From Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto:

Excessive government spending has done more than just put us in debt.  Charles Murray offers us a useful thought experiment that illustrates the welfare state’s enervating effects on our communities and our character.  Imagine that all the programs that constituted the federal “safety net” were all of a sudden abolished, and for whatever reason could not be revived.  And pretend also that the states chose not to replace them with programs of their own, which they almost certainly would.  The questions Murray wants us to focus on are these: How would you respond?  Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a food bank?  Would you be more or less likely to volunteer at a literacy center?  If you were a lawyer or physician, would you be more or less likely to offer pro bono services?

We would all answer yes to these questions, wouldn’t we?  But then we need to ask ourselves: why aren’t we doing these things already?  And the answer is that we have bought into the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me.  I don’t need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man.  Do our responsibilities as human beings really extend no farther than this?

My wife and I have been recently reading together through Theirs Is The Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America by Robert D. Lupton.  The book is a collection of short essays reflecting on the author’s experiences living in urban Atlanta.  Rather than being heavy-handed and guilt-inducing, the book strives to simply cause the reader to question some of their preconceived notions about the poor, and urban culture in America.

Here is a lengthy, but good, section from the chapter entitled, When Winning Is Losing:

My competitiveness reached its peak one day in my twenty-sixth year.  I was flying door-gunner on a helicopter in Vietnam, and we were on a search-and-destroy mission.  Suddenly the ground beneath us came alive with enemy fire.  The intense battle that followed demanded the ultimate in combat strategy, skill, and commitment.  The stakes were never higher and victory was never more exhilarating.  I accepted with pride a medal for heroism in aerial combat.

It was only later, while still in Vietnam, that I began to understand the implications of my competitiveness.  As I flew back from another “successful” mission, I realized that the emotions I experienced were the same I once felt while wrestling or debating.  They were more intense because the stakes were higher, but they were unmistakably the same emotions.  I was taking human life and feeling the thrill of victory.  This thrill was inversely proportional to the agony of defeat — in this case death and maiming.

I began to suspect there was something wrong with a system in which my winning was built upon the defeat of another human being.  When I returned to the United States I was unable to put this new insight behind me.  I began working with disadvantaged people who were losers in a competitive economy.  I saw young men, broken men, crippled by too many years of defeat…And although I felt unpatriotic for thinking such thoughts, I wondered if all was well with an economic system where winning meant defeating another human being.  Could it be that among human beings cooperation was a better way than competition?

I pray that one day God will bring in a new order in which human beings will rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.  Perhaps on that day we will refuse the gains made at the expense of others and our success will be measured by the quality of our servanthood to humanity.

This is not primarily a political blog, and though politics is one of my great passions, I’m trying hard to stay away from a large amount of political discourse on a website devoted to all things Christian (of course, politics falls under the realm of Christian-thought).

I’ve been recently reading Ron Paul’s new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto and really been enjoying it. For those who don’t know, Dr. Paul is a Republican candidate for the Presidential nomination; which, of course, is fairly unattainable at this point. He is a staunch “old school” Republican and values such things as: individual liberty, small and decentralized government, a foreign policy of non-intervention, and drastic cuts to federal spending so as to produce a budget surplus rather than budget deficit every year.

Last night while reading I came across a few brief words on the topic of abortion. Dr. Paul is opposed to the federal government mandating laws on abortion and believes such decisions should be made at the local and state level.

One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion. As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion…

…I have heard the arguments in favor of abortion many times, and they have always disturbed me deeply.  A popular academic argument for abortion demands that we think of the child in the womb as a “parasite” that the woman has the right to expel from her body.  But the same argument justifies outright infanticide, since it applies just as well to an infant outside the womb: newborns require even more attention and care, and in that sense are even more “parasitic.”

If we can be so callous as to refer to a growing child in a mother’s womb as a parasite, I fear for our country’s future all the more.  Whether it is war or abortion, we conceal the reality of violent acts through linguistic contrivances meant to devalue human lives we find inconvenient.  Dead civilians become “collateral damage,” are ignored altogether, or are rationalized away on the Leninist grounds that to make an omelet you have to break some eggs. (The apostle Paul, on the other hand, condemned the idea that we should do evil that good may come.)  People ask an expectant mother how her baby is doing.  They do not ask her how her fetus is doing, or her blob of tissue, or her parasite.  But that is what her baby becomes as soon as the child is declared to be unwanted.  In both cases, we try to make human life into something less than human, simply according to our will.

I read an interesting interview the other day with a Portland, OR couple who have refused to pay that portion of their taxes every year which were being used to support wars they disagreed with. Rather than simply using this as an excuse to not pay any taxes at all, the couple has written a check to their local government every year covering the amount they have refused to pay to the national government. Of course, as you can imagine, Uncle Sam is not a big fan and has pursued these uncollected taxes rather vigorously.

This is pretty radical to think about for your average American. All good, law-abiding citizens pay taxes, and avoiding doing so seems somehow dirty or wrong. I can’t help but feel like this couple is doing a moral thing, however. They are paying exactly the same amount in taxes as the government says they should, they are simply refusing their money to be allocated towards that which they feel is immoral.

Christians should stand up for what is right, and good, and honoring to God. We should also not allow our allegiance to worldly institutions to supersede our allegiance to Christ. According to Christ’s commands, we should follow the rules of, and pray for, our government. These things being said, there is a clearly a point at which “rendering unto Caesar” crashes headlong into “honoring Christ“, and our commitment as Christians to that which is good and pleasing to God must always win.

For example, if the government were to designate a portion of your tax dollars towards subsidizing the cost of abortions in America (thus increasing the rate of abortions for convenience sake alone), and you felt that abortion was a morally unacceptable thing for a Christian to financially support, then surely you would be justified in not helping fund such an endeavor by voluntarily withholding, and redirecting, your tax contribution towards abortion subsidies.

By the same logic then, if a Christian were convinced that tax-payer funded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were morally unacceptable things for followers of Christ to support, then would they not be justified in following a course of action similar to that of this couple from Oregon? Do we ever allow our allegiance to our government and unwillingness to experience social (or legal) pressure prevent us from following Christ radically?