Sociologist and historian Alvin J. Schmidt writes,
Even though Christianity does not [explicitly] espouse a given economic ideology, it would be quite erroneous to conclude that therefore [just] any economic ideology is compatible with Christian values and beliefs. Such a conclusion, however, is often made, especially by those who look favorably upon socialism.…
Just as God does not want people to be coerced in spiritual matters, so too he does not want them to be coerced in earthly matters, for instance, in their economic activities. There is not a single reference in either the Old or New Testament in which God denies economic freedom to people, as in fascism, socialism, and communism (emphasis added).1
In an online publication titled Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus A Socialist?, Lawrence W. Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education observes,
In Jesus’s teachings and in many other parts of the New Testament, Christians — indeed, all people — are advised to be of “generous spirit,” to care for one’s family, to help the poor, to assist widows and orphans, to exhibit kindness and to maintain the highest character. How all that gets translated into the dirty business of coercive, vote-buying, politically driven redistribution schemes is a problem for prevaricators with agendas. It’s not a problem for scholars of what the Bible actually says and doesn’t say.…
Jesus was no dummy. He was not interested in the public professions of charitableness in which the legalistic and hypocritical Pharisees were fond of engaging. He dismissed their self-serving, cheap talk. He knew it was often insincere, rarely indicative of how they conducted their personal affairs, and always a dead end with plenty of snares and delusions along the way. It would hardly make sense for him to champion the poor by supporting policies that undermine the process of wealth creation necessary to help them. In the final analysis, he would never endorse a scheme that doesn’t work and is rooted in envy or theft. In spite of the attempts of many modern-day progressives to make him into a welfare-state redistributionist, Jesus was nothing of the sort.
Note:
1Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 204-205.
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