Fractured Saints - never beyond mending - a christian blog for the broken ones

It may be that I live in Texas and people here wear their politics and their religion more loudly and frequently on their bumpers than in their lives, but I am continually being bounced between bemusement and outrage during the current economic discussions that many Christians continue to champion capitalism as a more moral or “Christian” economic system than socialism.  In fact, I often hear loudmouth preachers refer to socialism as “evil.”  For the life of me I can’t understand how a Christian arrives at this conclusion.

Capitalism may be seen as an opponent of the Christian in that it frequently sets itself against life. Too often those who are in a primary position or ownership position within a capitalist society do not share the same risks that those under them do. Those owners expose their workers to danger and risk for the sake of profit. It cannot be escaped that when profit is the highest aim, as it must be in a capitalist society, human life takes a secondary position; not just loss of mortal life, but loss of character and quality of life. And yet this is the system lauded by so many Christians as the one that Jesus would choose.

It is remarkable that Jesus never advocates anything of the sort.  Nor does he advocate or oppose socialism, which is why I have difficulty accepting one system or the other as either “Christian” or “evil.”  This simplistic and insincere approach to economics does great shame to the name of Christ, as if he would take a position on such a contrivance.

Usually when this is pointed out, capitalism’s proponents sputter something about Jesus advocating for freedom and capitalsim providing such freedom or that it isn’t Christian to take someone’s money away from them to give it to someone else.  But I seem to remember Jesus thinking very differently about the relative value of money.  ”Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.”  And freedom cannot be an end in and of itself for the Christian; it matters greatly what we do with that freedom.  But that would be beside the point since socialism is in no way a restriction on freedom or democracy, especially not freedom for the Christian who is already supposed to be free of attachment to the things of this world.

Before it is asserted, nowhere here am I advocating for a socialist revolution.  Instead, what I advocate, is that Christians rise above the nonsense of touting one economic system over another as being more “Christian.”  Such systems are neither Christian nor un-Christian.  They simply are.  And our call to love of neighbor, generosity, self-sacrifice, and mercy is the same whether the resources and means of production are owned by a government or by private individuals.  Let’s save the word “evil” for its actual applications as regards sin.