During its 1980’s resurgence, the Texas band ZZ Top released its Eliminator album, which contained the hit single, Give Me All Your Lovin’. The chorus went like this:
Gimme all your lovin’, all your hugs and kisses too,
Gimme all your lovin’, don’t let up until we’re through.
Reviewing the song’s lyrics as I write this, I can’t tell what the song is about, though am pretty sure I don’t want to know. The one thing that is obvious from the chorus, though, is that someone needs to give up all of something he/she has for someone else.
Welcome to the world of progressive liberalism!
Just like with ZZ Top, progressive liberals demand that others give up all of something that they have. The difference with between ZZ Top and the progressives, however, is that the progressives know exactly what they want–our wealth, possessions, and families:
Gimme all your money, all your land and children too,
Gimme all your money, we won’t let up until we’re through.
Not that this should be a surprise; God told the Israelites through Samuel this is what kings would do about 3,000 years ago:
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. (1 Samuel 8:11–15 ESV)
There is more, but I am sure you get the point.
The truth is, whenever society encounters a problem, the progressive response is always the same: more money. In fact, a lot more money.
The education system is not properly educating children? More money. Child Protective Services can’t protect children? More money. Welfare programs are not improving the welfare of the poor? More money.
To be fair, the progressive response to societal problems is not always more money. Sometimes, it is more regulation! Which points us to what progressives always turn to to solve society’s ills: more government.
Along these lines, in a recent email exchange on our church’s email list a friend asked me this:
I’m curious how you would see laws regarding gleaning and usury and parapets applied in this situation. While I don’t support most of the laws and regulations we have, I think that these Scriptural laws make it clear that there can be civil mandates for charity, consumer protection, and safety regulation.
My first response to this is, why would anyone think that government mandates for charity, consumer protection, and safety regulation will actually produce more charity, protect consumers, or increase safety?
Perhaps the primary outcome of the mandated charity of the welfare state, for instance, is to produce generational poverty and high incarceration rates for blacks who grow up without fathers in the home. Well, that is at least true for those who grow up. Many never get to that point, being murdered as babies or teens.
When it comes to consumer protection and, say, drugs, what the Food and Drug Administration does best is make medicine so expensive most people can’t afford it–without welfare or price controls, that is. When they can even get the medicine. Many people with potentially terminal diseases have died waiting to get access to drugs that might help them. But to “protect” them, the FDA has refused them access because pharmaceutical companies (of which I am no big fan) might profit even if the drugs don’t work.
Next, safety regulations for automobiles are sad examples of how government-mandated safety can go bad. For example, over 300 people have been killed by government safety-mandated airbags going off inadvertently or in low impact collisions. Well, you might say, a few hundred lives are worth the cost of the thousands of lives that have been saved; though you might get some push back on that from the families of the deceased. And not only did the government mandate airbags, it mandated everything about how they worked–including the specifications that led to the death of these people.
All of these laws were adopted because a few people in government thought they knew better than the rest of us how to promote our welfare, protect us from greedy businesses, or make us safe. Which points to a problem with popular Christian understanding of government. Christians, particularly reformed Christians, understand the completeness of man’s depravity through original sin and the impossibility of being rescued from that other than by the grace of God. Yet the approach to government of too many Christians is infused with the liberal belief that government can cleanse us from unrighteousness and perfect us. The Christians may not agree with that liberal belief, yet they support civil mandates for charity, consumer protection, safety regulation, etc. based on it and the liberals subsequent misunderstanding of Scripture’s teaching on government, private property, and markets.
Building on this, I suggest that support for civil mandates for charity, consumer protection, and safety regulation is essentially support for every government law and regulation on the books today. It would be hard to find any law, regulation, or government program that isn’t justified by one or more of these. Obamacare and Medicaid, for instance, are charitable mandates. A position that results in support for unlimited government is not a biblical one.
Backing this up is is the Westminster Confession of Faith. Chapter XIX describes the law given in the Old Testament as the moral, ceremonial, and judicial (civil) law. While Christians are obligated to obey the moral law today, the Confession explains that the ceremonial and civil laws of Israel no longer apply. Relevant to this discussion, it notes the civil laws of Israel “expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” So while we as individuals are still obligated to be charitable, not cheat our neighbors, and keep our property safe, Israel’s “laws regarding gleaning and usury and parapets,” cannot be used as support for “civil mandates for charity, consumer protection, and safety regulation” today.
A further example of the harms caused by the unbiblical rationale for today’s compassionate, protective government is the government’s facilitation of a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. One estimate puts the annual cost of the various direct subsidies and tax credits to businesses at approximately $300 billion, which costs the average family about $2,600 per year. This number doesn’t include the cost of regulatory favoritism, like Texas’ title insurance laws. Though these are classic “consumer protection” laws, what they actually do–and in truth what they are designed to do–is increase the price of title insurance for homeowners by up to $186 million per year; all of which goes into the pockets of the owners, executives, and employees of title insurance companies.
This is the same problem Micah describes in ancient Israel of the rich plundering the common people:
Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. (Micah 2:1–2 ESV)
At this point, some might ask if we should have government at all, given the great harm it causes. The answer, of course, is yes. God ordained government for our benefit. Those who would eliminate government in favor of an anarcho-capitalist state are just as mistaken as supporters of big government. The problem, then, is not government, but the failure of government to operate in the sphere in which God assigned it.
Christians mistakenly support unbiblical, i.e., expansive, government because they fail to recognize or understand one of the key God-ordained human institutions–the market. They acknowledge the family, the church, and the government, but not the market. And without recognizing how this institution is designed by God to govern voluntary exchange between individuals, they seek to wrongly impose civil government regulation in its stead. Right along with all the unbelievers.
I’ll leave it for another time to fully discuss the biblical support for the market as a God-ordained institution on par with the family, church, and government. For I’ll simply note that God mandated that we “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” and made us stewards of His property to be able to carry out His mandate. And that He intended specialization through voluntary exchange to be the primary way in which this all works:
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” Romans 12:4-5
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.” – Ecclesiastes 4:9
We Christians too often fall under the influence of worldly wisdom. It requires constant study and meditation on God’s Word to overcome this fleshly tendency. Christians can avoid the trap of progressive liberalism and instead move toward a godly understanding of the proper roles of government and markets only by looking specifically for what He has to say on these issues.
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