I can't believe I have to say this, but, no, Jesus is not a socialist. He does not see poverty as a social disease to be cured by a power from on high. He could do that Himself if He wanted to. But that's not the point. The point is that we as individuals are supposed to CHOOSE to help and love our fellow humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| So the debate that everyone's having now, the thing everyone's discussing, and it's a great debate, it's a very intellectually stimulating debate, it's over the issue of whether or not Jesus is a socialist. | |
| The person who runs the Democratic Socialists of America made this claim recently in an interview, and then former comedian Stephen Colbert said the same thing on his show a couple days ago. | |
| He said that God is a socialist, and he cited as proof the fact that Jesus didn't charge a copay before healing blind people. | |
| So that obviously indicates that he was a socialist. | |
| So, all right. | |
| Let's tackle this question. | |
| Was Jesus a socialist? | |
| And here's my argument. | |
| No. You nitwits. | |
| No. He was not a socialist. | |
| That's it. That's the end of the show. | |
| We'll just leave it there because I don't... | |
| It's hardly a statement that warrants a response because it's so absurd, but I realize that this is a popular idea Even among some Christians. | |
| So I guess maybe I should elaborate a little bit more than that. | |
| So if I had to elaborate, then this is what I would say. | |
| In fact, I'll give you three reasons why Jesus is not a socialist and why this whole idea is completely ridiculous. | |
| And I'm going to move pretty quickly through the first two reasons. | |
| I think they're sort of self-evident, and I want to focus more on the third. | |
| So first of all, Jesus did not endorse any economic or political system at all. | |
| So that's the first way we know he wasn't a socialist, because he never said anything about any kind of government system or economic system, which means that he wasn't a socialist, but he wasn't a capitalist either. | |
| To say that Jesus was a capitalist would also be ridiculous, and you do on occasion hear that. | |
| You don't hear that claim nearly as often as you hear that Jesus was a socialist, but I have heard in response to the Jesus was a socialist argument, I have sometimes heard people say, well, no, he was really a capitalist. | |
| Well, he wasn't that either. | |
| Jesus, it's very glaringly obvious when you read scriptures that, or at least the way that it appears, Jesus doesn't really care that much what's economic system you're living under. | |
| That's not really his point. | |
| And we'll get to his point here in a minute. | |
| But he wasn't concerned with that. | |
| He wasn't concerned with making these reforms to political systems. | |
| That's not what he was worried about. | |
| He could have. And in fact, I think that most people in his time expected him to do that. | |
| They expected him to come in and be a political revolutionary. | |
| And he wasn't that. | |
| And now we have 2,000 years of Christianity, and we have the scripture that we can go back and reference to see very clearly that he was not a political revolutionary. | |
| Yet still, somehow, even people today are as surprised and, I guess, disappointed as people were back in Jesus' time that he is not a political revolutionary. | |
| That's not what he was about. | |
| He was, is a revolutionary of a very different, more transcendent sort. | |
| Second point. Socialism and communism are objective evils, and we know that because we can look, by your fruits you shall know them, so let's look at the fruits of this particular fig tree, and we'll find that we've got over 100 million people Since the beginning of the 20th century who have been killed, | |
| well over 100 million people who have been killed by communism and socialism, and then many, many millions more that have been left starving, destitute, imprisoned, enslaved, even still today. | |
| If you look over in places like Venezuela. | |
| So that's the effect that communism and socialism have. | |
| They are a blight on the earth. | |
| And it's really impossible to ignore that fact when you just look at very recent world history. | |
| Third point. This is what I really want to focus on. | |
| You could almost put the other two aside, even though those two points alone should be enough to dispel this whole notion. | |
| You can even put them aside. | |
| Let's focus on this third thing. | |
| Most important, the whole idea behind socialism really is to find a way to solve poverty. | |
| The fact that socialism is a solution for poverty, which only leads to more poverty, should really tell you something. | |
| And it tells us not only that socialism is a horrible system in and of itself, it tells us that Poverty is not a social disease that the government can cure. | |
| And so anytime the government sets out to cure it, to get rid of it, and to instate some kind of utopian society where poverty doesn't exist, anytime the government tries to do that, it has disastrous results because it cannot happen. | |
| And that's not the way that Jesus wanted us to look at it. | |
| Jesus does not want us to address poverty through bureaucracy. | |
| That's not the primary way that he wants us to address it, which isn't to say that government should have no role whatsoever in helping the poor. | |
| That's not the point. It's simply to say that the responsibility of helping the less fortunate falls primarily on the individual, not primarily on the state. | |
| I think that It's clear that that's the—practically speaking, that's the best way of going about it, but also from a spiritual perspective, from a religious, from a Christian perspective— That is obviously what Jesus believed as well. | |
| So we've kind of been through these verses before discussing other topics, but let's go through them again because obviously they're very relevant to this topic too. | |
| So here's a few verses I think we should look at. | |
| Instances in Scripture where Jesus is talking about the poor and what we're supposed to do about the poor. | |
| It's obviously a topic he talked about quite a bit about, So if he really wanted us to instate some particular economic system in order to help poor people, he had plenty of opportunity to mention it, and he never did. But this is what he said instead. | |
| Matthew 25, 40. | |
| And the king will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these brothers, you did it to me. | |
| Matthew 5, 42. | |
| Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. | |
| Luke 12, 33. | |
| Sell your possessions and give it to the needy. | |
| Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. | |
| For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. | |
| Luke 21.1, Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins, and he said, Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on. | |
| Luke 14.12, he said also to the man who had invited him, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. | |
| But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. | |
| For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. | |
| Luke 3.11, and he answered them, whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. | |
| So just a few examples, five or six examples there, talking about the poor. | |
| Notice that the words government, state, law, policy, tax, least of all socialism, do not appear in any of these verses. | |
| Here is Jesus over and over and over again talking about, here's what we should do about poor people. | |
| He never says anything about passing a law, never even mentions it. | |
| It's pretty incredible, right? | |
| But there is a word that appears over 20 times in just those five or six verses. | |
| That is the word you. | |
| Over and over again, he's saying you, you. | |
| This is what you need to do. | |
| You personally. This is what you personally as an individual should be doing. | |
| Jesus is not interested in establishing systems by which the poverty problem can be impersonally solved. | |
| He's interested in you going by your own free will With your own money and taking all of that and using it to help your neighbor. | |
| He wants you to take your money and give it to the needy in your community. | |
| That's what he wants. I'm not putting words in Jesus' mouth. | |
| I'm not even really interpreting those passages. | |
| That's what he's saying very directly. | |
| This is what you need to do. | |
| And I don't think that that obligation is fulfilled I don't think it even begins to be fulfilled by paying your taxes. | |
| Now, he also tells us to pay our taxes, but he does not conflate paying your taxes with helping the poor. | |
| Those two things are not related. | |
| In fact, he says, give the Caesar what is Caesar's. | |
| Those would be the taxes. | |
| But in terms of your possessions, your tunic, your food, your individual possessions, give those to the poor. | |
| So those two obligations are not the same. | |
| And I would also mention that our obligation to help the poor is especially not fulfilled by sitting on the side and lobbying the government to take more money from your neighbor to give to the poor. | |
| Which is, it's very interesting that so often the people who are pushing for these systems, that's what they want. | |
| They're not even saying, take more from me. | |
| They're saying, no, take more from all of those people. | |
| All of these socialist college students, for instance, who have no job, no assets, nothing to tax, yet they want more. | |
| They want things for themselves, too, right? | |
| They want their student loans paid for. | |
| They want all that stuff. But then they also are socialists, right? | |
| So they're saying, give some stuff to me. | |
| Oh, yeah, and also give to the poor, but don't take from me. | |
| Take from those guys over. Take from those guys and then give a little bit to me to pay off my student loan and then also give some to the poor. | |
| Aren't I so generous? | |
| I'm so generous. | |
| That I am lobbying for the government to take more from those guys and give it to those guys. | |
| That wasn't what Jesus had in mind. | |
| There's also a really interesting thing in Scripture that you notice, and I think we often kind of gloss over, and that is that Jesus tells us constantly to give to the poor, yet He also says, blessed are the poor. | |
| He warns us against wealth, Tells us to give up everything, tells us to give up our attachment to worldly possessions, tells us to give our wealth to the poor, who he says are blessed because they don't have that wealth, | |
| and who, it seems, could possibly be harmed by wealth, because he obviously says that wealth is a dangerous thing, because it can lead you to an attachment to the world and away from eternal life. | |
| So all those things are kind of confusing, isn't it? | |
| And notice something else, too. | |
| I mentioned that there was the story of the widow in the temple who gives her only two coins to the temple, and Jesus points to her as an example and commends her. | |
| But if the point here is just to kind of get rid of poverty, like it's some kind of disease, to treat it, to cure it like a disease, Then wouldn't he have told the widow, no, no, no, you're poor already. | |
| Don't put your last two coins in the... | |
| No, don't do that. Don't put those in the treasury. | |
| Wouldn't he have told her to take her coins out and then told one of the rich folks to put in two more coins to compensate? | |
| But he doesn't do that. Why? | |
| I think these are questions we have to tackle, and when we do, it becomes kind of obvious that the real point here... | |
| Jesus' real point is love. | |
| What Jesus wants us to do, what he wants from us, is love. | |
| And that's the real point of giving to the poor, is love, is loving them. | |
| Obviously, providing for their physical needs is important, and it's part of the point, but it's not the primary point. | |
| The primary point is to love them. | |
| To lift them up, to elevate them through this act of personal, self-sacrificing love. | |
| And so when you, by your own free will and volition, make the choice to go and help somebody, help someone who's less fortunate, then you, obviously what you're doing, whatever practical thing you're doing for them, if you're giving them food, if you're giving them money, Then there are some very real practical benefits there because those are things that they need physically. | |
| So that's great. But even more important than that, they are lifted up by this humanizing love that you're showing for them. | |
| And then you are also lifted up by it. | |
| You also benefit from this act of love. | |
| Now, the problem is... | |
| And as I said, I'm not suggesting... | |
| That the government has absolutely no role whatsoever ever in providing some form of assistance for some people. | |
| I'm not saying that, but what we have to deal with is the fact that there is no love in the welfare state. | |
| There is no love in taxation. | |
| It's bureaucratic, it's impersonal, it's disinterested, it's dehumanizing. | |
| A poor person does not experience and is not elevated by the fruits of love when he cashes a check that was sent to him by some government office. | |
| Has anyone ever felt the power of love when they're given an EBT card? | |
| Are people lifted up by this feeling of love from the bureaucratic entity that handed them this card? | |
| No, I think what happens is that it's sort of the opposite. | |
| That poor people are treated like numbers and statistics. | |
| They are treated like a problem that must be solved. | |
| They are not treated like human beings who must be loved. | |
| So we're doing the opposite of what Christ tells us to do when we neglect the poor in our own communities and trust that the government will just take care of it. | |
| Even if the government's taking care of it with our own money, and so we feel like, well, that's kind of the same, they're using my money, and so it's sort of generous. | |
| No, that's not, no, no. | |
| Paying your taxes as you are compelled to do, in which you have no choice but to do, is not love. | |
| Cheering on the entitlement system, funded mostly with other people's money, not your own, that is not love. | |
| I think to love is to go on your own personally and to give. | |
| To give what you have, to give of yourself, that's what we're supposed to do. | |
| And even though Jesus does not endorse or support or advocate for any particular economic or political system, it seems clear to me That an economic or political system that better enables us to use our own money and help those in our community, that that is clearly going to be the superior system. | |
| Not just from economic and political standards, but from Christian standards. | |
| Because it better enables us to do what Jesus is telling us to do. | |
| I mean, this is something that has especially been on my heart The last year or so. | |
| Because you think about even, you know, when you're walking downtown in the city and you pass by all these homeless people, and there's always that, when you pass by a homeless person, there's always that feeling of discomfort and you feel a little wary, like you want to give them money, but then you also realize that That a great majority of homeless people have drug and alcohol problems. | |
| It's why they're homeless, many of them. | |
| And so if you give them money, it seems like there's probably a very good statistical chance that they're going to use it on drugs or alcohol. | |
| And so there's always that, should I give them money? | |
| Should I not give them? To just pass by a homeless person to give them nothing feels cruel, but to give them something that might then be used on drugs or alcohol, maybe that doesn't seem like the right thing either. | |
| And so I think like most people, that's something that's always been... | |
| I'm always going back and forth on that. | |
| And I do think that, and I try to, whenever possible, I think the best thing when you see a homeless person, if you can, buy them a meal, give them food. | |
| I try to keep little care packages in my car, just bags of toiletries and snacks and maybe a... | |
| Gift cards to some fast food place or something so that if I do see a homeless person, I can give them that, which I think is, of course, better than money. | |
| But recently I've realized, let's say I don't have a care package to give them. | |
| Let's say I don't have time to go get them a meal. | |
| Recently, the last year or so, what I've come to realize personally is that you pass by a homeless person, even if you have a couple of dollars, just give them something. | |
| And yeah, you don't know what they're going to do with the money. | |
| They could go use it on drugs or alcohol, and that would be unfortunate. | |
| But just give them some money anyway, even if it's just a dollar. | |
| Because the point really isn't the money itself. | |
| And the point isn't even really what they spend it on, although you hope they spend it on something that they actually need, and not something that's going to further destroy them physically. | |
| But the point is just to say to this person who is forgotten and neglected by society, and who's living on the street, and who has been just living in this inhuman situation, the point is just to say to them, I notice you, and you're a human being. | |
| And so, yeah, I got some money in my pocket. | |
| I'm going to give it to you. Like, I was going to go use this money on a coffee. | |
| I'll give it to you because you're a person. | |
| You're a human, like I am. | |
| And so I am noticing you. | |
| And I've come to realize that that's more the point. | |
| So just as a personal thing, I've tried to resolve that I'll never pass by a homeless person without giving them something, just so they're being noticed as a person, because I think that is humanizing, and that lifts them up. | |
| And I think that's the point. | |
| That's what we should do. And the more of our own money that we have at our disposal, Then the more able we are to go and help others. | |
| And then it's kind of the best of both worlds. | |
| All right. Thanks for watching everybody. |