Perceptions of Racism: Why We Need a Double Standard

This image has recently been displayed on Facebook, and I want to talk about it this week:

You can view a portion of the incident on CNN here. The Huffington Post also published an article detailing what had happened and some of the reactions to it:

As some people at the Missouri State Fair see it, the rodeo incident last weekend in which a ringleader taunted a clown wearing a mask of President Obama and played with his lips as a bull charged after him was neither racist nor disrespectful. It was a joke, they said, overblown by a news media that’s hypersensitive to any possible slight against the nation’s first black president. 

The rodeo incident and the clown at the center of it have become the latest illustration of racial divisions that continue to surface nearly five years into Obama’s presidency. . . Democratic and Republican elected officials in Missouri quickly condemned the incident, saying it was offensive and inappropriate. . . .

But there has also been a backlash on the right, with conservative radio talk show hosts and writers dismissing the act as a joke no different from jabs aimed at other presidents. Moreover, they said, the president’s supporters ought to learn how to take a joke rather than seeing everything as racially motivated.

There is a long history of mocking politicians at rodeos, and clowns have donned masks of other presidents as part of their acts. But James Staab, a political science professor at the University of Central Missouri, said last week’s incident “goes beyond the pale — they’re talking about physical injury and racial stereotypes.” 

To be fair, there is naturally going to be a difference in the way a rodeo clown dressed as a Democratic President is treated by the conservative, rodeo-going crowd of Missouri, compared to the way they would treat a rodeo clown dressed as a Republican and fellow Southerner like George H. W. Bush.  It's not surprising that the crowd demonstrated more verbal animosity towards the Democrat, and race may or may not have been a factor in that.  But that's not really what the problem is with the Facebook meme.

I also don't think it's all that helpful to focus on whether the Obama clown depiction was "racially motivated," as the Huffington Post puts it.  It's difficult and often unproductive to try to determine what people's motives are in a situation like this.  But there is an issue.  And the issue, as far as I can see, is not so much about what motivated the incident, but about what actually happened.

You see, I'm not talking about racial motivations, but about racism.  I think these are actually two things that overlap, but are really not the same.

I do think the Obama mask is racist, even though there was a similar mask of Bush that obviously wasn't.  One reason I think so is the simple fact that the Obama mask overemphasizes certain stereotypical characteristics associated with black people, such as large white teeth, in a way that simply doesn't apply to the Bush mask.  Another reason is that depicting African-Americans as clownlike and stupid is a historical practice of the dominant white culture in the U.S., and as such, it isn't funny when we do it today.  Based on our history as a nation, there are ways you can lampoon a white man that you can't lampoon a black one-- because the scars are still there, and this sort of thing isn't going to help heal any of them.

But there's more to it even than that.  

I want to talk about institutional, systemic racism-- the kind that isn't about "motivation." The kind that people participate in without intention, and often without even consciousness of doing so.  The fact is, that it's quite possible-- even easy-- to participate in systemic, institutional racism without in the least intending to be racist.  All you have to do is go along with the status quo.

That's not to say that there is never any actual, deliberate, racially motivated animosity towards our current President.  I'm sure sometimes there is.  But when it comes to racism, it's quite possible to participate in it without deliberate racial motivation at all.

Back in 2009, blogger Rod at Political Jesus identified a particular characteristic of conservative evangelicalism, which he spoke of in terms of sexism, but which easily apply to racism as well.  He said that conservative evangelicalism has

a highly individualistic view of sin–an idea that individuals alone are judged according to their sins and actions. . . 

[Thus they] discredit any theological notion of corporate sin, and therefore discredit the claims of [persons experiencing systemic injustice] since institutional sin does not exist. If institutional sins such as institutional sexism does not exist, then [such] claims cannot be explained except for anything but a “conspiracy theory.”

But this is not about a secret plot that a few people claim exists.  This is about real events that happen, real ways that people get treated, which are not part of any conspiracy, but just a factor of our ongoing social structures. Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as institutional, corporate sin, and systemic racism is one of them.  If sins were only individual, why would Jesus speak as He did in Matthew 11:20-24?

Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. . . And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day."

An article in Watchman Magazine Online by Marc Smith explains a little bit about what might have been the corporate sin of Capernaum:

Capernaum was located in a very advantageous place (Matthew 11:23, "And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven..." This reference the Lord makes might have had to do with the attitude of its inhabitants more than any other factor.) in that it was on a crossroads of primary importance, being along the Beth-shan, Damascus highway. The presence of Roman soldiers at Capernaum (Mark 8:5-13) illustrates the importance of Capernaum's location. (Emphasis in original)

If Capernaum as a city could have been considered guilty of corporate pride by Christ, how can we say there is no such thing as corporate sin?  As long as we look at sin as only an individual thing, we will probably fail to see that we may be participating in systemic societal sin, simply by remaining blind to it and thus just going along with the way things are.

So what does systemic racism look like?  How does it relate to the way the Obama mask is perceived, versus the way the Bush mask is perceived?

This article on white privilege details several differences between being a white person and a person of color in America.  I think one aspect in particular applies here:  that in ways a white person will never experience, a person of color is viewed less as an individual and more as a representative of his or her entire race.   Here are some examples from the article, detailing conditions which people of color cannot count on, but which white people often take for granted:

I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.

I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

White people in our culture (and particularly white men) are usually looked at as individuals.  White is normative; white is the default.  You don't get noticed for being white in our society.  You aren't considered primarily as a member of a group known as "whites."

What this means for the rodeo clown mask incident (as my husband so pithily pointed out the other evening), people in general aren't going to look at the Bush mask and say, "Oh, look at the funny white man."

But  that's not the case with the Obama mask.  When people look at the Obama mask, the tendency, learned from our culture and passed down generationally, is to see a mask of a black man first, and of a man named Barack Obama second.

What this means is that we can't put a rodeo clown in an Obama mask without its being seen as a mockery, not just of our President, but of the entire black race.  Even if we don't intend it to be seen that way.  Even if that's the last thing on our minds.

Is this fair?  No.  But it's the way things are.  So to get offended when people say, "That's racist!" is to continue to walk in the privilege of not having to notice that it's not the same to be black in our country as it is to be white. 

I think it's important as a white person not to take this too personally.  To have someone point out that something we're participating in is racist, isn't necessarily an indictment on our character.  Instead, we can see it humbly, as a time to learn to let go of privilege.  It's time to learn to see through the eyes of those our race has traditionally and repeatedly othered.  We need to understand why the Bush rodeo mask and the Obama rodeo mask really aren't the same thing-- and why it's not hypocrisy to say so.

As white people, we tend to want to ask, "Then is the only way to not be perceived as racist, to treat people of color with more consideration than we treat ourselves?

Well-- yes.

Because we can't clean up a mess by pretending it's not there.  We can't just say, "As long as I'm not making a new mess, it's ok."  We can't just say, "I wasn't the one who made that old mess, and it's not my fault or my responsibility."  That doesn't matter.  We inherited this mess of systemic racism that's been here all these years, and we have to roll up our sleeves and bend down to work on cleaning it up. To pretend it isn't there ends up just being a way to leave it in place.

And that means that, until black and brown people are really free from institutional and generational racism, there has to be a double standard.

It's the least we can do.  Isn't it?

Thoughts of a Christian Centrist: Is Big Government Really the Big Problem?

As I explained in Part 1, I consider myself a Christian centrist and a questioner. I don’t claim to be an expert on politics, and I don’t plan to do a lot of political posts on this blog-- but one of the questions I have had to ask myself in today’s political climate is whether I agree with the political stance taken by many Christians in the U.S. today—the stance that many non-Christian Americans have come to identify with Christianity: libertarian-style political conservatism. Besides the fact that there are actually many Christians who do identify with centrism or progressivism, it seems inappropriate for Christianity to become so identified with a political party in the first place. But setting that aside for now, the main question I have to ask myself is whether I agree with the stance that big government is our big problem.

The idea seems to be that government is infringing on the rights of businesses and private citizens, who would all be much better off if government stayed out of their business. And this is not just about the national debt and how much government spending we can afford. George Will’s column in my local paper for June 17, 2012 (I’m sure this appeared in newspapers all over the country), said:

“[In] the 1930’s the [US Supreme] Court formally declar[ed] economic rights to be inferior to ‘fundamental’ rights. This begot pernicious . . . tolerance of capricious government abridgements of economic liberty.”

Mr. Will defines “economic liberty” as “private property rights, freedom of contract and freedom from arbitrary government interference with the right to engage in enterprise.”

I wasn’t born in the 1930’s, but I do remember my history. It was the time of the Great Depression. My basic understanding of the economic situation out of which the 1930’s Supreme Court made its declaration, is that “economic liberty,” at that time, included the liberty of banks to gamble with their depositor’s investments, the liberty of corporations to hold wages down below minimum subsistence levels, set 14-hour workdays, and ignore even rudimentary safety standards, and the liberty of landowners to treat migrant workers however they pleased, often subjecting anyone who tried to resist them to violence. The economic liberty of the powerful meant that they could engage the police to uphold and even perpetrate human rights violations against individual workers who merely wanted to earn enough to feed a family. One thing the Great Depression taught the nation was that when economic rights are unrestrained, the strong trample the weak, a certain small segment of society becomes richer and richer, and everyone else suffers.

The question, then, of whether economic liberty is really equal to fundamental, basic human rights like life, dignity, security and personal liberty, is one that I have to ask. And I have to answer that when the economic liberty of one person (I’m mainly speaking about the way a person “engages in enterprise,” as George Will puts it) infringes on the basic human rights of another, economic liberty really must take a back seat. Should government interfere with economic liberty by regulating private enterprise in ways that protect the powerless from the powerful? I have to answer yes.

So here’s what I see as the real problem in my country.

The way I see a lot of people thinking, it is the government alone which can or does oppress people, and it does it through taxation and redistribution (which was equated with theft by a representative conservative voice in my last post) and through regulations that hinder the ability of private businesses to make wealth. But according to passage after passage in the books of the prophets, God faults both the rulers and the private sector for oppression— and especially, as in the verse above, when they conspire together to make laws that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Micah 7:3, one of the prophetic lamentations about the sins of the whole nation of Israel says: “Both hands are skilled in doing evil; the ruler demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, the powerful dictate what they desire--they all conspire together.” This is what things are looking like in the United States, from where I sit. Powerful business interests are dictating public policy through campaign contributions to our legislators, while the ordinary citizen has little or no voice. What should happen is that government and private enterprise act as checks and balances upon one another. What I see instead is collusion.

The lamentations of prophets like Micah are applicable today in that they identify in a timeless, universal way, what is right and wrong in the way we treat one another, both as communities and as individuals. Of course the actual groups addressed by the prophetic books are not the same as the ones that hold power today. But power is power, and rule is rule. The fact that we have elected officials instead of kings, and high-tech corporations instead of wealthy agricultural land interests, makes very little difference.

Here are some other, similar passages:

Isaiah 1:23 - Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves; they all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless; the widow's case does not come before them.

Isaiah 3:14-15 - The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of His people: ‘It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?’ says the Lord God of hosts.

Isaiah 10:1-2 - Woe to you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!

These passages don’t seem to fit very well with the idea that God is primarily displeased when government interferes with the power of the wealthy to make more wealth. Instead, the prophets’ outcry is against laws created through bribery and undue influence by the powerful on the lawmakers—laws that make things tougher on the poor and the ordinary citizen.

And then there are these passages, which are not clearly aimed at “rulers” at all:

Isaiah 5:8 – Woe to you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!

Micah 2:2 - They covet fields, and seize them; house, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance.

To join asset to asset until there is room for no one else— this is what big business does today, and the government has aided them by watering down the laws that used to protect citizens against monopolies. And seizing houses and other assets is most recently the province of the big banks, whose subprime mortgage fiasco led to the seizure of millions of homes from ordinary citizens who were duped by unscrupulous financiers into taking out loans they could not afford. Do the citizens bear responsibility for their own actions? Of course—but who is more responsible, the ordinary citizen with little or no training in finance, or the financiers who led them into trouble?

A few more:

Ezekiel 22:6-7, 12 & 29 - See how each of the princes of Israel who are in you uses his power to shed blood. . . in you they have oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the widow. V. 12 - In you men accept bribes to shed blood; you take usury and excessive interest, and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. And you have forgotten me, declares the Sovereign Lord. V. 29 - The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.

Amos 5:11-12 - Therefore, because you trample on [another reading is “impose heavy rent on”] the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.

Malachi 3:5 - Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against . . . those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear Me, says the Lord of hosts.

It is not just “princes” but “men” in the private sector who are in view in the Ezekiel passage. The other two almost certainly address both. Who are these passages applicable to today? Congressmen and senators who receive campaign finance promises in exchange for promoting laws that profit the donors— often at the expense of the people they were elected to represent. Credit agencies which jack up interest rates. Corporations which pay huge salaries and bonuses to those at the top while their workers suffer wage freezes and layoffs. Real estate management companies which raise rents excessively. Banks and Wall Street moguls using their wealth to influence Congress to make laws which help wealthy investors give one another inside knowledge to avoid weak investments, while average citizens are on their own. And all these things are commonplace.

In 1 Timothy 5:18 Paul cited the Old Testament, “do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” to discuss the principle that a laborer is worthy of his wages. Workers today are working more hours than they have in decades, only to see their real wages—the amount of goods and services that their money will buy—continue to fall. Most people I know have not had a raise in years, but consider themselves lucky to even have jobs. And while wage growth stymies, corporate profits rise. Is this happening because of oppressive government? Only, as far as I can see, in the sense that the government is doing little or nothing to stop this kind of oppression from the private sector.

In order for these things to be stopped, the limitation of powers cannot be one-sided, limiting the government alone. The Lord does not view only government officials as responsible for their use of power. Wealthy private citizens and business interests are also powerful, and also responsible—and only through a balance of power between government and the private sector can the natural greed of humanity be curbed. Campaign finance needs to be regulated. Banking practices need to be regulated. Business and employment practices need to be regulated.

Right now, it seems to me, we are suffering not so much from too-powerful government as we are from too-powerful private interests. Huge corporations that shut down their plants and ship the jobs overseas. Companies that lay off huge numbers of workers, then hire them back as temporary help at half the wages and no benefits. CEOs who take record-size bonuses while the employees on the lines see their wages frozen—for the third year in a row.

I think we need the government to hold accountable the hugely powerful private sector, just as we need the private sector to hold the government accountable. Instead, the wealthy in both are in cahoots with one another to make each other even wealthier. My problem with government right now is not that it is getting too big—it is that it is getting too weak, more and more under the thumb of the private sector through powerful lobbying interests and campaign finance promises, no longer able or willing to do what’s right without an eye to personal profit. There is supposed to be a fine line between campaign finance and bribes—but that line is getting to where only a lobbyist or a politician can actually see it. It all looks like bribery to me.

Good fences make good neighbors, they say, and locked doors keep honest people honest. But people in positions of power and influence, whether public sector or private, do not become virtuous just because they are entrusted with more responsibilities. On the contrary—power corrupts. Where there are no fences and no locked doors, people are going to cross lines. Deregulation and more deregulation of the private sector is not the answer. Neither is lifting the restrictions on how much money a politician can amass, in the name of “free speech.” According to the most basic Christian doctrine of the sinfulness of humanity, power needs to be curbed.

There have been times when too much regulation has been a problem in our nation. But the way it looks to me—that time is not now.

And as for the national debt? I’m concerned about that; I really am. But it seems to me that if more ordinary, working people were allowed to get ahead, rather than working so hard just to enrich their bankers and CEO’s—then we would all be able to both save more and buy more, and we would be paying more taxes on our increased incomes. Increased prosperity would mean that less people needed government services, decreasing spending and increasing revenues at the same time.

And then we wouldn’t be talking about balancing our budget by cutting aid to the most vulnerable in our society. In the long run, that will not help our nation as a whole. In reality, we’re all in this together. When one child who could have become a productive citizen fails to do so because of poverty, it harms our whole economy.

I’d like to see our nation start putting more value on everyone pulling together, and a little less on every man for himself.

Thoughts of a Christian Centrist: On the Role of Government

Part of who I have become over the past 10-15 years has to do with questioning. I used to just follow the conservative Republican ideas that I thought good Christians were supposed to believe. But as I have questioned things, I have moved more and more into the center, and there, in recent years, I have stayed. Not that I’m really into politics—in fact, I’d rather avoid thinking about them much at all. But to keep some kind of intellectual integrity, and because I have responsibilities as a voting citizen (thank you, suffragettes!) I have had to decide where I stand in the polarized political climate we in the U.S. live in today.

Recently I bought and read Left, Right & Christ (Russell Media, 2011), in which a Christian Republican and a Christian Democrat each take chapters to address the pressing political issues of our time. The foundational issue was the role of government. I wasn’t really satisfied with the Christian Democrat’s response— she seemed to me to skirt all around the issue without ever addressing it head-on. But it turned out that the Christian Republican’s response was one I couldn’t agree with at all.

So here are my own thoughts on the role of government, from a Christian centrist’s perspective.

D.C. Innes, the Republican contributor in Left, Right & Christ, defines the role of government using just two short passages from the New Testament. 1 Peter 2:13-15 says that “governors [are] sent by him [the Lord] to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. And in Romans 13 we read that rulers carry out God’s wrath on wrongdoers and approve those who do good. Innes concludes from this: “The task of government is simple and limited: punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. . . God appoints government for our benefit, but it is not to provide every good. It is only to prevent bad conduct with creditable threat and punish it. . . .” (pages 58-60).

 Based on this, Innes says only private charities should help the poor. As he puts it, “God’s purpose for civil government is that it provide an umbrella of protection for person and property that frees people to go about their business undisturbed, whether by neighbor or by government itself, providing for themselves, their neighbors, their community as a whole, and anyone whom they find in need.” As I read through the book, I realized that by “community as a whole,” Innes is not talking about people voting for local social projects such as homeless shelters or food banks. He was talking about every individual giving to the community as he or she sees fit—but local taxation for the benefit of the poor seemed just as anathema to Innes as federal taxation.

The problem here is that Innes is making these verses do much more than I think Peter or Paul ever intended. Looking at the context of each letter, neither apostle was in any sense writing a comprehensive theory of government. Paul's letter to the Romans is largely devoted to the theology of justification by faith. Chapters 12-15 answer the question, “how should we live in light of this gospel?” with a series of practical-living precepts for the young Christian church. Peter’s first letter is written to scattered believers in Christ living in pagan cities and is largely about how to hang onto the faith through persecution. Both letters advise Christians to be submissive to the governing authorities and mention the power of civil government to punish wrongdoers and give approval to those who do right. But neither of them says, implicitly or explicitly, that government is meant by God to be limited only to those two things. In fact, the New Testament, which focuses on the new creation in Christ and His kingdom, simply is not about rules for civil government in any sense at all. Proof-texting a complete theory of government from a few passages is not good exegesis.

If I as a Christian am going to come up with a theory of government, I will need to base it on principles: the principles of civil justice found in the Old Testament (remembering that we are not encouraged by Christ or the apostles to attempt to establish Moses’ civil law over any other nation), and the basic principles of justice, fair dealing and do-unto-othering found in the teachings of Christ and the apostles.

So what is the proper role of civil government? This question used to be answered by Christians in terms of the divine right of kings to rule. They used the same passages which are today used to declare such complete limits on government, to establish the full authority of the king over all the people in every area of life. But since I believe these passages were not actually intended to comprehensively enumerate governmental powers, what can I say about what makes a properly functioning government?

This is how I’d sum it up:

The proper role of government includes but is not limited to punishing wrongdoers and praising those who do right. In a very real sense (and especially in a modern representative democracy) government is the community as a whole, acting together— and there are things that a united community can accomplish which groups of individuals or businesses never can. Civil government’s power is in carrying out those tasks which private citizens or businesses cannot as successfully or efficiently do on their own.

Now, obviously this leaves a huge scope of areas where individuals or businesses can act more efficiently and successfully than the civil government can. Private enterprise, family life, individual pursuits and hobbies—in general, I would say that interference of civil government in these areas, except where wrongs are being perpetrated by one person or group upon another, often just stifles the creative thought and individual development of a free people.

On the other hand, when wrongs are being perpetrated by one person or group upon another, I do think the government needs to be able to intervene. Workplace safety standards, workers’ compensation laws, wage and hour protections, prohibition of child labor—all these things are important safeguards that prevent powerful employers from ruining the lives of employees for the sake of profit. (This is another whole topic in and of itself, though, and I’ll be writing more about it next week.)

But what about things that cannot be done very successfully or efficiently by private citizens? What about the building of roads, bridges, water and sewer systems to span large areas or even the whole nation so that everyone is equitably served? What about urban planning and development, so that we don’t end up living in cities of hodgepodge and confusion, with streets going every which way and with some people enjoying the benefits of infrastructure and some falling through the cracks? What about policies of justice for minority groups, so that they don’t get trampled on by the majority? What about the preservation of national resources like Yosemite and Yellowstone? And what about a basic social safety net that’s available to all, and not those who just happen to live where a church or non-profit charity happens to be operating?

I am not for a “nanny state.” A civil government that takes care of all of our needs, cradle to grave, will not encourage resourcefulness or the work ethic that Jesus and the apostles approved—and it also, by rendering private acts of charity obsolete, discourages the moral growth of each individual acting in personal love for the needy. But there has to be something in between nanny-statism and survival-of-the-fittest, social-Darwinist capitalism. Neither one, I think, are what the Spirit of Christ would lead us to.

The United States, as a society, has decided that our community values include no one having to live in shanty towns such as exist all over the third world, boxes of cardboard or corrugated metal without running water or adequate sanitation. We have decided that employees should not have to work 14-hour days or seven-day weeks, and that employers should not be allowed to hire children or to abandon employees who have been injured on the job. We have decided that certain of the most beautiful portions of our land should be set aside for the enjoyment of everyone, never to become factory sites or lines of stores and parking lots. All of these, if looked at in terms of economic freedom, restrict some people’s freedom regarding how much money it is possible to make. Should all of these social contracts, these whole-community values set forth in law, be abandoned in the name of economic freedom? Or should the human tendency to self-centeredness be given free reign—that anyone with enough money to do so, can freely do anything he or she wants to make a profit? Are we so afraid of any hint of what we call “the welfare state”?

Abraham Lincoln is credited with saying, “You cannot ultimately help a man by doing for him what he could and should do for himself.” This makes sense to me. Safety nets should not trap people in the net. They should give people who are able to help themselves, the resources and the hand up needed so that they can help themselves. But those who cannot help themselves, as well as those who just need a hand up, need a safety net that extends under the whole nation, not just in those spots where private charities are in operation. This is something that the civil government can do more effectively than the private sector can—although, given the notorious inefficiency and red tape of civil government, balance through overlap with private charity where possible, is a definite plus.

D.C. Innes says on pages 75-76: “The Christian moral objection to the welfare state is . . . that it violates the eighth commandment [thou shalt not steal]. . . Thieves come in different forms. . . [T]he government’s power to secure property is also the power to take it away. When a mob uses government to pillage its more propertied neighbors, we call it progressive taxation, or redistribution of wealth. Sometimes we call it fairness. But it is theft all the same.”
My problem with that is that the principles of civil justice found in the Bible simply do not equate taxation for the benefit of the poor, with theft. In fact, unrestrained economic rights are foreign to the concept of civil government under the Law of Moses.

Of course, as I said earlier, we should not as Christians look at the government set up for Israel in the Pentateuch as a blueprint for all governments for all time. But we can glean certain basic principles from the Law regarding how a civil society should govern the treatment of one another. God, working with the people of that time and place, simply did not promote economy liberty over basic equity and fair-dealing. In economic dealings, as in other areas of life, the Law restrained the people from fully exercising their liberty, recognizing that the natural human bent towards selfishness and greed needed to be curbed.

The gleaning law in Leviticus 23:22 amounted to a tax on all landowners of a portion of their income, for the benefit of the poor. The Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25:13 amounted to a redistribution of wealth every 50 years, so that each family could return to its own land and possessions—and so that the concentration of all the nation’s wealth in the hands of a few could never take place. One of the most foundational principles of the Bible is that all of humanity is sinful, and therefore cannot be trusted to simply do the right thing as long as you leave it alone. The Law included certain regulatory provisions to make sure that everyone in the society did the duty of the society to the poor among them. Though free-will giving was encouraged, it was not left up to free will alone. Israel was set up very early on (Exodus 18:25) on government by leaders over groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. If a wealthy land-owner denied a poor person the right to glean in his field, the poor person could bring the matter before judges who would enforce the law.

Christian conservatives usually point out at this point that the mandatory giving in the Old Testament was from the well-off directly to the poor, without a government middle man. This is true—and this worked fine for a small, tribal, agriculture-based country in ancient times. But today our wealth is not held in fields for the poor to glean. Land is not held by tribal families so that a Jubilee would result in everyone knowing where to go home to. I don’t think we can get by in our day and age without monetary taxation and a distribution system. In many cases, government contracts with private companies might be the most efficient and best way to get the resources from those who have more than they need, to those who need them. In other cases, it can work better for government agencies to act as the middle man. But as far as I can see, there is nothing inherently evil in a government agency. The evil is in human nature when there is no restraint on power.

However, humans are also made in the image of God and are inexpressibly valuable to Him. When it comes to the value of every human being before God, political theory should not be allowed to override personhood. Jesus said, in Mark 2:27, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” He healed on the Sabbath because the individual standing in front of him in pain, mattered more than the perfect application of Sabbath policy. Should we be happy when conservative laws hold sway and government safety nets are eliminated, but the people who don’t manage to find a private charity are starving?

It seems to me to be common sense to say, “Hey, the poor need to be helped, by the best method possible, even if it doesn’t fit into your economic theories.” As a Christian, and as a citizen of a nation which has always had a strong ethic of care for the poor, that’s where I stand.

Even if many of my brothers and sisters think it un-Christian of me.