I don’t watch Glenn Beck but I am glad to know he was highlighting Jim Wallis’ false teachings. Glenn is a Mormon but he knows the Bible better than Wallis & Co. Here are videos of Beck talking about Wallace (Hat tip: Christine).
From a January 13, 2006 radio interview with Interfaith Voices:
Host: Are you then calling for the redistribution of wealth in society?
Wallis: Absolutely, without any hesitation. That’s what the Gospel is all about.
That is classic false teaching. I’d heed the words of Paul before the words of Wallis:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8–9, ESV)
Galatians 1:10 also applies to these world-lovers:
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10, ESV)
More background on Wallis here. His politics are bad enough, but what really is deceptive about him is is faux centrism. They milk the “God is not a Republican . . . or a Democrat” sound bite but they don’t believe a word of it.
He was a keynote speaker to the 2008 ACORN Convention. In a great slip of the tongue, he is almost introduced as Jeremiah Wright.
You can’t change the politicians, you need to change the direction, and ACORN is an organization that can change the direction of the country by pressing from the outside and I have no doubt ACORN will be making their voices heard regardless of who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Lovely.
Thanks for this, Neil.
Distribution of wealth? “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thess. 3:10-12)
In the gospel we find grace-motivated obedience and hard work for those who are physically and mentally able in order to be fruitful for their families, generous to all, and faithful ministers of the gospel.
Throughout the Bible when it does talk about helping the poor and needy, it typically focuses on the orphans and widows. When it talks about helping the “poor” in general, the method of helping them looks so much different than it does today. In the Mosaic law, the rich simply didn’t just “give” to the poor, they allowed the poor to glean from their fields. So basically the rich gave the poor an opportunity to gather food for themselves.
Excellent points, Chance.
Sent from my iPhone
Chance/Neil et al.
Great point about the gleaning. What does that look like in 21st century America?
Craig:
It looks like the Salvation Army, Samartian’s Purse, Young Christians painting houses on mission trips, and more things too numerous to list.
That said, maybe we (Christians, not the government) could do better at creating jobs. We do distribute seed and livestock where possible, and many Christian businessmen are out there creating jobs.
SST,
I don’t disagree that those are all good things, but I’m looking more at the principle of gleaning. I think you’re close when you talk about creating jobs, micro finance, etc. I think this is a principle of Christianity and Gods economy that needs to be explored. I really think there are some ways to be creative and help those in need beyond charity.
Tell me what you think of this. I’ll be spending the summer in the urban core of Minneapolis doing a house rehab for a low income family.
There will be a lot of folks on site actually doing the work and one byproduct of this will be aluminum cans. One option is to pitch them in the dumpster and let WM sort and recycle the aluminum. Another option is to sort the cans out and leave them for neighborhood kids to recycle for $$$. Good idea, bad idea, gleaning, not gleaning?
Thanks for the thoughts, anyone else?
I think you are right, Craig; I think that’s a good example. I see it primarily as finding extra ways to give people something to do, even if it doesn’t make the most sense dollar-wise. For instance, I could hire some kid whose family doesn’t have a lot of money to mow my yard for 20 bucks, even though normally I’d rather just do it myself. Or, just paying someone to do odd jobs around the house or, if I was a business owner, around my workplace. I think GoodWill’s primary purpose is to provide jobs for people, so I think that’s another example.
Chance,
I think that is more in line with how I see gleaning. Charity is good, but gleaning seems to be more about ways for people to be more self supporting.
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“And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
- Acts 2:44-45
“Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.”
- Acts 4:32-35
Those are nice verses. What is your meaning in posting them? Do you think they are a biblical command for Christians to petition the government to take from neighbor A by force to give to neighbor B?
I posted those verses because your blog post called Jim Wallis a teacher of false doctrines for his advocacy of wealth redistribution and then quoted some verses that had no bearing on the question of wealth redistribution. The verses that I presented clearly show the young church in Acts practicing a primitive form of communism which definitely implies wealth redistribution.
In addition, a study of the Old Testament reveals outright examples of explicitly commanded wealth redistribution in the laws given to Israel by Moses which clearly shows that wealth redistribution for the poor is not the same thing as the Biblical notion of theft and that the modern Western notion of private property (which didn’t crystallize until after the Middle Ages) is not the same as the Ancient Near East notion of property. Also, we can see the heart of God in the Prophets’ continuing calls for Israel to practice the social justice that God is so passionate about as defender of the orphan, the widow, the foreigner, the poor, and the oppressed. This lines up nicely with our Lord’s ministry to the poor and the outcast and His rebuking of the rich, the powerful, and the self-righteous religious teachers.
Unfortunately, as is the case with so much of God’s radical way as most fully expressed by the Lord Jesus Christ, these truths undermine and contradict deeply ingrained values that our culture tells us are good or common sense and instead of responding to the Lord’s Truth and conforming ourselves to God – we distort the Bible to conform to our own fallen cultural values.
You asked if I think this means that we should “petition the government to take from neighbor A by force to give to neighbor B”?
I’ll answer with a question of my own. Do you think there should be a government? If so, then you believe in the use of force and believe in taking from neighbor A to give to neighbor B. A government’s essence is the monopoly of “legitimate” force and the use of that force to enforce laws. A government cannot exist without taxation to fund it and those funds are obtained through implicit or explicit force. The services that a government provides for that taxation do not benefit everyone equally. Thus, if you support government in any shape or form, you are supporting the government taking from neighbor A by force to give to neighbor B.
Given the fact that government is likely to exist along with its use of force and its taxation of its citizens, the question should instead be what kind of government policies are most in line with the heart of God as the Old Testament makes it clear that God judges nations as well as individuals – and that was even true for nations that had monarchies instead of democratic republics where the citizens have more say in government policy. From that perspective, a government that treats its poor with love, kindness, and mercy is more righteous than one that provides tax loop holes for the rich and spends hundreds of billions on sending trained killers in the service of the State to attack and invade and occupy other weaker nations.
Hi John,
Your primary problem is pointing to a fact then drawing an unrelated conclusion. The burden of proof is on you to show how the verses (or whatever you reference) supports your conclusion. Yours don’t.
Jim Wallis is a false teacher. He claims that the Gospel is “all about wealth redistribution.” That is a lie. I heard the full audio. I politely asked his blog regulars to refute it. None could. But they were gracious enough to block my comments after that! How “fair and balanced” of them. Apparently they don’t take kindly to facts and logic.
You need to understand the verses in Acts. That isn’t a primitive form of Communism. It is Christianity: People giving generously because they have decided in their own hearts to do so, not reluctantly or under compulsion (2 Cor. 9:6-7). Do you seriously think the people in China and the former Soviet Union thought they were giving in that manner?
Wallis promotes the government redistribution of wealth. That isn’t giving.
Your response includes my rebuttal: Those were laws given to the Israelites, a theocracy. The tithe was more more like a flat tax than wealth redistribution.
Speaking of self-righteous religious leaders, take a closer look at Wallis. And if he really cares about social justice, why doesn’t his blog address abortion? Crushing and dismembering unwanted, helpless human beings is the ultimate injustice. He and his followers support taxpayer-funded abortions. That’s sick.
Actually, that’s what you are doing. Equating voluntary giving with Communism is a complete non-sequitur. The only commonality is the transfer of funds, but one is forced and one is voluntary.
No, you need to answer my question: Do you think those verses are a biblical command for Christians to petition the government to take from neighbor A by force to give to neighbor B? It is a simple question. You think that by calling the giving a “primitive” form of Communism that you’ve explained yourself, but that doesn’t follow.
If you want to donate your own money, that’s great. That’s what I do, in addition to paying all my taxes. I have no problem with some form of government support, but I reject the false teachings of people like Wallis who want the government to do their “giving” by taking from others.
You should also drop the Wallis & Co. sound bites and read what the Bible says about the primary role of government.
The phrase “all about” can mean many things. I can easily see what Wallis is talking about given that Jesus came to preach good news (gospel) to the poor and chose the Jubilee Year with its massive wealth redistribution as the sign of the beginning of His ministry. The gospel accounts themselves are filled with a palpable sense of God’s special concern for the poor and the outcast verses the rich and socially esteemed. Just because Wallis recognizes this theme as one thing that the gospel is all about doesn’t make him a false teacher.
I’ve only a passing familiarity with Wallis from the brief time when I subscribed to his Sojourner magazine, but I have enough knowledge to know that the man is a true follower of Christ even if you despise his politics and his focus on the social justice aspects of the Bible.
Now if you were demonstrating evidence that Wallis denied that Jesus was the Christ or denied that Jesus came to save men from sin or denied Jesus’ miracles or the literal nature of much of the Bible, then you might actually have something to latch onto with this notion that Wallis is a false teacher. However, what you actually have is but a question of semantics and emphasis concerning a clear theme in the Gospel and also in the Old Testament that Jesus’ ministry references.
On the contrary, you need to understand both Acts and communism. Communism isn’t synonymous with Marxism and was not practiced in the former Soviet Union or in Maoist China and especially not in modern China which has a high degree of nearly unchecked capitalism in its economy – its why businesses love to find cheap labor there. The former Soviet Union and Maoist China were trying to build socialism (as defined by Marxism-Leninism which is an outgrowth of classical Marxism) which they saw as an intermediate stage between capitalism and a stateless communism. The parties were known as Communist Parties because they desired to eventually bring about communism once their economies reached the necessary level of abundance not because the states that they led practised communism. Communism is simply a form of economic organization where a group of people hold all things in common and distribute things to those within the group according to need. The first practitioners of socialism and communism were Christians. Indeed, the immediate predecessor of the First International (the socialist organization formed by Marx and Engels) was the League of the Just which was an organization of mostly Christian communists who saw their communism as coming naturally from the Bible. It was only once the atheist Marx joined and won a leadership role that the organization shifted into a primarily atheistic and materialist one, shedding its original Christian character.
The young church practiced Christian community through communism. It’s right there in Acts. They held all things in common and did not consider any property as their own. They took from each according to ability and gave to each according to need. That’s the defining principle of communism. This isn’t voluntary giving being described here as that would imply that I have a possession and give it to you to become yours – it’s something much more profound: it’s the abolishing of the distinction between ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ to replace with a unifying concept of ‘ours’. Of course, the early church wasn’t simply defined by its practice of communism – which again implies nothing more than the form of the community’s economic organization – it was a community that was centered around the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
You are cherry picking the text here with no context and poorly extracting a general principle. The book of Acts presents the church existing as groups of communes. In this letter from Paul to the church in Corinthians, Paul is writing about a gift that the believers there had already promised to give to help out others in need. Paul encourages the believers to cheerfully render their promised gift and not to render it grudgingly as though they were under compulsion. The point is one about how generosity is a virtue that pleases God – which makes perfect sense given Christ’s teachings about practicing the perfect love that imitates our loving Father in Heaven – not that there can be no compulsion in giving under any context. Simply consider the story found in Acts 5:1-11 where a man and his wife are struck dead for holding back some of the money that they received from selling their property and how this struck fear into the hearts of the believers. That is very clearly God Himself making an example of these people and compelling fear struck observers to obey via His awesome display of power.
Wallis has addressed abortion on many occasions and a quick search of his blog shows he’s addressed it there as well. Perhaps you’re just not happy with his approach of advocating for policies that reduce abortions – which is a pragmatic approach with realistic prospects of actually making an impact on the number of terrible abortions performed each year as opposed to the fruitless approach that many conservative Christians take of supporting Republicans who say that they oppose Roe vs. Wade but who never act to roll it back because they know that to do so would cost them big politically while continuing to dangle it as a carrot to naive Christians will bring those anti-abortion votes rolling in. In supporting these Republicans, Christians pound their chests about their concern for the lives of the unborn while neglecting their love for the born (the poor and downtrodden who often suffer from Republican policies) and for the real chance of saving some of those unborn who are dying needlessly.
I wasn’t talking about the tithe. I was referring to the laws concerning things like the Sabbath Year and the Jubilee Year where debts were canceled and property redistributed back to its original owners. The fact that these laws were given to the Israelites doesn’t fend away the general principle that wealth redistribution as a means of social justice is something of which God approves. Many of the laws given to Israel including these point to moral principles that come into sharper focus under the light of Christ and the early practice of the Church.
You need to back that statement up as it would appear that you are bearing false witness. In this article by Wallis http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/a-flawed-step-forward-on_b_506342.html, he makes it clear that he supports the principle behind the Hyde Amendment of preventing the federal funding of abortions.
On the contrary, I was raised as a political conservative and attended a conservative Southern Baptist elementary school where I first became a Christian and studied the Bible daily. It was my own study of the Bible later as an adult and my approach of always seeking to read the text as its original audience would have understood it (an approach born out of an interest in apologetics) that changed my political views and moved them far towards the left with a deep concern for social justice. I don’t know your personal history so I won’t make any claims about you, but most conservative Christians that I know are politically conservative American nationalists first and Christians second who bend over backwards to interpret away many of Christ’s teachings so that they sit more comfortably beside the American culture that informs their world view.
I have no problem with some form of government support
Thus, you have no problem with the government taking away from Neighbor A to give to Neighbor B because any government program does exactly that.
You want to know my answer to your question directly? Yes, I do support government redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. I support it because it is just and because only a collective group as large as the nation can properly address the problems created by the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Your question phrases things so as to paint wealth redistribution as though it were a case of theft when in actuality it is a modest attempt to correct for prior theft as the rich gather their wealth through taking from the poor through the sin of usury in its many forms: rent, interest, and wage slavery.
Your false dichotomy between voluntary and compulsory giving is absurd in that you suggest that a voluntary individual virtue is somehow a vice when society as whole acts out the same principle through law. Is society’s law against murder transformed into a great evil because of its compulsory nature in achieving something that Christians voluntarily do? Not only does it go against common sense – it also goes against the Bible where we clearly see in the Old Testament that God judges nations corporately for sins of the state.
I came to my conclusions through careful study and earnestly seeking God’s intentions – not by listening to sound bites. I’m not a follower of Jim Wallis.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read and studied the Bible from cover to cover. I think I know what the Bible has to say about the primary role of government and that is *nothing*. When political conservatives read their Bibles, they read their relatively recent limited government ideology into a passage like Romans 13 where careful reading within the greater context should make it obvious that this is anachronistic wishful thinking. Romans 12 is about non-violent loving submission to evil. Romans 13 continues with a concrete example of the application of Romans 12 in the context of how Christians ought to respond to the governing authorities – especially when they persecute them – which is exactly what the Roman government was doing. To support his teaching, Paul points out how God places all governing authorities into their positions of power for His purposes (including Hitler or Nero or King George III) which is not to say that He approves of them, but that He allows them to have their power and uses them to achieve His ends. Think of Jesus’ response to Pilate about only having the power that His Father has given to him. Think of the way Isaiah describes God using wicked Assyria to judge the sinful Israel. Given that this describes how God uses states and not His approval of states – it doesn’t describe a “proper role” for government.
Indeed, I would argue that a strong theme of disapproval of the state can be traced throughout the Bible and would suggest that the state is itself a form of idolatry that replaces the Kingdom of God with the kingdoms of men. That said, as Romans 13 makes clear, Christians are not to rise up and overthrow these states, but are to instead subordinate themselves to their laws in so far as doing so does not conflict with obeying God – even if this means suffering persecution. However, given that God uses these states and judges nations on their collective behavior, it stands to reason that just as Christians call upon individuals to act righteously, they are to call upon nations to do so as well – especially in the modern democratic republic where the Christian citizen has far more influence upon the character of society’s laws and customs than a citizen did under a monarch or emperor.
I listened to the whole interview. He is a false teacher. The Gospel is all about Jesus dying for our sins and rising again (1 Cor. 15). It isn’t all about wealth redistribution and even if it was it wouldn’t be “all about” government forced wealth redistribution.
I have no problem with people focusing on the social justice aspects of the Bible. It is all God’s word. I just see how fraudulent he is, masquerading as a social justice champion while deliberately teaching false things and supporting taxpayer-funded abortion, among other things.
Misstating what the Gospel is “all about” isn’t semantics. Neither is the massive confusion of claiming that personal giving and government forced redistribution are the same thing.
If you can’t see that the voluntary giving of the Christians is completely different from asking Caesar to take from neighbor A and giving to neighbor B then you are beyond reason and should not comment here again.
That is false. They didn’t take from others, they gave. Even Peter notes that Ananias and Saphira didn’t have to give all their proceeds. Wow, people like you are dangerous. This passage is not that hard to read.
Wrong. See Ananias and Saphira. And I’ll bet you don’t practice what you preach.
2 Cor. 9 is very clear. Anyone can read the whole thing.
Wrong. Again, see Ananias and Saphira (and the rest of the NT). Giving, by definition, is voluntary.
Oh, that is funny. I made the previous references to that very passage before I saw your reference. Read it again. The example was that it is profoundly bad to lie to the Holy Spirit, not that anything short of fully immersing yourself in communism is a capital offense.
Wrong. I’ve spent a lot of time there. They go into conniptions when you point out that they were willing to gamble away all of Obamacare to hold onto their precious taxpayer-funded abortions.
That’s the meme, isn’t it? It ignores that great gains had been made and that if McCain had been elected he would have put vastly different judges on the SC. Reversing RvW was a long trip and we turned around just short of the destination. Hopefully we’ll turn around again.
I’ve never seen Wallis or his followers trumpet the benefits of Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Even IF they are pro-life, why not use their pulpit to persuade people against abortions even while they are illegal? Why not constantly remind people of the scientific fact that the unborn are human beings worthy of protection? Why not blast the social injustice of Planned Parenthood hiding statutory rape?
Another bit of Democratic Kool-Aid. Conservatives give more time, money and even blood. Democratic politicians are notoriously cheap — http://tinyurl.com/yzautg2. Those are facts of history.
How much do you donate to crisis pregnancy centers? How much time do you donate? Those organizations aren’t political. They acknowledge there is a legal choice and try to save lives and help people in need — all for free. The clinic where I’m a board member is run 100% on donations and mostly with volunteers.
And the “Republican policies” bit is a joke. Go visit Detroit, my friend. Half a century of Liberal politics and school leaders. Wanna move there? You can get a great deal on a house.
Do we live in an Israelite theocracy?
Bzzzzt. I followed the whole Obamacare debate at his site. They opposed the Stupak Amendment. Your weasel words even betray you, where you say he supports the “principle.” Tell that to the unborn.
Nice try. My point was that I’m not an anarchist as Democrats like to imply. I just know how to define simple words like “giving.” If people make cases for what is good public policy (defense, education, roads) then that is fine. But when they cheat and blaspheme and claim that Jesus’ teachings were that we should petition the gov’t to take from neighbor A to give to neighbor B — and define that as generosity on their part — then they sicken me.
Why not give directly out of your pocket? Why force your beliefs on others?
You haven’t demonstrated that there is anything immoral about making money.
Eek. Then put laws into place or enforce existing laws if those things really happen. Don’t say that some rich people are bad, so we need to shift money around by force to correct for that.
I don’t present a false dichotomy. You are the one calling taxation “giving.” What a joke.
False analogy. Protection of people’s lives is a natural responsibility of gov’t (see Romans 13 and elsewhere).
Then you need a refund on your Bible purchase, because they left out Romans 13 and more.
Did you not read what I wrote? The point under which you placed this comment was that communism is merely a means of economic organization within a group. It has nothing to do with Caesar or the State – indeed communism is supposed to be practiced without a state. If you and I and some other Christians all decided to live together in a neighborhood and share all our goods with one another and meet daily in one another’s homes and “no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but [we] had everything in common” then we would be practicing communism. And that’s *different* from giving (even if it is indeed voluntary) because with giving, you still consider your own thing yours and I still consider my own thing mine.
To fund defense, education, and roads you are taking from neighbor A to give to neighbor B. I have no children, but I still have to pay taxes that go towards educating my neighbor’s child. I opposed invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, yet I still have to pay a huge portion of my taxes towards this thing which I consider a great evil. For almost any government program, you will find that some people will derive more benefit from it than others.
I do.
Did you just not read the rest of that paragraph that you were responding to or did you simply ignore it? I explicitly mentioned Romans 13 and how people sometimes like to read their political ideology of limited government into it and misinterpret it as divine approval of government when all it is doing is describing how God who ordains all things uses the governments to achieve His purposes and that we Christians are not to supposed to rebel against these governments but instead are to follow Christ and subordinate ourselves to them even if this means submitting to persecution. It’s a natural concrete application of the proceeding chapter’s call to non-violence and loving treatment of enemies – which the Roman state was definitely an enemy of the early Christians.
Why don’t you apply that logic to your positions? How long have Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) tried to eliminate poverty only to fail? Why do you insist on laws to stop what you see as unfair economic acts when you could use a pragmatic approach of educating people better?
I know that Liberals try to soothe their consciences over their silence on the abortion holocaust by offering platitudes about trying to reduce them, but I don’t let those lame excuses go unchallenged here. Abortion is legal because of people like you.
I do. I’m an anarchist. I wish to see an end to the state (though as a Christian I do not advocate trying to launch a violent revolution against it as both Christ and Paul make it clear that Christians are called to non-violence), but at the same time I realize that for the foreseeable future there will be a state, and so I pragmatically support using the state as best as possible where it can benefit people – for example I don’t oppose the construction of roads and I am very much in favor of public transportation improvements.
Because education won’t fix the problems (though it doesn’t hurt and I certainly do my part in speaking out). These are structural problems that no single individual can change. I’m sure you can understand. Don’t you insist on laws to stop abortion? Yet I bet you try to educate people about the evils of abortion at the same time by supporting Crisis Pregnancy Centers. It’s not an either/or situation.
That’s a very unkind thing to say to me and simply not true. I support overturning Roe vs. Wade and always have since I first became aware of abortions. However, the more I’ve seen how politics work and the more I rejected Republicans and Democrats alike as abusive spouses who rely upon their battered spouses to come back every time at elections, the more I came to reject seeing a politician’s stance on abortion as a litmus test.
Hello Neil. Just checking in to read the posts and comments, as I do sometimes. I’m sure you’re aware. You are still on my prayer list, ever since you crossed my path. I hope you and the family are doing well. I know you shut down my comments here, but you will read this and that is really the purpose. I just wanted to point out that I agree wholeheartedly with John Weathers. Just so you know. Now you can better categorize and judge us.
Hi Poolman,
Thanks. I sincerely hope you and your family are doing well. Glad you are a loyal reader.
If you and John Weathers are anarchists that actually explains a lot, and it does help me categorize and judge your views.
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