The Jesus Economy

Dear Mr. Columnist,

I usually enjoy, and often agree with, your columns in the Sunday Globe.  One of the refreshing things about your columns is that you rarely engage in knee-jerk, reactionary opinion pieces, the kind that make me want to tear my hair out.  Even when I don’t agree with your position, I can usually see how you got there, and am reminded that reasonable minds can differ. 

So I read your March 6, 2011, column, titled, “Separation of Jesus and Congress,”* with some reluctance.  Here it goes, I thought, it’s Christianity-bashing time.  Eighteen inches of Those people and their proselytizing and so on.  I’ve read that column way too many times before, in way too many newspapers and magazines.

But that’s not what your column was about (and, hey, thanks for that!).  Instead, you were talking about a “liberal” Christian group, Sojourners, which has taken out advertisements asking, “What would Jesus cut?”  I put liberal in quotations because I don’t know if that is your description or theirs.  In fact, I don’t know anything about this group, save for what you convey in your column.  But I digress.

You take issue with Sojourners’ position that the priorities the House Republicans are offering for federal budget cuts are unbiblical.  You ask, rightly, whether it is really rational or fair to believe that nobody advocating cuts to social welfare programs could possibly be doing so from an ethical, even, I might add, biblical, perspective.  And I agree with your rhetorical point:  it is a biblical tenet woven throughout the Scriptures to live within your means, avoid debt, spend wisely, and generally be a good steward of the resources given to us by the Father.  Budgetary cuts certainly fit within this framework.

But then you go on to say this:

A more fundamental problem with the “What Would Jesus Cut?” campaign is its planted axiom that Jesus would want Congress to do anything at all.  Yes, we are emphatically commanded by Scripture to help the poor, to comfort the afflicted, and to love the stranger. But those obligations are personal, not political.  It requires a considerable leap of both faith and logic to read the Bible as mandating elaborate government asssistance programs, to be funded by a vast apparatus of compulsory taxation. I admit that I am no New Testament scholar, but I cannot recall Jesus ever saying that the way to enter Heaven is to dole out money extracted from your neighbors’ pockets.

And here’s where I part company with your otherwise sensible take on these matters.

The obligations we have toward our neighbor are absolutely political as well as personal.  We live in a democratic republic:  we elect the leaders and by electing them, we tell them what our priorities are.  It is a cop-out of the highest order – hypocrisy, even – to pretend that their decisions are not our decisions.  When we go to the polls, we pull the lever next to the name of the person who, we think, most closely represents our ideals for society:  is she pro-choice or pro-life; is he for or against health care reform.  And the person who wins, by however small a majority, is the representative of that population who sent him or her to the Hill.

When we, therefore, send someone who says, in effect, I’m going to balance the budget by cutting social programs and decreasing funding for the poor and needy, we are making both a political and personal choice.  We are choosing the government we want and emphasizing our own values.

The Bible demonstrates, in both the Old and New Testaments, very generous social programs.  Take a look at Deuteronomy 24, which directs that farmers not go back and harvest every bit of their crop (which, of course, would otherwise be their right; it is their land and their crop); rather, they are to leave some for the widows, orphans, and aliens to glean so they can eat.  It’s this generosity that Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, relied upon to live because they had nothing else.  That’s a social program, mandated by the law given by Moses.  It is in that same tradition that churches today take up benevolent offerings – usually on Communion Sunday – to give to people in need.  The Judeo-Christian tradition has internalized this, both personally and politically.

You futher state:

To be a lawmaker in a democracy is to choose, and the choice is often between alternatives for which reasonable arguments can be made both ways.  For religious believers, Judeo-Christian principles may sometimes offer guidance on difficult issues.

No, Mr. Columnist, to be voter, to be a citizen, in a democracy is to choose.  We choose our philosophy; we choose our leaders; and if they don’t adequately represent our values, we choose someone else to take their place in the next election.  You can’t duck the hard choices by pushing them off onto the lawmakers.  We are the lawmakers.  We make the choices.

So you’re right, God isn’t a Republican or a Democratic.  He is not a liberal or conservative.  He does not reside in either a red state or a blue state.  He is just, and He is righteous, and He expects us, His children, to be as generous and giving as He is Himself.  Nothing we have belongs to us; it is our Father who owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

The Old Testament prophet Micah laid out the mission long before the Son of God made His earthly appearance, and it is by no means limited to Christians.

He has shown thee, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:8.)

What would Jesus cut?  He would, as a voter, insist on cuts being targeted away from the helpless, the hopeless, and the needy.  He would remind our lawmakers that God’s law requires us to leave the edges and corners of our fields for widows and orphans to glean.

*Jeff Jacoby, “Separation of Jesus and Congress,”  Boston Sunday Globe, March 6, 2011.