Justice and Redistribution

The Christian evangelical Left parallels the rise of the radical far Left in American politics. That's why I don't see a conflict with calling Obama a Christian and a marxist. I am not one who was surprised that Obama stayed with Wright's church. Like many churches, it runs programs for the poor, such as housing, food, clothing, but it also receives funding from the government to do so. That money comes from you and me in the form of taxes. Sometimes it is a summer lunch program, sometimes it is rehabilitating older housing, or it may be career or job training (or subsidies for barely working). Christians see this as "distributive justice" (or more accurately, redistributing our wealth). There is also a far left wing among mainline protestants and Roman Catholics. Together these three groups are the Religious Left. They all have their own organizations, many of which receive money from the government as well as their denominations to fund their programs and achieve their goals, which are often in line with those of the government.

Justice in the Bible is synonymous with righteousness, which is an attribute of God. Man, made in God's image, was also righteous before the Fall, but now is a sinner and receives Jesus' righteousness by faith. The "good news" includes concern for the whole person, but leftist Christians have distorted the Biblical view with the idea that government needs to redistribute goods and services through taxation to achieve justice. Thus the state can be God's representative on earth.

The following is from Stewardship Journal, Winter 1991, "The Christian Debate over Justice and Rights" by Ronald H. Nash, 29-40.

The most elementary analysis of the Religious Left's writings about justice makes it clear that they are interested almost exclusively in questions of distributive justice. When one's announced intention is to help the poor, it is probably inevitable that one's emphasis will be upon distributing (or rather redistributing) society's wealth. . . Political liberals concerned with distributive justice on the level of an entire society usually try to disguise the fact that the redistribution of a society's holdings they wish to institute must be enacted through coercion, that is, through the state or government forcing people in some way or other.

On several occasions, I have heard my friend Ron Sider give eloquent appeals to rich Christians in America to spread their wealth around to help the poor. I am often mystified as to why Sider fails to tell his audiences that what he desires is for the state or government to effect his desired redistribution of wealth through force, that is, through taxation (the IRS, after all, does not suggest that one make a donation). Some of Sider's followers obviously sense that he is an apologist for higher taxes that will supposedly support greatly expanded liberal social programs. Others seem to miss this obvious point and simply get caught up in the idealism of a noble crusade to help the poor.

Please note the big difference between Christians voluntarily giving their own money to fund programs to help the poor and the quite different situations in which agents of the state take other people's money, keep a large chunk of it to pay their inflated salaries, and use some of what's left to fund counter-productive and self-defeating programs that end up making life even more miserable for the poor. . .

Social or distributive justice as liberals view it is possible only in a society that is controlled from the top down. There must be a central agency with the power to force people to accept the liberals' preferred pattern of distribution. . . What liberals call justice is a setting in which representatives of the state, the most powerful and coercive institution on earth, are empowered continually to take from some in order to give to others, taking care in the process that they keep enough to pay their own salaries. . .

Devotees of liberal "social justice" often fail to see how their position leads to an aggrandizement of state power, how it enslaves people to the state. They too easily overlook the massive threat the institution of the state poses to human liberty. . .

Christian political liberals want the state to use its vast powers of coercion to force everyone in society to help attain the Christian's ends. . . [They] often use the doctrine of Christian stewardship in an attempt to justify their commitment to statism. . . Christian stewardship is perverted into a doctrine that obliges Christians to surrender their judgment, will, and resources to the liberal state which, in the view of the Religious Left, becomes God's surrogate on earth. (p. 31)