Thursday, July 18, 2013

“The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”


I was reading the Bible recently and came across 2 Thessalonians 3 where it states a few warnings against idleness, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Since we are a "Christian nation" largely by culture, I now understand why the Republicans favor economic policies that cut social services. They take cue from this passage where they interpret those who need federal assistance as those trying to sponge off of the system without working for it. And all this time I had wrongly conceived Christianity in my head. I thought it would support social welfare programs, but it doesn't. It all makes sense now why conservatives think no one should be allowed to take any money from the government. A Christian conservative does technically have the biblical justification for saying that those on welfare or those on any kind of government assistance should be thrown off the rolls.


8 comments:

  1. I've never heard any Christian assert that "those on any kind of govt assistance should be thrown off the rolls."

    Charity is a core Christian value. Helping those who cannot help themselves.

    However there are indeed may "idlers" on the rolls in America. Are Christians the only ones who think they should compelled to contribute to society in exchange for the benefits they recieve?

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    1. Have you heard the republican mantra lately? Look at the recently passed farm bill: billions of subsidies for rich corporations, but reducing food stamps. It's ass-backwards to be colloquial. I'm all for charity, but government is providing the same resources to those in need. We've had welfare reform and those who receive as far as I know are expected to contribute for it.

      What I'm against is the libertarian/Ayn Rand objectivism ideology that says there should be no government assistance at all. "Let 'em all starve!" is what they say. The message in this bible passage is invoked to justify that.

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  2. I am in agreement with you. I think the people who are pushing the zero government "solution" are being very Un-Christian. I believe the verse you cite is referring specifically to a community of believers, and how to discipline members if that community. I think it is a mistake to think that it is referring to society at large.

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    Replies
    1. Yes that verse is specific to a small Christian commune I think, but it's general principle can be invoked in other contexts.

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    2. Agreed. I believe it is a principal that is valued widely across cultures, but not all.

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  3. This ethic seems to be one of the instances where Paul's message does not line up woith Jesus as depicted in the Gospels (assuming we take the gospels to be somewhat historical records).

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    Replies
    1. And no one who wrote anything in the New Testament ever knew or met Jesus, and that's if he even existed.

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    2. And the only person we really know anything about, who wrote in the NT (Paul) says that he did not learn from men, but rather from revelation and reading scripture.

      So we really have no good reason to accept Paul's claims, and even less reason to accept the claims of any other text in the NT.

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