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He That Has Ears To Hear, Let Him Hear ( Matthew 11:15-30)

Challenging both secular wisdom and religious doctrines. - Will our descendants know moral virtue?

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See also: "Democrat Socialism" - "...while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." --Alexis de Tocqueville

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." --English statesman William Pitt (1708-1778) -- PatriotPost.us "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." ...I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. –Annals of Congress (1794-01-10) --James Madison, the Primary author of the U.S. Constitution Charles Finney formed the Benevolent Empire, a network of volunteer organizations to aid poor and aged with healthcare and social needs, which in 1834 had a budget rivaling the Federal Government. Back then, there was no government run welfare programs. It was churches, ministries, and volunteer organizations that took care of the sick and poor. In the Scriptures, commands are given to 5 main groups: · individuals · families · employer-employees · church · government. There are commands for individuals and the church to care of the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the orphans, the widows, etc. There are no commands for the government to do any of that. Government is simply commanded to protect the innocent and punish the guilty.

Was Jesus a Socialist? (Video - PragerU) - By Lawrence Reed ...Did Jesus support socialism? Do the teachings of Jesus Christ condemn the accumulation of wealth while pushing for the equal distribution of resources? Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, explains the misconceptions surrounding one of history’s greatest figures.

...Socialism is the concentration of power into the hands of government elites to achieve the following purposes: central planning of the economy and the radical redistribution of wealth. Jesus never called for any of that. ...Nowhere in the New Testament does he advocate for the government to punish the rich – or even to use tax money to help the poor. Nor does he promote the ideas of state ownership of businesses or central planning of the economy.

...In Luke 12, Jesus is confronted by a man who wants him to redistribute wealth. "Master," the man says to Jesus, "tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." Jesus replies, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?" and then he rebukes the man for being envious of his sibling. How about Jesus's Parable of the Talents (talents were a form of money in Jesus's day)? A man entrusted three of his workers with his wealth. The two who invested the money and made a profit were praised and the one who buried his share so he wouldn't lose any of it was reprimanded. Sounds a lot more like an endorsement for capitalism than socialism, doesn't it? ...He never drove a "moneychanger" from a marketplace or from a bank.

...Jesus advises us to be of "generous spirit" – to show kindness, to assist the widow and the orphan. But he clearly means this to be our responsibility, not the government's.

...In addition to the Parable of the Talents, Jesus offers his Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. In it, a landowner hires some laborers to pick grapes. Near the end of the day, he realizes he needs more workers to get the job done. To recruit them, he agrees to pay a full day's wage for just one hour of work. When one of the laborers who had worked an entire day complains, the landowner answers, "I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money?" That's a testament to the principles of supply and demand, of private property, and of voluntary contracts, not socialism.

Jesus never endorsed the forced redistribution of wealth. That idea is rooted in envy, something that he, and the Tenth of the Ten Commandments, railed against. Most importantly, Jesus cared about helping the less fortunate. He never would have approved anything that undermines wealth creation. And the only thing that has ever created wealth and lifted masses of people out of poverty is free market capitalism. Read the New Testament. The plain meaning of the text is loud and clear: Jesus was not a socialist. He couldn't be. He loved people, not the state.

Keep Jesus Out of Your Socialism By Michael Youssef - The headline of the full-page ad asks, "What Would Jesus Cut?—A budget is a moral document." The text continues, "Our faith tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor." The ad was produced by Sojourners, a self-described "evangelical" organization whose slogan is "Faith in Action for Social Justice." The ad was signed by Sojourners president Jim Wallis and more than two dozen Religious Left pastors, theologians, and activists. They urge our legislators to ask themselves, "What would Jesus cut?" from the federal budget. How would you answer that question? My answer would be, "It's a nonsense question. Your premise is faulty. Your priorities are not His priorities."

...In John 18, Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect, a friend of Caesar. Why didn't He give Pilate an earful about the injustice of Roman rule? If ever there was a time for Jesus to "speak truth to power" and become the "social justice Messiah," that was it! But Jesus didn't preach the social gospel to Pontius Pilate. Oh, he spoke truth to power, all right. He delivered a profound message to Pontius Pilate—and to you and me: "My kingdom is not of this world." Now, I'm not saying that Christians are never called to confront their government. God bless Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church for standing against Nazi genocide. But that's not the situation here.

And I'm not saying there isn't a social and compassionate dimension to the Christian gospel. There certainly is! Jesus had great compassion for the poor. He preached in Nazareth, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." He sent word to John the Baptist, "The deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." Jesus presented the obligation to help the poor as an individual responsibility, a Kingdom responsibility—not the duty of the secular government.

Both the religious and secular Left in America seem to want government to replace the church in ministering to the poor and needy. One of Barack Obama's first proposals as president was a plan to slash tax deductions for charitable donations by high-income taxpayers. President Obama reasoned that a tax deduction "shouldn't be a determining factor as to whether you're giving that hundred dollars to the homeless shelter." Maybe so—but since private charities do so much good for the poor, why eliminate incentives for charitable giving?

Could it be that liberals see private charities as competing with the big government welfare state? In Romans 13, Paul tells us that we pay our taxes and support the government so that we will have a just, orderly society in which law-abiding citizens are protected from wrongdoers. But the responsibility for mercy and compassion belongs to the church—not the government.

When Jesus didn't help the poor By Dan Popp - Does need constitute a demand? Awhile back I wrote about the time when Jesus refused to feed a group of hungry people. There are only two possible explanations for that: Either the Lord didn't care whether those folks went hungry, or there's something worse than hunger. Now I'd like to look at an incident in which Jesus rebuked disciples who wanted to give to the poor. If Jesus cares about the poor, the only remaining conclusion is that poverty is not an absolute demand on the resources of others. (Mark 14:3-9 – Read parallel accounts in Matthew 26:6-13 and John 12:1-8)

...John identifies Judas as the one pretending to be offended, and adds, "Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it." (John 12:6) That's a pretty good description of Congress, it seems to me. Jesus says to those who dream of all the good they could do with other people's money, You're scolding this woman for seeing what you don't see. Something greater than the poor is here.

...No amount of robbery and redistribution will prevent people from being poor. Anyone who tells you otherwise is calling Christ a liar. ...Perhaps the harshest condemnations in the Bible are directed at those who turn grace into law. ...Jesus taught us that the purpose of almsgiving is to please and honor Him. "The King will answer and say to them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.'" (Matthew 25:40, emphasis mine) This aligns perfectly with Old Testament passages like Proverbs 14:31: "He who oppresses the poor taunts his Maker, But he who is gracious to the needy honors Him."

In the Judeo-Christian model of giving, the cause is God. "Everyone whose heart stirred him and everyone whose spirit moved him came and brought the LORD'S contribution...." (Exodus 35:21a) "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7b) because the gift is the natural result of the cheer, the overflowing gratitude of the heart. It might be well to remember at Thanksgiving-time that gratitude is grace's reflection. Where there is envy there is no gratitude, and grace is turned away.

...The picture of Christian giving is the woman with her perfume – not Caesar with his tax. Christian giving is prompted by the Holy Spirit; consists of an act of free will; insists on accountability; results in gratitude; and fulfills the purpose of glorifying Jesus Christ. Government redistribution, on the other hand, is motivated by lust for power; consists of dividing the spoils of a robbery; is indiscriminate; fosters covetousness, resentment and dependency; and glorifies man. The name for this is "idolatry."

JESUS WAS A CAPITALIST TO HIS CORE - By BRYAN FISCHER - Despite the best efforts of liberals, including liberal “evangelicals” like Jim Wallis, to turn Jesus into a flaming socialist, his own words tell a different story. In fact, the stories that Jesus told could have only come from a capitalist’s capitalist. Jesus was, in fact, a capitalist to the core.For instance, in one of his most famous stories, the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus commits a number of grievous and politically wicked sins according to the worldview of progressives, who try to recast Jesus in their own image as the Karl Marx of Christendom.

A talent was not an inconsiderable amount of money. In fact, one talent represented about twenty years of wages for the average laborer, let’s say around $600,000. So the first employee is being handed a cool $3 million to invest. In other words, the hero of Jesus’ story is a rich, rich guy. The horror! The humanity!

In Jesus’ story, this rich businessman called his servants together and “entrusted to them his property.” Hold it right there! It was his own property! He owned the means of production – it did not belong to the village or the government! The capital used in economic exchange was totally, entirely in private hands. And what he did with his wealth was clearly nobody’s business but his own. He, and not some government bureaucrat, decided who would be entrusted with his economic resources.

How can all this be? This makes the hero in Jesus’ tale a criminal in the fevered imagination of social liberals, guilty of greed and exploitation, and of grave offenses against an enlightened social order. Further, the businessman distributed the talents “to each according to his ability.” Egregious sin number two, for here Jesus directly, flagrantly, flatly and unambiguously rejects the fundamental tenet of liberalism.

According to liberals, Jesus should have had this man distribute his resources “to each according to his need.” He should not be entrusting money to people based on ability, but rather should be extracting it from them based on ability. After all, in liberal land, the rule is supposed to be “from each according to his ability.” Jesus turns that completely on its head by giving “to each according to his ability.” You could look it up. Perhaps Rev. Wallis and others need a remedial grammar lesson on prepositions as well as the Bible.

Even worse, the business enterprise in Jesus’ story is a meritocracy from start to finish. Responsibility is awarded based on ability, not on some kind of ethnic or economic quota system. And promotion and pay raises likewise are based squarely on achievement. The man with five talents earns five more, and is given more responsibility and authority as a result. Likewise with the servant who took two talents and turned it into two more. In other words, Jesus shows zero concern for income inequality. In fact, in his story the hero actually makes income inequality worse, not better. The guy at the top went from a portfolio of $3 million to well over $6.6 million, while the sluggard at the bottom went from $600,000 to zero.

There is not a breath here in this story of the equality of outcome as any kind of operating principle. In fact, quite the reverse. Jesus had no intention of having everyone wind up at the same level of income, authority or responsibility. This businessman believed in equality of opportunity but not in equality of result. Outcome was not dictated by government regulation but rather determined by individual initiative and skill. Accountability in this story does not rest with some government agency. Rather it remains in private hands, with the entrepreneur who called his servants together upon his return and “settled accounts.”

Jesus’ businessman would surely agree with the Founders who said that one of our unalienable rights is the “pursuit of happiness.” Note that nowhere did they say that any of us has an unalienable right to the achievement or possession of happiness, only to its pursuit. The promise of America is the freedom to chase your dreams. There is no guarantee that you will catch them. That’s up to you, with God’s help. Government, in the view of the Founders as well as the New Testament, is there to create a stable and just society in which each of us, with minimal bureaucratic interference, can pursue happiness based on ability, hard work, good judgment, perseverance, education, training and ambition, all of which will vary significantly from one individual to the next.

And last but not least in Jesus’ story, when the master returns and finds that one of his servants has buried the money in his backyard rather than investing it, he calls him “wicked and slothful.” He does not get food stamps and unemployment benefits. And rather than taking money from the productive workers and giving it out of phony compassion to this man in the form of welfare, he takes the one talent the indolent worker has and awards it to the most productive member of his team.

Jesus’ businessman had no intention of rewarding or subsidizing irresponsibility. The lazy servant had no right to anything he wasn’t willing to work for. What Jesus taught is that the redistribution of wealth is to be entirely voluntary, motivated by personal generosity and compassion and directed to the worthy poor. There’s no hint in Christianity of any kind of support for the involuntary transfer of wealth through government coercion.

So let’s sum up. In this story, capital is in private hands. The owner of the capital is free to invest it as he chooses, and to entrust his private resources to anyone he wishes. Economic gain comes through investment, risk-taking and smart choices. The enterprise is based on ability and there is no quota system of any kind in place. Achievement rather than mere effort is rewarded. Accountability rests in the hands of private enterprise rather than in the hands of government. Laziness is punished rather than rewarded, and resources are not involuntarily transferred from the producers to the non-producers but the other way round. Bottom line: Jesus, as much as liberals hate to admit it, had capitalism in his DNA.

A further challenge to secular progressives