How Should Christians Think About Socialism?
00:00:00.000 | No doubt because Bernie Sanders is making a serious run for the presidency in the United
00:00:10.120 | States, this question is on the minds of some podcast listeners.
00:00:13.600 | One, a listener named Christian writes in to ask this, "Hello Pastor John, how should
00:00:18.520 | Christians view socialism?"
00:00:20.320 | What'd you say, Pastor John?
00:00:23.600 | Well, I suppose I should put all of my misgivings up front to say I'm no expert in political
00:00:31.580 | science or economics, so take it for what it's worth.
00:00:35.400 | Here we go.
00:00:37.440 | I think the first thing I should say is that the church, the church in the church, no one
00:00:46.380 | should go hungry.
00:00:47.860 | No one should be without a place to stay.
00:00:50.480 | No one should fail to get the health care they need.
00:00:53.360 | No one should go without a job if it's possible for believers to help them find one and so
00:00:58.600 | on.
00:00:59.920 | And all of this should happen through the free and uncoerced help of other believers.
00:01:08.480 | When Luke writes in Acts 2, 44, "All who believed were together and had all things
00:01:14.880 | in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds
00:01:21.460 | to all as any had need."
00:01:24.340 | What he means is that every need was being met by other believers, even if they had to
00:01:31.600 | sell things that they owned in order to help meet them, and this was done freely.
00:01:39.420 | It didn't remove, but rather presumed the ownership of private property.
00:01:44.680 | Indeed, all of the Bible, Old and New Testament, assumes both the legitimacy and, I think,
00:01:52.020 | necessity of personal ownership.
00:01:56.140 | Thou shalt not steal makes no sense where no one has a right to keep what is his.
00:02:04.220 | The reason I stress that all of this is uncoerced, free, not forced, is because of the heavy
00:02:15.660 | emphasis that Paul puts on giving to the poor in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 freely, cheerfully,
00:02:27.200 | not under compulsion.
00:02:28.200 | I remember I had a big debate when I was in Germany with a professor and other student
00:02:34.440 | because of the way they fund the church, the state church there, through taxes.
00:02:38.360 | I said, "That just doesn't fit without compulsion, cheerfully and freely."
00:02:43.640 | In other words, there is built into the Christian faith an inner impulse by the Holy Spirit
00:02:49.360 | through the gospel to make sacrifices so that others have their needs met, and there is
00:02:56.920 | no such impulse built into human nature or the human heart apart from God's grace.
00:03:05.160 | And it is so vital that this kind of love and mercy and sacrifice be free and uncoerced
00:03:13.160 | that this is laid down as a principle by Paul in 2 Corinthians 9, by Peter in 1 Peter 5,
00:03:19.640 | as he's instructing the elders there.
00:03:21.520 | Now, socialism, as I understand it, I don't know much about it, but socialism, as I understand
00:03:29.600 | it, refers to a social and economic system that through legal or governmental or military
00:03:38.040 | coercion, in other words, you go to jail if you don't do this, establishes social ownership
00:03:45.360 | at the expense of private or personal ownership, or and/or, you could say, where coercion is
00:03:53.640 | used to establish social control, if not ownership, at least control of the means of production
00:04:00.360 | in society, and thus through control effectively eliminate many of the implications and motivations
00:04:10.000 | of private ownership.
00:04:11.440 | In other words, socialism borrows the compassionate aims of Christianity in meeting people's
00:04:19.640 | needs while rejecting the Christian expectation that these things will not be coerced or forced.
00:04:30.480 | Socialism therefore gets its attractiveness at certain points in history where people
00:04:37.260 | are drawn to the entitlements that socialism brings and where people are ignorant or forgetful
00:04:46.400 | of the coercion and the force required to implement it and whether or not that coercion
00:04:53.200 | might in fact backfire and result in greater poverty or drab uniformity or worse, the abuse
00:05:02.920 | of the coercion as we saw in the murderous states like the USSR and in Cambodia.
00:05:09.720 | It may be that Bernie Sanders is naming things in our society that need addressing.
00:05:16.680 | I don't doubt that's the case.
00:05:18.840 | There are no doubt real injustices that make it harder for the poor to move out of poverty
00:05:25.200 | and make it easier for the rich to do wrong and get away with it.
00:05:29.220 | But I doubt that holding up Denmark's economic model, which he does, as the way forward is
00:05:36.580 | the path of wisdom.
00:05:38.280 | Forbes, for example, reports that out of a total population of 5.6 million, a little
00:05:45.320 | more than 2 million in Denmark, a little more than 2 million are state pensioners, unemployed,
00:05:52.560 | sick, or on social transfer payments for other reasons, and another 800,000 are employed
00:05:58.800 | by the public sector.
00:06:00.800 | That's half the population employed by the state or sustained by money channeled through
00:06:07.280 | the state.
00:06:08.760 | Or to put it another way, out of 5.6 million people in Denmark, there are only about 1.8
00:06:14.640 | million that are not directly dependent on the state for payments of some sort.
00:06:20.440 | And even among this group, there is high focus on cheap, subsidized childcare, free healthcare,
00:06:28.760 | child bonus payments, subsidized housing, and a large number of other ways to secure
00:06:35.480 | additional income from the state.
00:06:39.920 | Just an example, students get five years of free tuition at state universities, and I
00:06:48.840 | read of a married student who gets a $900 stipend from the state and free childcare.
00:06:55.800 | So basically, living totally off the state for those university years.
00:07:02.000 | Now political liberals, they analyze this all over Europe right now and everybody says
00:07:08.140 | these systems are under pressure.
00:07:11.840 | That's the word that's used by liberals.
00:07:13.840 | They're under pressure, like most of the entitlement states of Europe.
00:07:19.080 | Conservatives say it's a ticking time bomb.
00:07:22.000 | In other words, almost everybody says it can't go on.
00:07:27.040 | The crisis in Greece is the forerunner, and no matter how angry people may get when their
00:07:32.980 | entitlements are threatened or taken away, you can't create tax income out of nowhere.
00:07:40.440 | And the support base is not going to be there indefinitely, not to mention other disincentives
00:07:47.820 | that plague socialist economies over the long haul.
00:07:52.060 | So for Bernie Sanders or anyone else, to commend a socialism like that of Denmark as the system
00:07:59.440 | that is going to do things well for us is short-sighted to say the least.
00:08:07.400 | So in general, I would say that the impulses of biblical Christianity include, one, compassion
00:08:14.780 | for the disadvantaged; two, justice under law without respect to status; three, freedom
00:08:23.840 | to create and produce; and four, private property.
00:08:29.920 | And my own sense is that history and reason and further biblical reflection lead to the
00:08:38.200 | conclusion that freedom and property rights lead to greater long-term well-being, or like
00:08:46.640 | we say today, flourishing for the greatest number.
00:08:52.400 | And it should not go unsaid, lastly, that every economic and political system will eventually
00:09:00.800 | collapse where there are insufficient moral impulses to restrain human selfishness and
00:09:11.040 | encourage honesty and good deeds even when no one is watching.
00:09:16.120 | That's very interesting.
00:09:17.120 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:18.120 | I appreciate your thoughts on economics and socialism.
00:09:21.080 | We don't get a lot of questions on socialism, I'll admit, but we do get a ton of questions
00:09:25.400 | on spiritual depression.
00:09:27.960 | We are the joy people after all, Christian hedonists at Desiring God.
00:09:31.680 | So what do we do when spiritual depression descends into our lives?
00:09:35.200 | What do we do?
00:09:36.200 | How do we respond?
00:09:37.200 | John Piper will explain next time.
00:09:39.120 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:09:40.200 | For more on this podcast, visit us online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:43.600 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:09:47.320 | Bye.
00:09:47.820 | [music]
00:09:50.820 | [end]
00:09:53.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]