Confusing Jesus Christ with Marx

Democrats continue to use religion, i.e. Christianity, to advance “values,” i.e. socialism. The Globe Gazette reports:

In a return trip to Iowa Sunday, former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry told a group of women activists it is time to reopen the values debate in America.

The Massachusetts senator said it is good that religion has become more of a part of the public dialogue in the country as long as faith translates into action.

“Faith without works is dead,” Kerry said….

“I can’t find anything in any religion anywhere, I certainly cannot find anything in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ, that says you ought to take health care away from poor children or money away from the poorest people in the country to give it to the wealthiest people in the nation,” Kerry said.

Leaving aside Kerry’s dishonest notion that to reduce the amount of unearned transfer payments going to poor people is to “take their money” and give it to rich people, where does it say in the Gospels that you can use the power of government to transfer the wealth of people who have earned it to people who haven’t, or, indeed, that you can use the power of government to redistribute wealth at all?

Jesus in the Gospels explicitly rejects the idea that he intends the equitable distribution of wealth, when he declines to come to the assistance of a man who claims he has been cheated of his proper share of his inheritance:

And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. (Luke 12:13-15.)

Jesus’ mission was to lead men to conform their life to God’s will, as his own was, not to create any particular social arrangement.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 10, 2005 12:00 PM | Send