BondiHarry
Newbie
I agree. I don't consider taxation to be theft though. Did Jesus call taxation theft?
Neither does God for the responsibilities He gave to government. However taxation for the purpose of taking the bread of one man's labor to give to another man is stealing and breaks the 2nd great commandment that we love our neighbor as ourselves.
So a rich person should be content with what he has not and not lobby for more tax breaks ? Or does this only apply to the poor?
It seems few people take the commandments of God seriously today be they rich or poor. Under Godly government all people are free to pursue their financail interests enjoying the bread of their labor and learning from their mistakes if they handle their money foolishly. Government allows the free commercial competition between men, not favoring one man over another (just as God is not a respecter of men). God has not tasked government with exercising charity as that is the responsibility of the individual and the church. Indeed, God warns us that wealth gotten by vanity (dishonesty) shall diminish (Proverbs 13:11)... as we see does occur in statist countries.
On a personal level it is wise to practice detachment but it's also compassionate to work for improving economic conditions for the poor as well.
If men stopped adding to the responsibilities of government beyond what God has authorized the poor would be much better off. Government instrusion into the market has led to one harmful effect after another. Government arbitrarily decides there should be a minimum wage but the result is some jobs are lost and others never created because people with no work experience or few job skills are priced out of the market. Government decides to offer welfare to single mothers and the result for many of those mothers is they continue to have babies out of wedlock and the problems of single motherhood are exacerbated. Government decides that Social Security is a good idea and for a few decades it works okay as there are about 15 workers paying in for every one drawing out and there is money left over which the government then spends on other things putting IOUs in the form of Treasury Bonds into the SS trust fund to cover the money being taken out. Approximately 80 years later there are only three workers paying in for every one taking out, a huge generation of workers is getting ready to retire which will result in far more money being paid out then is coming in and the government, already running huge deficits and sports trillions of dollars in national debt has to make those IOUs good. The medicare program is in even more dire straights and so it goes. The governments that men have created vastly exceeding in responsibility what God authorized are a prime example of 'there is a way that seems wise to men but the end thereof is death'.
I really don't see Jesus as having taught anything about the proper size of government. You might be able to make conjectures based on what He did teach but it's certainly not there in black and white.
A few years ago God put it in my heart to do a study on Godly government and I was shocked myself at how little God authorizes government to do. Having been born and raised in the United States and the government doing so much I just assumed that is the way things were meant to be. My study revealed something far different. God deliberately gave government few responsibilities and I think we are seeing just why He didn't task government with establishing a social safety net (our own government has done a great deal to destroy the social safety net God had established) or interfering in the market place etc.
And since this seems to always come up in discussions about what government should do I make this note: God appoints governments and although those He appoints may not obey His instructions to them we as servants of the Lord are still to submit to them (as a wife submits to her husband as she would to Jesus so the citizen will submit to the governing authority as to God) and pay whatever taxes they levy, obey the laws they pass etc. unless what they direct us to do would cause us to disobey God (for example a Christian doctor would refuse to perform an abortion as that would be murder).
Upvote
0