (1 Corinthians 5:12-13). I personally think churches should do it a little more often. Fortunately, though, we don’t have the entire burden of purifying the church ourselves; Jesus also disciplines his own (See Revelation 2:20-23).
But adding additional sources of authority doesn’t really solve the problem.
In and of itself and barring some manner of qualifying the authority, no– more data isn’t more information.
An example of qualified authority would be factual evidence of historical meaning, evidence of a long history of X interpretation, or a binding teaching of a shared faith.
Possible ways of creating an authoritative source that is sort of sola scriptura would be to collect a body built on the Bible, then reasoned through– the biggest problem would be avoiding selective quotations and poor translations, which is a baseline problem with any information.
or example, a socialist could easily find some flawed bishop or early church father (or dead Protestant reformer) and then take a quote out of context from him instead of the Bible.
*dryly* Don’t have to go that far– the MSM is already insisting that the Pope’s last encyclical is socialist, or maybe communist. I also have recently met up with Catholics who very much believe that some form of socialism is the only truly Christian way to live, although none that I’ve met so far are full-on socialists.
The people who think they know everything just by reading the Bible themselves often tend to go off and start cults; God made us a community.
Old Jewish story about a man who went to a great Rabbi and asked to be taught to read, so that he could read the Torah. He didn’t want to be taught the Torah, because he didn’t want to be given the Rabbi’s bias, he wanted to be able to read it himself and make up his own mind.
The Rabbi agreed, and they spent the whole day teaching the guy the alphabet, A to Z.
The next day, the man came back for his lessons, and the Rabbi started teaching him the alphabet, Z to A.
“Wait, wait! This is all wrong– yesterday, you said something different!”
“You are willing to trust me to teach you the alphabet, but not to teach you the Torah?”
The guy got the point and learned the Torah from the Rabbi.
I personally think churches should do it a little more often.
Problem being that, generally, the folks who follow such a thing already left on their own, because they can’t stand to be churched with those who disagree with their hobby horse.
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