Monthly archive: November, 2009

Mikey and Me… Agree?

November 30, 2009, by No comments yet

Hell just froze over: I read and agree with a letter from Michael Moore to President Obama, concerning the war in Afghanistan, and Obama’s decision to send more troops.

Here’s an excerpt:

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

More here:

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

Full text here.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Reflections on Economics, Social Justice, and the Imago Dei

November 28, 2009, by No comments yet

When debating about social justice and economics, most philosophical opponents don’t quite agree on the way things work in life, let alone the solutions for making life a better place. When holding to one set of beliefs, it is often assumed that opposing set of beliefs must be incompatible with currently held ones. If one believes in a free society, then social justice must not matter. Or if one fights for social justice, the free market must be unjust.

The more I’ve pondered why this may be, the more I realize that there is a central theme to the debate: the nature of mankind. Opponents of a free market criticize its defenders by saying they don’t take into account man’s depravity. Defenders of a free society (who are also Christians) believe that their vision not only accounts for sinfulness, but furthermore channels it into productive uses. Whatever we do with depravity and sinfulness, not least of which accounts for evil and injustice, we are fallen humans seeking to understand life, and working very hard to preserve it and make it thrive. It is a crucial matter that we understand who we are, what we were made for, and how to best thrive in life so as to make it better for ourselves and for those around us. As I wrote about earlier, we were made to be part of a story, an Epic: The Story God Is Tellingepic story, a “Sacred Romance” that gives us identity and moves us forward each day.

It all starts with believing that human beings are made in the image of God— the “imago dei.” In ancient times, an image, or statue, was a representation of a far-away emperor or caesar, created to represent the king and remind subjects of that kingdom that there was a ruler, and this is what he looked like. So human beings were made to represent God, and the first command we were given was to “tend and keep” the garden. Inherent in this command is the ability to carry out the task, which requires two things: stewardship and creativity. Stewardship because even in Eden we were unable to do everything we needed because of time constraints and geographical constraints (Adam and Eve were not omniscient). Creativity because it wasn’t just a job, it was a calling to work with and through the creation to keep it flourishing as it was intended to be.

A post-Edenic world does not change the game, but merely requires more vigilance for the task ahead of us. We live in a world of scarce resources, where one item can be used for multiple purposes, and cannot (usually) be used for all of them at once. So it is incumbent upon us to steward wisely that which has been given to us. As individuals, we have been given something, whether little or big, and we are to steward that. As social creatures, we are required to cooperate in such a way as to make optimum use of those resources with as little waste as possible. But even beyond mere stewardship, we were designed to create, bring order to disorder, and enliven that which is dying.

Our task of stewardship is our economic vocation. Our passion for creativity is the pathway to social justice. However we feel about the task of man, our hope for the future, and the way we find ourselves structuring society, we cannot escape our economic calling to stewardship or ignore our creativity in our passion for social justice. And both must be present for true justice to prevail. Poor stewardship isn’t negated by ostensible justice, nor can proper stewardship exist where injustice is found.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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The Sacred Romance

November 28, 2009, by No comments yet

One of my favorite books is The Sacred Romance by Brent Curtis and John Eldridge. It’s partly where I get my passion for narrative theology and theologically-themed stories. Eldridge has an incredibly way of helping us see through the eyes of adventure.

After reading The Sacred Romance, I wrote a brief summary of the Story that I believe God is telling:

Once upon a time God delighted in Himself and enjoyed a joyful and loving relationship among his Three Persons. This love overflowed into Creation, a magnificent and delightful world in which among all things beautiful, God designed creatures that were like Him in many ways. They were His prized creation. He loved them more than anything else in the world. God the Ageless Romancer dwelt with them every day in perfect communion.

However, these human beings were seduced by the enchantment of the Evil One, and in a single act they lost their Sacred Romance and became separated from fellowship with their Beloved.

But the Ageless Romancer would not stand for broken fellowship. So He promised to send a Prince to recapture and protect their hearts. Over time God provided His most-loved creatures more details about this Promise and, as it turned out, this Prince was God in the flesh.

The Prince’s mission was to forever defeat the power of Evil and win back the heart of His Beloved. By defeating death He rescued them from the shackles and power of the Evil One. Upon this rescuing of his Beloved, He imparted to them a fresh Spirit for a new Adventure.

Until His promised Return as King, the Spirit empowers the Beloved to crusade against the Evil One and his attacks. Today they eagerly await the Return of the King, knowing with all certainty that their King will finally destroy the Evil One forever and restore the Sacred Romance that was enjoyed in the beginning.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Idolatry and Identity

November 27, 2009, by No comments yet

Our loss of confidence in a larger story is the reason we demand immediate gratification. We need a sense of being alive now, for now is all we have.

The Sacred Romance, pg 43

In an earlier post I praised the importance of story because of its power to grip the imagination, hold our hearts in captivity, and influence our lives in both subtle and obvious ways. Stories are the soul of living, for we each live in one, desire a better one, and are always seeking our role in the story. Indeed, we are always seeking a better and more fulfilling role. Even the most content among us seek more, because we were made for more. Unawakened dreams and heart-felt passions are always somewhere beneath the surface.

Most folks who don’t believe in God or do not profess to follow Jesus care little for the definition of sin given by most Christians. “Sin is displeasing God,” or “doing something God hates,” or “not following the Bible.” While there can be and often is some element of these things in any given sin, it doesn’t quite help us understand why sin is a problem, or why even that a particular person should believe he/she has acted in such a way that warrants repentance.

If we approach people with “sin is displeasing God,” we are inevitably going to need to define what does and does not please God. Even if we are relatively subjective in what constitutes an “act of sin,” at some point we must declare, “this is a sin,” to the person inquiring. This is only mildly helpful in engaging with those who don’t share our faith. It also tends to leave the impression that “they” (on the outside) are the sinners, leaving “us” (on the inside) are the saints.

But what if we thought of sin as not merely disobeying God, or figuring out which rules to follow and not breaking them. What if saw sin as a life story issue, a matter of identity? What if we treated the theme of our stories as that which we worshiped, and find the definition of sin within that framework? We all live for something, and our lives are telling an important story. What story is it telling?

God created this world good, and declared it to be so. Even after plunging into disharmony with God and the rest of creation, there is no fundamental abandonment of that which God had created and declared “good.” In fact, we are to enjoy and relish creation, and that which comes from its resources. We are to love and cherish our homes, our pets, our children, our belongings. All good things come from God. Sex is good. Power is good. Money is good.

But take those three things. If either sex, money, and power defines who we are, if it frames the story we live out, then we are making something good into that which it was never created to be. The problem isn’t that these things aren’t good, but that they don’t satisfy, they don’t quench the longing of our souls. To state it another way, they don’t resolve our life stories. When we make a good thing an ultimate thing, it becomes our identity, our idol. When we make Jesus the ultimate thing, Jesus satisfies. It’s not as if we won’t hunger for more, but it will satisfy our souls, give our life story more sense, and remove the false identity that we are trying to live.

Is there a single person on whom I can press belief? No. But I’ve lived in this Story. It satisfies.

Make of it what you will.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Thankful for… capitalism?

November 26, 2009, by No comments yet

Since it’s the morning of Thanksgiving Day, most of the RSS feeds I read about liberty and economics have articles dealing with the reason we celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s funny how the Official Version of History leaves out some important, but juicy details.

While I’m thankful for a free market and the benefits it brings to everyone in society to some degree, I don’t thank capitalism for the blessings we have. Life and society are far too complex for me to thank a “system” (which I don’t really believe is a system so much as a natural outcome of a moral philosophy). Rather, it is God who is to be thanked for blessings.

On the flip side, however, I’ve been thoughtfully mourning those who do not have bountiful blessings, whether in our own country or abroad. My family and church has always reached out to those in need during this time, and I hope they can share in the blessing of having neighbors who are willing to serve those in need. God has not forgotten the poor; nor should we.

For the articles I’ve been reading about Thanksgiving, here they are:

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Blessed are the Peacemakers

November 25, 2009, by No comments yet

I could be wrong, but when Jesus spoke the words, “blessed are the peacemakers,” I strongly suspect he wasn’t talking about invading a country to establish democracy. He probably had something close to the “shalom of God” in mind; that is, not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of wholesome relationships and a general sense of wholeness in society.

One of the reasons I am a libertarian Christian (for lack of a better term) is this ethics of peacemaking. No person should ever be compelled to do that which his conscience does not allow him, especially by force.

If all humans were created in the image of God, in order to be God’s viceroys (“a ruler exercising authority in a colony on behalf of a sovereign”), and if we were all created equal but unique in our personalities, qualities, and talents, then it seems impossible to believe that if we were all peaceful individuals, our uniqueness and personal tastes would simply vanish into a sublime communal desire. No, it seems to me that in the Kingdom fully realized, however that turns out in the end, we will all maintain our uniqueness. Indeed, to put it in a grammatically incorrect way: we’ll all be “more unique” in the Kingdom. Whatever our current swath of talent, character qualities, or personality distinctions in this world, in the age to come they will be even more fully realized.

In that light, it is necessary to remember that in such a world, even a world where there is no sin or evil, people will have different desires, different tastes, and different paths to fulfillment. Inevitably conflict will occur, and in our world today this conflict, on scales large and small, non-peaceful resolutions of conflict remain an option as long as sin is permitted to have its hold over human beings. But absent evil in the world to come, conflict of interests do not simply vanish; no, conflicts of interest will be resolved peacefully. The conflicting parties will naturally want to work things out so that it is a win-win resolution.

In today’s world, being a peacemaker means seeking a solution that does not use violence or coercion, but that results in a win-win for the two parties involved in the conflict. The concept of the rule of law predicates that the rules of conflict management are predetermined, stable, and understood, so that both parties can come to the table knowing to the best extent possible the rules by which they will resolve whatever conflict. It is also important that the rules be fair, and that status in life, age, gender, or sexual orientation does not affect the rules of engagement. In other words, the conflict resolution, if it is truly a win-win situation, must be achieved by the two parties in conflict.

So one reason I advocate for a free society is because people ought to be free to exchange, trade, and collaborate in peaceful ways. If they are not peaceful, laws should punish the offender. If laws don’t provide enough incentive to be peaceful (i.e. if laws protect one party and harm another), they need to be changed. Laws protecting one group of people should not outweigh the protection of another group of people.

It is a truly peaceful society that can seek and find win-win solutions to conflict resolution in absence a coercive and violent force such as the State. The more the State needs to be involved in the management of the lives of others, the further that society is from a truly peaceful and virtuous society.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Social Control Through the Back Door?

November 24, 2009, by 2 comments

Jim Wallis has described his religious-political view with a phrase I largely agree with: “religion is personal, but never private.” The idea is that just because Jesus is our “personal savior,” that doesn’t give Christians an excuse to live a double life, with one aspect being a personal belief system and another, sometimes contrary, lifestyle of do as we please. Our faith matters publicly, even if that faith is deeply personal. “Privately held faith” is a sort of oxymoron.

But I think Wallis wishes to go further down the road of “never private” than many Christians (or non-Christians, for that matter) should be comfortable going. It’s one thing to live our faith externally for all to see, mock, criticize, or embrace. It’s quite another to our energy on the correct political action and governmental involvement for our social agenda we have for everyone else.

Many so-called progressive Christians are politically active and engaged in changing the culture through political or legislative methods. Whether it be supporting a mandate for health insurance or placing upon some persons a tax burden inordinately large, for them, building for the Kingdom of God means using all means possible, and political means is one of those means.

Others of us like to point out that using the kingdom of the sword to do the task of that squarely belongs to the Kingdom of the Cross was not part of the mission of Jesus. Doing so legitimizes violence, disrespectfully requires others who may not share our ethics to live by them, and delegates personal stewardship and responsibility to an entity which has little incentive to steward that which has been entrusted to it.

But the retort goes something like this: “Yeah, but Jesus context was different from ours. He lived under a caesar, and we live in a democracy.” The apparent disparity in the comparison—a totalitarian caesar versus the people in a democracy—is supposedly the reason why Jesus didn’t employ political methods: Jesus simply didn’t have the opportunity to use ethical political methods. In our day, the assumption is, democracy is ethical because it is not imposed from a particular top-down authority, but rests within the people.

At first glance this may be a legitimate explanation to conclude that Christians can and should be involved politically. After all, we are part of a society that is generally involved in our own political processes, whether it be locally, regionally, or nationally. Progressive Christians believe that when they are advocating for justice by invoking government involvement, they are doing so ethically because “we are the government” or “this is our government.” Democracy becomes the back-door excuse for social control. If most people can vote a certain way, or if most people can get politicians to vote a certain way, then society will be better off.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that whatever political system we live within, political solutions are always accomplished by the use of force. However nice and ostensibly beneficial the law seems to be, at some point, there’s a gun backing up the law. Last I checked, making others do what you would rather them do was immoral. That goes for authoritarian implementations as well as democratic ones. Getting more people to agree with your social agenda is no less tyrannical on the rest of us than one person forcing us to follow it.

It’s one thing to get as many people as possible to follow Jesus. It’s quite another to twist the intention and meaning of “follow me” into compulsory and mandatory behavioral modification through the law.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Love Your Neighbor Starts in Kindergarten

November 22, 2009, by No comments yet

Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.” I take that literally, though I suppose we need to define “neighbor.” Could neighbor mean everybody, not just the “guy next door”? Could neighbor mean somebody in need? Could neighbor mean those whom we dislike and don’t care much for—those “other people”? Whatever the definition, it is clear for most followers of Jesus that our American definition of neighbor isn’t sufficient, because naturally we would understand that the person two doors down is also to be loved. But what about the person six doors down, or six towns down, or six states away? Or maybe around the world?

In Kindergarten, we all learned a very basic rule: “Keep your hands to yourself, and don’t touch other kids’ stuff without their consent.” In a very basic way, this is what good “citizenship” is: respect others and their property. It’s not quite as proactive as love, but it is a start, and it is a moral and social boundary within which we can love our neighbor.

I’m a libertarian because of the two statements above. Loving my neighbor cannot happen when I vote for others to take his money because I don’t think he’s doing what he ought to with it. There’s nothing just about benevolence with the wealth of others. I’m not loving my neighbor when I pay more in taxes, or support taxes that support my neighbor, when I could be doing it myself, or rallying others to that cause out of my own pocket and energy.

Of course, love goes further than the boundaries that ensure we aren’t aggressing. As the saying goes, peace is not the absence of conflict; so love is not the absence of disrespect or aggression. More on that another time.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Unique Privileged Stance

November 18, 2009, by No comments yet

Another really great quote from Greg Boyd in a debate with Jim Wallis I mentioned in an earlier post:

I don’t see how our commitment to Christ gives us a unique privileged stance on having an extra wisdom to tell government, “Here’s what you should do.”

The hope of the world isn’t found in our tweaking the government the right way.

Boyd doesn’t discount the notion of “tweaking,” but I think this is the fundamental disagreement I have with folks like Wallis who wish to become the conscience of the state. While on the one hand I hope that the government would be “more Christian” and act justly and righteously within the world, there is a real danger in giving power or influence to a group of folks who have historically been very dangerous with power. Lord Acton had it right when he said, “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Giving power to a benevolent group of well-intentioned folks is no different.

Christians tend to be a bunch of folks who believe to “have it right” about life, for whatever topic comes their way. If it’s about abortion, Christians have the answer. If it’s about science, Christians have the answer. If it’s about sexuality, Christians have the answer. From the looks of it (and from what I hear from my friends who are unChristian), you’d think Christianity was all about having the right ideas about life and how other people should run their lives and make decisions.

I’m the same way. I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit I’d like to run other peoples’ lives. There are myriad decisions and life choices my friends—Christian or and non-Christian—make that I think are unwise, foolish, or simply stupid. It’s not that I want control for its own sake. I just think better decisions could be made. Within all of us who want to help make things right in the world is a penchant for control, a greedy little goblin wanting to and willing to pull the levers of power to shift society in such a way that makes us feel more comfortable and better about ourselves.

The problem is, power doesn’t work that way, at least not in the Kingdom of God. Becoming great means becoming a servant. Leading is about sacrificial love. Power is meekness and humility. When it comes to changing the world, it’s not through might or power, but through love and sacrifice. This is why I tend to reject and rant about government-centered solutions to social justice issues and concerns.

Christianity has far too long demonstrated itself to be an arrogant, haughty, know-it-all religion. Christians have succumbed too often to the temptation of power, believing that if we are on God’s side, our power over others is justified (isn’t that what religious terrorists believe?). It is time that Christianity be about the Kingdom of the Cross (driven by servanthood, sacrifice, and love), and abandon the Kingdom of the Sword (driven by force, violence, and coercion). It’s time to put away arrogance and stop placing ourselves and our ideas as better than others and their ideas. And perhaps we should stop acting like we know how everybody else should run their lives. If the good news we bring to the world is so good, why do we need to force folks to follow it?

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Is God a Totalitarian Tyrant?

November 17, 2009, by 7 comments

Anarchist/Libertarian economist and Christian Bob Murphy asks the question, “Is the Christian God a tyrant?” He is responding to a comment made on an earlier blog post:

Ultimately, I am anti-totalitarian. For various reasons, I view both the Judeo-Christian God and the State as ultimately striving for totalitarianism. Therefore, I am both anti-theist and anti-statist. And I feel that those who are one and not the other to be fundamentally saying, “there is no good case for an all-powerful state/god, but there is a good case for an all-powerful god/state.”

Murphy responds by saying (1) God owns everything, and since God is creator and we’re created, that’s not unjust; and (2) whether or not a god is totalitarian is not proof for or against said god’s existence.
Commenters on the post respond with everything from defending Murphy to assuming to disprove the legitimacy of libertarian philosophy, which is heavily based in the notion of private property. Though as somebody pointed out, the very notion of private property means that somebody totally owns that property.

Since I claim to be a Christian and a libertarian, it simply begs the question for me: If I’m so anti-totalitarian, why do I believe in a Judeo-Christain Creator-god?

If there is no god, one can still be a libertarian or anarchist. But if there is a god, and if that god is the Creator-god of the universe, it is important to ask, “What is our relationship to God?” Now by “relationship” I don’t mean a personal intimate relationship, though that is part of the Christian theology. I mean, if you believe in a Creator, what is the status of humans in relationship to this Creator? Are we mere slaves to God? Or is there something more to it?

My Christian friends tell me that God owns everything, therefore we evil libertarians don’t really own what we believe is “ours.” Not only is this a statement of power-play for control, it avoids the real truth of the matter that most, if not all, Christians agree on: we are stewards of God’s creation. The Bible is very clear that human beings are meant to be good stewards of the earth. Call it ownership. Call it stewardship. Whatever you call it, the distinction is a matter of perspective.

There are other passages that claim that human beings are made in the image of God; this is an allusion to statues of kings which were used in distant lands to remind the citizens of their loyalty and allegiance to a king they did not see every day. So in a small way, we are “little totalitarians” alongside God, regents over creation in order to make full use of it without abusing it. The difference is that when we “do things” God isn’t exactly pleased with, there is no totalitarian consequence. Even God allows us to abuse it, as is evident in many areas of the world. It’s not a given that God makes us behave in the sort of way a totalitarian human being would choose to do. Nor does it mean that all decisions we make will be fruitful and wholesome. This is where sound economics comes into play, but that’s for another day.

(A side note for anti-theists and atheists: even if you don’t agree that we are stewards over that which is truly own by god, you must admit that even if human beings were true owners of their property, we are not mortal, and thus cannot perpetually own that which we cannot hold on to.)

It is also very clear early on in the Scriptures that God has given human beings in incredible amount of freedom of the will. Not only are we free to commit suicide, we are free to kill others, rape, murder, pillage, plunder, and conspire to do these things en masse. So much for a truly totalitarian god!

On the contrary, the Christian god is the God who not merely created the world and lets it run on its own (and very badly at that), but wants to restore it and has worked throughout history to remake and transform it. Since a supposedly omnipotent god could simply “wipe out” evil, but doesn’t, surely this stands up against arguments that God is truly totalitarian. Even those of us who believe in a historical resurrection scratch our heads every now and then and think, “If God can pull of a stunt like that, why not something more useful like ending poverty or curing all diseases?” The truth is, that’s the point of the atonement, and of the resurrection. It is the story of a God who aches when we ache, hurts when we hurt, and so became one of us in order to (among other things) take on the sin and ugliness of the world. And he overcame it with resurrection—but that’s for another post!


Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Impoverishment of the Imagination

November 16, 2009, by 6 comments

I recently listened to Greg Boyd debate Jim Wallis on the level and nature of Christian involvement in politics. One phrase that stood out to me was Boyd’s comment about Christian witness and manifestation of the Kingdom of God here on earth and within society. He said that for Kingdom people to delegate to the State that which squarely rests as the responsibility of the people of God is that it impoverishes the imagination. Voting our values sounds great, but are we living our values? If it is truly the  vocation, calling, and responsibility of the people of God to not only live out but carry out God’s justice, why would we want to hand over those tasks to an entity whose primary mechanism of operation is threat of force? But that isn’t how Jesus came to transform the world.

If bringing the Kingdom to fruition here on earth is part of the task of the Church, then I must ask : How lame is the gospel of Jesus if we had to use a kingdom of the sword rather than rely on the power of the gospel to transform society peacefully? If the gospel is truly powerful and able to transform, then why do we need a “God and Guns” solution to injustice?

For affluent Christians in a society where we often have more than we need, it is easy to give away our money in taxes or charity and believe that we’ve done our part or given our share of wealth. It’s quite another thing to do the work of justice ourselves.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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Mandated loss of Freedoms

November 14, 2009, by No comments yet

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive… [for] those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

As a follower of Jesus and a believer that God created the world, I affirm that all people are equally created in God’s eyes. No person is better than another, or deserves more than another, and should have equal protection under the law. I further believe that ensuring as many freedoms as possible is required for justice to exist. Jesus indeed came to free those in captivity to oppression. There is no such thing as pure justice this side of the new creation, but that does not mean we shouldn’t seek it. Freedom is integral to justice; it must exist else there is no true justice.

So-called progressive Christians are mostly in support of the government-driven reforms of our health care industry. Viewing the State as a legitimate extension of the people (and of the Kingdom), they conflate words such as “cooperation” and “common good” with ideas like “mandate” and “coercion” to persuade the rest of us that living under the conditions of being told how to live is natural and legitimate. But mandates and legislation, by nature, are coercive. That is not to say all legislation is bad, nor is all forms of coercion inherently bad. Coercing somebody to not be harmful, or punishing somebody who was, is not an illegitimate form of coercion. The law (and those who enforce it) serves as a “referee” of sorts. No athlete believes they are being coerced into following the rules of the game. The problem is when the referees don’t like the rules and change them arbitrarily. It’s one thing to compel people to obey by presenting consequences for noncompliance. It’s quite another to coerce folks to behave according to one’s own ethics or desired social outcomes.

Some claim that “As long as individuals live in society, freedom is not absolute.  The common good puts limits on individual freedom.” Inherent in equal freedoms is its own limitation. If I had no limits to my freedom, then by definition you do have limits to yours. So naturally there are limitations to freedom. But a subjective phrase such as “common good” is difficult to achieve, because there are many things that could be perceived as “common good” to some, but be oppressive to others. To use “common good” as an excuse to limit one’s freedom is to essentially say, “My social goals and outcomes are more important than your goals and hoped-for outcomes in your life.” A conflict of goals emerges; the battle then must be on whose goals are more important. If we demand that individuals—most of whom we never met—are required to give up their rights, we are essentially telling them we matter more than they do. If we insists that individual rights are equal, and seek to protect the rights and freedom of the individual, we demand nothing from anybody.

Benevolent legislation such as health care mandates or laws that are designed to get people to behave in a certain way. It is disrespectful to make people give up their rights through mandates that appear helpful, and then ask, “What are you giving up, really?” People are not ants; they are not robots; they are not bits of software that can be programmed to do that which the “operating system” wants it to do. No, they are individuals with rational choice, free will, and ought to have the ability to pursue the goals they themselves have decided are best for them. You may disagree with their choices, but it is their choice.

It does not seem Christian to advocate for things that belong squarely in the realm of coercion. Paul wrote that the gospel is powerful, and it has the power to transform society in a way that fulfills God’s desire for God’s justice to reign on the earth. But going along with mandates and coercive legislation betrays a fundamental fear that the gospel really isn’t as powerful on its own, but needs the power of the sword to accomplish its ends. I wholeheartedly reject this notion.

Doug

Doug Stuart is a committed follower of Jesus and passionate about building for the Kingdom of God through education and mobilization. He is a regular writer at LibertarianChristians.com as well as the founder of Living Loud.

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