What’s wrong with the state engaging in charitable causes?

The fundamental issue is the conflation of different uses of the state and the law. One type of use is moral, the other is not. It is moral for the law to be used to protect private property and persons; it is fundamentally immoral for the law to be used to take private property from persons, even for philanthropic ends.

In Bastiat’s words:

“Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every person the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.”
“This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.”

Part of Bastiat’s logic, and I would say the faithful Christian position on the matter, is that the use of the law always implies force. Whatever law you make, because the state with its power is the actor, you plan to enforce. To say it differently, everything the state does ultimately is at the point of a gun.  If I reject a law, or refuse a tax, ultimately after fines and further refusal’s on my part, I will be arrested and held imprisoned. If I reject that imprisonment and try to leave I will be restrained by force and violence, and if I continue fight for my freedom I will face point of a gun.

Every well intentioned law you make, or tax you levy, assuming you expect the state to enforce it, you choose to enact at the point of a gun. You may not intend that, and socialism tries to pretend it away, but it is the fundamental fact of what the state is.

The Christian moral question, then, is: ‘when is it ok to put a gun in someone’s face?’

The scriptural answer for this question, in terms of the state, is found in Romans chapter 13, where we’re told that the state has been set by God and equipped with the use of force for the punishment of wrong-doers.  Because this is the state’s God given purpose, its use of force for the protection of others, of private property, and to enforce contractual arrangements is moral.

While the use of force is right for the punishment of wrong-doers, it is illegitimate and immoral for the sake of charity.  Why?  Because Christianity rejects the idea that the end justifies the means.  Christian’s must reject the naive interpretation of the state as some kind of financial dispensary.  The state has no financial resources of its own, apart perhaps from the sale of public lands or government assets which are hardly sufficient or sustainable as the financial basis for significant charitable works.  What that means is that when someone advocates that the state should undertake some philanthropic project, they are not asking a wealthy king to open his coffers.  They are suggesting, rather, that the state use its force to confiscate the wealth required to carry out its charitable aims.  That is exactly the same as going to a neighbour, putting a gun in their face, and taking their property under the threat of force.  Even if they let you take it, there’s no morality left in their act. They’ve been robbed. That’s all.

Some Christians point to passages like Psalm 72 to argue that the state should also offer charity to the poor.  But that is not the description of the King suggested in the Psalm.  In Psalm 72, the King should not allow the poor to be exploited because of their need, and he should ensure the OT laws applicable to them were enforced.  That matches Romans 13 and Jesus preference for the poor wonderfully.  The Psalm goes on to suggest that the King ought to give of His own immense wealth for the sake of the poor, reflecting the OT practice of the poor tithe. In OT times, the poor had the benefit of that tithe, and as well they had the freedom to glean after the harvest – and we’re right to understand that the King was also a landowner.  The scripture applied today, in effect then, is calling a Stephen Harper to use His personal finances to help care for the poor and to ensure that his state power is leveled for their protection. There is nothing in that passage that gives the King the right to grab other people’s property and redistribute it. (For scriptural support, consider Jezebel when she takes Naboth’s vineyard – Fr. Juan de Mariana makes this case in his chapter on “Does the King Own His Subject’s Goods?” from his A Treatise On The Alteration Of Money.  He’s an excellent read that helps with Christian thinking on economics and governance.)

There is no way for a serious Christian to make easy use of the state as a means to charity, because no matter how well intentioned or good the end might be, the means of state-force are a vile imitation of real righteousness and charity.

I write all this because I’m quite concerned about the current trend I see among some evangelicals and the missional church of which I’d consider myself a part.

Christian charity is self-sacrificial. We’re called personally to sell our possessions and give to the poor, trusting in the Kingdom. In the OT, the poor tithe is between the individual and God Himself, and not the state.

Instead, however, current hipster forms of Christianity seem to be producing uninformed and gullible Christians who use Jon Stewart as both news and education source. The personal call to charity in the scriptures is diminished in favour of offloading personal responsibility to the state, and justifying the state’s confiscation of the wealth of others.  And then, these Christians actually think they care about the poor because they advocated that someone else’s wealth be stolen and given away. It is a sham. It’s the classic elitist liberal guilt that chooses public advocacy instead of personal action; it cherishes a charitable image, but maintains a cold personal distance from the poor.

I can’t help but wonder if Christian’s who believe they’ve pursued charity, but carried it out by theft from others at the point of the state’s gun, are in for a sorry show when the judgment comes.  Naivete is the only defense; there is nothing Christian about it.  It is a repugnant pseudo-philanthropy based on evil.  One cannot mix food and poison: there can be no compromise with the socialistic use of the state; to hold a gun to the wealthy for the cause of the poor is a form of slavery with the produce of one man’s labour taken by force for another.

So what role can the state play in the face of poverty or distress?  Subsidiarity teaches that the Higher Orders only step in temporarily when the Middle Orders of society face a challenge to their pursuit of the good which they cannot overcome on their own.  Certainly a Christian case can be made for disasters, and even, perhaps, critical health care.  But how much better for the state to ask the middle orders of society how it can pave the way for their work!  What if the state, recognizing social needs, facilitated the generosity and growth of businesses, charitable organizations, and faith based organizations?  What if, seeing international needs for help, the state facilitated citizens efforts to care for others and backed them up?   Indeed, the greatest answer we have for poverty is employment.  The only source of wealth we have is our productive citizenry; the state is just an expensive means of gathering some of that wealth by force.  Jesus called for us to be the foundation of a better way.

The call of Christ – to every person – is to give to the poor and needy ourselves.  We must not use Jesus’ name to justify theft, not even for a ‘good’ cause.