Needing Need
December 3, 2008 by Erin Reynolds · Leave a Comment
(Guest Contributor)
Part 2
| Part 1 |
“The mother who bends over a little casket to leave her triune gift of roses, tears, and kisses may yet perceive, in the light of a higher revelation, that though the rose-wreathed casket bears the ashes of her cherished hopes, it is also ministrant to a need she knows not of.” -C. E. Sargent
Once a lifetime we are granted everything we absolutely need. Before we are born we receive precisely enough oxygen, water, and nourishment to survive and to develop the organs that are absolutely essential for existence.
After that, we are immersed in an abundance that we rarely comprehend or appreciate.
Those who fall subject to hunger or exposure to the elements usually die not because of insufficient matter, but because of insufficient methods of distribution and production.
When capability is misdirected, it often leads to incapacity.
America has tried to find the answer to hunger, AIDS, and war itself through war. Yet after so much warfare we are not much closer to peace.
The world’s method of solving problems is to attempt to destroy the problem, but all the while feed the source. We may do the same in our own lives. We create drugs and programs and counselors to fix societal problems, before considering that modern society might be the problem.
The solution to overcrowded prisons and overweight citizens could lie closer to home than we now teach. What we serve for dinner tonight might conceivably impact both prisoners and weight-loss programs; having family mealtime could change not only what but also where our children eat, now and in the future.
Gripped With Need In the Midst of Abundance
Although we have been born into significant abundance, many of us are not content with all that is readily available. One of humankind’s primary sources of malcontent is need. Frequently the reason many of us don’t respond to the needs of others is that we feel encompassed, debilitated, and humiliated by our own needs.
But need often grants more than it denies. This ravening wolf wards off more predators than we ever realize. This is hard to recognize at first, confirming that we don’t understand the true nature of need.
The average American doesn’t know what it means to be truly hungry, or scared or cold. We cannot easily relate to a prisoner of war that lived on starvation rations for decades, and worked outside in –60° weather without coat or shoes. We aren’t concerned about stretching a quarter cup of flour to last three meals.
Usually we find ourselves worrying about things such as our car’s faulty air conditioning, or stressing over the color of our teeth, hair and nails. Skin cancer in America is more likely to be caused by too many hours at the beach than from too many hours of working in a rice field. The increasing number of weight-loss programs alone ought to be a fairly accurate indicator of where one of our nation’s most consuming worries lies, not in sufficiency, but in overabundance.
With this superabundance to which most of us have become accustomed, how can our understanding of need be felt in any other context than what we have experienced first hand, in relation to what we want, not what we truly need?
Needs can be classified into a number of categories, but two types are easily recognizable. The first type of needs are those universal to all humans and are absolutely necessary for existence: food, water, or shelter. The second type includes needs that are relative to what we, specifically, possess and are not as closely related to our subsistence: a baker needs an oven, a sailor needs a ship.
But is there a need greater than any of these? Is there a higher need, which, if understood and fulfilled, could increase each person’s capacity and success, and put all other needs in perspective?
What Do We Really Need?
Perhaps if we had more time we could fit in everything we really needed to do, and thus avert disappointment. Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman emperor and philosopher, once counseled, “Do not act as if you were going to live 10,000 years.” He recognized that humans need increased capacity to utilize time, not more time.
This capacity can only be fostered by limiting, not increasing, that element of life. Ability must be tested if it is to be increased, just as muscles must be exercised if they are to be strengthened. To augment the element of time could indeed limit our capacity. Aurelius identified time as the universal ally.
None of us is cheated of one second of one day. One boy may live ten years, and his father one hundred. But each day of every life is filled with the same full measure of seconds, minutes and hours. Time was never the true excuse of failure, nor the real element of success.
What we need is not more time.
Perhaps more money would allow us to finally reach true happiness. This seems to have become the premise of much of today’s logic. If we usually find more exalted happiness than exalted looks among the wealthy, we might legitimately conclude that happiness and wealthiness are closely connected. But as it now stands, the meek are allotted to receive a greater inheritance than everyone else combined.
What we need is not more money.
So do we need more of anything?
The empty homes, and bursting hospitals, the refugee camps and unmarked mass graves issue a silent but resounding yes. We need more healing and helping. We need armies that protect more lives than they deny, treaties that allow more freedom than they revoke, and leaders that give more than they require.
Yet if we really need these things, are we condemned to die of want from such needs –- or is the surest provision for the solution’s endurance actually its temporary absence?
If Lincoln had libraries, would we have had Lincoln?
If Washington had peace, would we?
Was it the men, or the methods that made these leaders who they were? Maybe it was both. Lincoln needed books and learning. But more than needing books, he needed to need books. More significant than the hours of reading were the walks through the woods to get those books. More important than the knowledge he received was the price he paid to obtain that knowledge.
So it is with most of our greatest gifts; what we give will often reward us more and impact us more than what we receive. This is true of both good and ill.
The Reward of Paying the Price
Often we lay our excuses upon all that is absent in our lives. But as we achieve greatness we realize the significant thing we hold in common with others who have done the same is in having learned to appreciate, and even capitalize, on what we lacked.
Sometimes what we find in seeking to fulfill a need is not what we sought, but what we paid, and that payment becomes more meaningful and dear than it ever was before. Both need and fulfillment are elements of happiness. When our gaze rests finally upon the fulfillment, or at least the most outward manifestation of it, we have not understood real happiness.
Ask a group of mountain climbers where their view rests the longest once they have reached the summit of their climb. The exhilaration of the view does not usually lie in seeing a patch of ground under foot that could not be seen from the valley below. Rather it comes from seeing the valley below, but from an entirely new perspective.
It could be that what we need most is a change of view about what we already see. Our needs symbolize more than need; they represent a source. Each solution to a problem stands for something more than a solution; it implies a comprehensive whole.
The Test of Debt
Need and fulfillment are naturally united. But another aspect of existence, intertwined with each of these, is something we all know well enough by face and not enough at heart: debt.
Debt is one of our most potent tools and one of our greatest allies, if we use it wisely. Debt is an essential aspect of our development. What we go into debt for shows where our lives are really lived, on borrowed, or invested, time and means.
What this tool really proves is that there are few if any other choices before us; we can spend, or we can invest what was a gift in the first place. If much of what we possess is given from a Higher Power, then isn’t one of life’s great lessons about how well we deal with debt, and how well we respond to need?
And does that Power really care most about how much we have of anything? Isn’t it more concerned with how well we use what we already have?
Only those who invest what they are given, from time to talents, to money to means, ever approach fulfillment. Every other action, use and abuse, proves that such fulfillment is at worst illusory, and at best, borrowed. Only invested effort, or effort that seeks to magnify and improve, can yield happiness that is truly genuine.
This aspect of debt illustrates that often our greatest needs are internal, and will never be met by more money, more friends, more food or more recognition. In fact, these things may increase our indebtedness to ourselves and to the world. What empowers us is the ability, the gift, to augment what is already innate.
The key to a rest-filled sleep could depend more on what is in our heart, than what prescriptions we have in our bathroom cabinet. And while the latter might help us get through one more night, they are not what is helping us get through one more day. The really restful answer addresses both concerns.
The most obnoxious people we know could have more in common with us than our very best friends, in that both of us suffer from the same disease: discontentment. They, from discontentment with life; we, from discontentment with humankind.
The world’s prisoners of war are our neighbors, families, and friends who have lived through hell, but do not possess the language to ever tell about it. This restriction does not augment the torture, it is the only escape from it. Our deepest wounds are often couched in tears that are never shed, and in pain that is always subverted, not of necessity, but of our own choice.
Other people usually can’t comprehend our suffering. They often won’t understand our fears. And that’s all right because neither they nor we need to save ourselves. But we do need to be saved. We don’t need to magnify our battle scars; we need them erased.
Someone paid for what no one else ever could. Someone offers us the “Balm of Gilead” because no one else ever can, and no one else ever will. To be healed of pain, confusion and doubt we need only accept what we have already been given.
Our Greatest Needs
Our greatest need is acceptance, not receipt. We really need love, not license. We need to empathize with others, not detail our wounds. It could be that the only way to surmount the injustices of life is to refute their injustice, and embrace the only Judge whose judgment will finally matter.
We can encourage healing without inciting further injury. We can forgive without condoning what is wrong. Our needs can be changed and overcome; not, at least yet, by complete fulfillment, but certainly by more fulfilling needs.
Perhaps as we surmount the tendency to place responsibility for emptiness on our needs, we will find we are more full. A deeper need could demand and provide a deeper fulfillment. A deeper source could provide a higher triumph. A deeper debt could cultivate a stronger debtor, one capable of absolving more than his own debts, one dedicated to healing more than his own wounds. American need can lead to narrow-minded greed, or something much greater. The abundance we enjoy can hide our real needs, or illuminate them.
The time has come to consider what it is we truly need.
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This essay is Chapter 2 of Dinnertime Revolutions: Meeting the American Challenge by Erin Reynolds. Click here to purchase the book.
Erin Reynolds is a graduate of George Wythe University with a Bachelor’s degree in Statesmanship and a Master’s Degree in Education. She has taught in a number of venues, including spearheading a group to Uganda. She resides in Cedar City, Utah.
Dinnertime Revolutions
December 2, 2008 by Erin Reynolds · Leave a Comment
(Guest Contributor)
Part 1
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” -George Eliot
What is the power of one boy walking alone? The impact of one man going home early? The portent of one woman on her knees?
The essence of the world, and in fact this world’s summation, can be found at the scene of a family gathered around a table, leading the world’s great revolutions.
One father can stop an army. One mother can make the difference between a World War and a Continental Conference.
The next American Revolution has begun. It has commenced within the quiet precincts of our nation’s homes. The collective cry for help is being sounded by a world in chaos; the pledge to assist is being offered one person at a time.
American freedom has provided a sounding board for the great ideas of the twenty-first century. American freedom has allowed its citizens the opportunity to decide what those major ideas will do. American freedom, begun long before 1776, can no longer be just another subject we study in school, or a pledge at a ball game, or a prayer in church.
American freedom is clearly an obligation — a resounding cry that must be answered, because very soon roll will be called, and solutions will be required. The discrepancies of justice refuse to be silent; the arbiters of justice will be called to take account.
But who knows about his or her obligation to the world? Each person born in America today faces challenges as great as did Gandhi, Churchill, or Lincoln. And while we may not be required to suppress cultural rebellions, conquer international dictators, or defend human dignity, our challenges match and sometimes exceed those of past generations.
The Challenge
Our challenge today is to defend the destiny of the world; it is to promote liberty in our legislatures and at our dinner tables, at home and abroad. Americans are at an influential fulcrum point. The future of freedom hinges on decision we are making unawares. We must therefore become aware of all we have to offer, and all that is at stake, or we cannot summon the courage to reckon with our fears and thereby deny our enemies their only real weapon.
Today we are obligated to defend freedom when it may seem in our best interest to do otherwise. In sharing liberty we may risk opposing political and economic agendas designed to promote what some have termed “American freedom” and “American prosperity.”
But this revolution will teach us that no biased, selfish agenda can ever be called American. As part of the revolution we could be invited to sacrifice personal prosperity and peace on behalf of those who have who have not experienced either. We will choose by how we vote, whom we follow, and how we live, whether or not our children’s children will think of freedom as a legacy, or a memory.
The line connecting our children to freedom, and ourselves to the defense of that gift, has never been clearer, or harder to realize. More could not be at stake.
For at least five decades freedom has allowed peace and prosperity. It has not been requisite that the patriotic citizen sacrifice his business for his country, or his home for the world. But revolutions breed strange benefits. We may be surprised at what is asked of us, and even more, at what results.
The sacrifices demanded by this revolution will bring benefits of courage and virtue. They will inculcate greater prosperity and peace. Yet, as in any war, much hinges on the knowledge of the nature and aims of the enemy. Ignorance of this revolution may lead to loss of more than our own happiness. If we are not careful, we could indeed find ourselves fighting on the wrong side.
To find ourselves fighting for our own enemies seems almost impossible, but it is easily accomplished when the impact of ignorance is forgotten. We often do not realize that the bridge linking us to true fulfillment is not the next bridge, nor the last bridge, but the one we’re burning right now.
It can be hard to see that the reason our children are sent to battle is not because we cannot find the answer to war, but because we will not give the price of peace. Indeed, many of us do not know exactly what that price is.
What is this revolution, and what does it mean?
Who are its advocates? Against what is it revolting? This revolution is not really industrial, economic, or political –- though it impacts each of these. It is a departure from current trends, a return to past principles, and a leap forward in terms of what will be demanded, what will be given, and what will result. This revolution will show us that the years ahead offer more enjoyment, more fulfillment, and more happiness than we have ever known. As with the first great American Revolution, more than anything this revolution is concerned about what will be.
While this revolution is purely American in region, in thought, and principle, its founders come from nations worldwide. Its advocates are found on all sides of the political spectrum, and some of its greatest heroes are those whose eyes never viewed the land of the free and the home of the brave. But their hearts still thrilled at the thought of liberty, and their voices still defend what is right — Joan, Solon, Wellington and a host of others.
True liberty was their hope and their ideal, a vision that gave life meaning, and death purpose. For it they surrendered family, friends and fortune, but all this with the understanding that their sacrifices, alone, would never be enough. They looked forward with the knowledge that somehow, someway, somewhere freedom could ignite not just one individual, but an entire nation, and thereby liberate not one class, or one country, but actually revolutionize a world.
This was the liberty they sought; this is the obligation we have inherited.
The leaders of this revolution are the men and women, the mothers and fathers, the grandsons and granddaughters who care about not only the next twenty years of peace, but also about the next two hundred. They are leaders of movements past and present that look to us to defend the fact that freedom is not an American enigma, but a condition of progression.
Finally, what is this revolt against? It is a revolution against bondage, against mediocrity, particularly mediocrity of the most important things. The most dangerous battles are the ones where the “least” is at stake; in such scenarios those who fight are prepared for, and question, nothing. Whatever they lose, then, is more than they were prepared to surrender, and less than they could have given.
Such seemingly insignificant battles define the most significant ones. This revolution may seem insignificant. It may appear that not much is at stake. But to choose mediocrity now could make our lives as well as our nation meaningless. Our personal choices are no longer personal, and in fact touch the very center of civil service.
Family: The Heart of the Revolution
Our business strategies may not be as important as our marital success. Our financial legacy may hold less meaning than a family tradition. The degrees and accolades, the promotions and profits, often detract from the real purpose at hand. The world measures success by the only method it knows: public opinion. But by its very nature, such opinion can grant only public happiness.
Slow down and consider this for a minute — public happiness. We tell ourselves how happy we all are, and it must be true. Right? Everyone says so. But the only happiness you can take home with you is private. As we turn to sources closer to home to find inner happiness and peace, we will be fighting more than our own battles.
Our dinnertimes hold greater meaning than we may think.
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This essay is Chapter 1 of Dinnertime Revolutions: Meeting the American Challenge by Erin Reynolds. Click here to purchase the book.
Erin Reynolds is a graduate of George Wythe University with a Bachelor’s degree in Statesmanship and a Master’s Degree in Education. She has taught in a number of venues, including spearheading a group to Uganda. She resides in Cedar City, Utah.
Shock: We’re Dying From It
October 27, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · Leave a Comment
“Shock,” said my instructor, “is what we all die from. No matter what kind of injury, sickness, or stress the body has gone through, in the end the cause of death is shock.”
This was in the middle of a ten-day Wilderness First Responder Course in which we had been learning to splint broken bones with sleeping pads and webbing, how to set a broken arm, stop blood flow, and treat heart attacks. But shock was the one of the most important of things to learn how to cure.
Why? Because once you go into shock your survival rate rapidly plummets, and once it reaches a certain point there is no going back. A broken bone can be set, but there isn’t a way to pull someone out of serious shock.
We have heard of culture shock. It’s when you enter a new country or circumstance and where the social rules have changed to such an extent that you find yourself not knowing how to behave or what is going on. But there is a comfort — uou can go home, back to a place where things are familiar and the shock will leave.
Future Shock
But there is a new kind of shock: future shock. This is when events, terms, technology, and nations are changing at such a rapid rate that we can’t keep up with it. We are left confused and unsure about how to behave.
Alvin Toffler wrote his book Future Shock in 1970. Reading it today he sounds like a prophet. His predictions of what the future would be like for those living in these times, and his concerns for the stability of our nation and communities, are almost dead on.
The term “future shock” was coined by Toffler in an article written for Horizon in 1965. He then spent the next five years studying the idea and came away with “two disturbing convictions”:
First, that “future shock” is a real sickness from which increasingly large numbers are already suffering. This is not just an idea; it is felt by everyone but recognized by few. Children that have grown up in an ever-changing society don’t know a difference and yet still don’t know how to adapt.
Secondly, Toffler was “…appalled by how little is actually known about adaptivity. In the most rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been exposed…we remain pitifully ignorant of how the human animal copes.” We don’t know how to adapt. Technology goes out of date faster then we can keep up. Definitions of education, work, religion, morality, sex, country, and patriotism change. With this continual shift we are left preparing for the future before it comes. The future is crashing upon us before the present is even lived.
“Many of us have a vague ‘feeling’ that things are moving faster. Doctors and executives
alike complain that they cannot keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Hardly a meeting or conference takes place today without some ritualistic oratory about ’the challenge of change.’ Among many there is an uneasy mood — a suspicion that change is out of control. Not everyone, however, shares this anxiety. Millions sleepwalk their way through their lives as if nothing had ever changed, and as if nothing ever will.”
Change is the constant and increasing dilemma in our lives. No matter what direction change is taking us the rate of change itself is astounding. And it is only in our understanding of it and our ability to adapt that will keep us from shock of the future.
We have the ability now to channel change. What we say, think and believe can impact literally thousands within moment, thanks to technology. Days when it took generations or thousands of years for an idea to take hold are gone as information and communications fly through cyberspace.
What does all this change mean for our society as a whole? What about the structure of nations, families, jobs and science? Will we be able to reinvent ourselves for the future, before the futures comes?
In 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote, “In the three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collisions with the future. Citizens of the worlds richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them, the future will have arrived too soon.”
That future is here, and it has come to soon. But it need not put us into shock, we can reinvent the way we do things and lead out in the direction change is taking us.
Recovering From Shock: Three Treatment Steps
1. Embrace It.
The first step to adapting to future shock is acknowledging the rapidity of change. Sleepwalking through life will only put us further into shock. Change is exciting, it is an opportunity and it is happening whether we like it or not. Embrace it. Enjoy this age and take full advantage of the opportunities it presents. Enjoy the journey and don’t fall into believing nothing is happening. Instead, believe that anything can happen.
2. Reinvent, Reinvent, Reinvent
We may not be able to control the change that is taking place or the effect it is having on our lives, but we can reinvent the way we do things. Attempts at this have taken place with the ever-increasing fashion of “going green.” Going back isn’t an option; going forward and reinventing is. The way we do things from how we look at money to how we build houses, get an education, vote, and use energy can have astounding impact on the direction the future is taking us.
Taking control over everyday products such as food, energy, entertainment and leisure will have a huge impact on our ability to handle change. We are victims of change when we are reliant upon outside sources that feed, clothe and house us. By using our time and resources to take more control over the future of our lives we will be directing what kind of change impacts us. This isn’t a call to live in the woods unconnected with the rest of the world. It is simply an idea that perhaps we can limit future shock by limiting the outsourcing of our everyday lives.
3. Get Educated.
It has been said that to be educated is not to know everything worth knowing but to be able to find it and sift it out from everything that is not. Educate yourself in technology, current events, and sciences. Educate yourself about the future. But also educate yourself in the past. The understanding of history and philosophy will make the current rapidity of events understandable. Education gives us tools to be able to see patterns in our own day and prepare for it and the understanding of where ideas and thoughts come from and their validity. Education will be one of the greatest tools to avoid future shock.
As Alvin Toffler wrote, “Future shock will not be found in Index Medicus or in any listing of psychological
abnormalities. Yet, unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it, millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, and progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments.”
Future shock is here. Do you have the treatment?
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Changing the World…
October 17, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 6 Comments
…One comic at a time.
Look on the bright side of our economic crash, at least now we can see where we are! What do you see? Maybe it takes a crash to get a better view of the world around us. Now lets climb down and start heading in the right direction.
Attacks always come from where you least expect it. Being big and tough to the rest of the world doesn’t mean we can’t destroy ourselves from the inside.
The reality is that as a nation we are in dire need of change, real change. We are on the fast track to a dangerous and unstable times. If you don’t like the reality of our situation you can always choose not to accept it.
Or, you can help begin a revolution against apathy and ignorance. Don’t be selective about the reality you accept. Accept reality for what it is and allow your action to change it.
Need I say more?
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Was Jesus Christ A Liberal Socialist?
October 13, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 22 Comments
One of our subscribers and best supporters (Thanks Linda!) emailed me today asking for my perspective on a couple questions. The questions have arisen as she has been involved in a debate on another forum.
The first question is, “Was Jesus Christ a Liberal Socialist?”
The first step to answer this question is to define the terms. Much disagreement exists not because those arguing fundamentally disagree, but because they’re simply defining terms differently.
If by “liberal socialist” one refers to a person who seeks to serve his fellow man with compassion and charity, and who spends his life voluntarily clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, liberating the captive, educating the ignorant, and caring for the sick and afflicted, then yes, Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist and we should all strive to be liberal socialists.
If being a liberal socialist means striving to attain just and equitable society, a society where there are no rich or poor, where all men are treated equally, then Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist. If liberal socialism means to give of our talents and substance to serve and uplift others, then Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist.
For those readers who are choking on my words, please read on carefully to digest the full context.
Consider the following excerpts from the Bible:
Matthew 19: 16 - 21
16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
17 And he said unto him…if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness.
19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself.
20 The young man saith unto him, All of these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me.
Luke 6:35-38
35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36 Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37 Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
Matthew 25:34-46
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
In an interview with Pastor Rick Warren, Barack Obama, currently the most prominent liberal in America, said, “America’s greatest moral failure…has been that we still don’t abide by that basic precept in Matthew, ‘Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, you do for me.’ That basic principle applies to poverty, it applies to racism and sexism, it applies to not…providing ladders of opportunity for people to get into the middle class…This country, as wealthy and powerful as we are, we still don’t spend enough time thinking about the least among us.”
I agree with those words — in a certain context — and I think that Jesus Christ, as I understand His life and teachings, would agree as well.
Content Vs. Context
Let’s pause a moment. Understand that no truth exists without context. Needles are content; using them to insert drugs or life-saving medicine are examples of context. Water is content; watering crops and drowning a person are examples of context. Needles aren’t good or bad — it’s how they are used that determines their virtue, or destructive power.
The words “liberal” and “socialist” are nothing but content; without understanding the context in which they are used it’s impossible to determine whether or not Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist.
To counteract my claims above that Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist, now consider a different context:
If by “liberal socialist” one refers to a person who justifies using force to steal from one person or group of people to give to another, then Jesus Christ was the furthest thing from a liberal socialist.
Force Vs. Voluntarism
The crux of the argument lies in understanding the purpose and function of the government. As I have written elsewhere, government is force. No policy can ever be enacted through government without it being backed by a gun to the head of every citizen who chooses to disobey the law.
Those who claim that Jesus Christ was a liberal socialist, and who believe that liberal socialism is enacted by government force, misunderstand the voluntary nature of charity. As I write in an essay entitled On Bridge-Building:
“Unprincipled social workers seem relatively harmless on the surface, yet when an entire culture embraces a false sense of government-sponsored philanthropy, the long-term consequences are an irresponsible society operating under a crippling sense of entitlement. The desire to lift and serve others is good, but the danger from the group I speak of comes from using government force to impose their sense of morality upon the populace. This degenerates into a moral cannibalism that ultimately destroys the society.
“When the true sense of public virtue is distorted and counterfeited to become forced wealth distribution, the virtue is lost and replaced with resentment and anger by those forced to give, and the loss of dignity and self-reliance on those who depend on the givers. False charity destroys those who know how to fish at the expense of those waiting for fish to be given to them. The cruel irony is that the people who are hurt the most by forced welfare schemes are the same people that misplaced charity is precisely designed to help. People who set out to ’serve society’ and who do not operate under moral principles inevitably seek to ‘lift’ the bottom by forcefully taking from the top. The result is a miserable mediocrity for all.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ is, at its core, one of voluntary virtue. Being forced at gunpoint to support others is not virtue at all — it is unabashed theft.
While Jesus Christ demonstrated the path we should follow by washing Peter’s feet, He also taught, “Thou shalt not steal.” Interestingly, contemporary liberals and socialists break one of His laws in order to fulfill another. They justify theft in the name of charity — ironically rendering charity obsolete in the process.
I wholeheartedly agree with Barack Obama — and Jesus Christ — that the ideal society is one in which all citizens seek the interest of their neighbors and do everything in their power to serve and uplift the downtrodden, the oppressed, and the underprivileged. And I also believe and strive to adhere to the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”
Using the government to take from one person or group to give to another is an act of force. Strip away all of the nice-sounding language about “social justice” and the concept of the “village” and all it is is one person putting a gun to another’s head and saying, “You will give this money or you will be shot dead, or at the very least imprisoned.”
“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” -Thomas Jefferson
If charity is not implemented on a voluntary basis it is thievery, it is moral cannibalism, and it fails every time, as proven throughout history.
So, was Jesus Christ a liberal socialist? It depends on the definitions and the context. Our challenge is to follow Him without resorting to force.
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