If we don't enforce the social welfare state (the impulse to take care of the poor, sick, orphan and old is Christian) through taxation, people will not voluntarily give enough to prevent starvation and utter penury at the bottom. We know this from all of the thousands of years of history everywhere in the world BEFORE the social welfare state.
So, while it would be grand if everybody gave enough of their own free will, they do not, they never have, and they never will.
Our choices, really, are to leave everybody free to do as he pleases - and accept the desperation, lack of medical care, starvation - and periodic violent revolutions - from the bottom, or to use the power of government to take about a third of income from everybody so that nobody starves or dies in the streets or for want of medicine, we don't have revolutions, and all we have to do is listen to people in general whine about their taxes, and Christians in particular whine about their freewill being violated through mandatory charity.
It is true: everybody's free will IS being violated, to an extent, in order to feed everybody. Christianity had 1600 years as the official, established religion everywhere, and nowhere did Christians ever voluntarily give enough to stop the hunger and stop the penury.
The mandatory, involuntary, enforced-by-the-gun social welfare state has done a much, much better job educating everybody, feeding everybody (including foreigners in crisis), establishing universal health clinics (they're not great, but they get the job done), social security to provide income to all of the old, disability insurance.
The social welfare state is imperfect, but it is two orders of magnitude superior to anything the Christians ever cobbled together on their own. Voluntary Christianity failed its mission, and so the government had to take over and add compulsion to accomplish that which Christians SHOULD HAVE, but NEVER DID, on their own. Christianity in ideal is wonderful. In practice if falls far, far short of what it should do. And when it comes to charity, that means high death rates, sickness and utter destitution for lots of people. It also means those secret graveyards and mass rapes in the old orphanages and poorhouses, where unsupervised Christians abused their charges.
Christianity failed in this duty, so the democratic state stepped up, largely took it over, and compels its people, including Christians, to provide what is NEEDED to meet the minimum requirements of the poor, not merely what people gave out of the goodness of their hearts.
People always did give out of their good hearts, but it was never enough.
To many Christians that is good enough. They don't want the mandatory charity of the state. They want to be left with more of their money, so THEY can choose what and whom to give to.
No.
No, that does not work.
All history in all Christian countries shows that Christians never give enough to address the problem.
Addressing the problem is more important than Christian liberty. Christian liberty makes you feel good about giving, while people literally stay illiterate and starve. Not good enough, not sufficient.
Social welfare has been the solution. We tried relying on Christian welfare and generosity for a millennium and a half. It was never enough. Also, not everybody is a Christian. There is no reason to let the atheist escape also having to pay a third of his income to keep his fellow countrymen alive.
People don't like it? So what? Obey, pay, or rot in prison. It isn't voluntary because people never will voluntarily give enough. So they have to be coerced by force - or we can let the poor die in larger numbers and have periodic bloody revolutions as of old.
I do understand that people don't want to pay taxes that high, that they feel that it is violative of their consciences, that it's not "Christian charity". I hear it and I feel for them. My taxes are also too high and I don't like it either.
Nevertheless I, and everybody else, have to be coerced to give more than we want to as taxes, so that everybody can live, and read, and the sick be cared for, and the old poor not all thrown back on the resources of their children (if they have any). That's the way it is, it isn't going to change because it CAN'T change unless we're willing to tolerate massive suffering, and in the end responsible Christian people know that. So we voted, as a people, to have a social welfare state. This was Christian, it was the right thing to do. Those who think otherwise can whine and moan and point to passages in their book, but they will be ignored, by everybody, including the rest of us Christians, because they're wrong.
For all the protests, we know, in our hearts, that their motivation is always narrow-minded greedy self-interest, so we discard all of the "Christian" arguments against social welfare as exactly what they are: dishonest, untrue, and pointless. They're never going to get anywhere and make themselves out to be immoral by making the arguments. The best answer is to man up, shut up, pay the taxes, and be grateful you live in a Christian country where enough people understand that we all have to be coerced to pay more than we would ever give voluntarily, so that we all have that safety net if life throws us off the horse.
That's just the truth. It's unfortunate that it has to be said, but apparently it does.
It's like young people whining about Social Security. No, you will not be able to save up more yourself to cover you in all the ways that Social Security does. The young all think they are much smarter than they are. They all think they can do better. They're all wrong. Perhaps we remember making those arguments ourselves. As we get older and realize how aleatory life really is, how we're not in charge, and how difficult it is to keep things together for the long haul, those of us with any wisdom come to thank our lucky stars that society ignores the opinions of greedy young people in their ignorance. If we did end Social Security, 90% of the old would end up dependent on welfare. If we did away with welfare also, they would end up dependent on their children. And millions of them would starve.
No, we're not going back to that. Yes, we will have redistributive social welfare and the taxation that goes with it. Yes, it is Christian. No, the Churches cannot, and will not cover the gap: they never did before, and the society is much less Christian than it used to be. Yes, we've all heard the whingeing and moralizing. No, we don't listen to a word of it. Yes, when YOU whinge and moralize about social welfare and taxes, you sound unchristian, uncharitable and foolish, because you are. Suck it up, be quiet, and pull at the oars with everybody else. Social welfare is part of the burden of Adam. And yes, it's Christian.
