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Edited on Sat Aug-14-10 04:19 PM by Igel
It's quoted as saying that it's bad to withhold money/assets from the common good.
But the conclusion is the opposite: It's wrong to pledge money and then withhold it. It's perfectly okay to not pledge it. The collective had no demand on their private assets, and yet they could have remained part of the collective.
The Bible is clear on preserving the rights of the poor. There are a number of them. You cannot take a poor man's garment as collateral for a loan, for example. I think that saying this is a bedrock foundation of liberalism is setting the bar awfully low--few would say that a poor man wouldn't be allowed to keep a blanket when evicted from his house. In fact, few people, conservatives or liberals, would take a man's coat as collateral in the first place. Perhaps pawnbrokers, but I don't think of them as either particularly conservative or liberal. Just scuzzy. Otherwise, the assumption seems to be that conservatives take away the rights--as defined in the Bible--of the poor.
Another "right" is fair judgment. You shouldn't look at a person's wealth or poverty when deciding a court case. It's immaterial: A righteous verdict is righteous, it's one that looks at the facts, the law, and renders a verdict irrespective of who's in front of the judge. Anything else is deemed unrighteous, wresting judgment. This is justice, the following of the laws. I can't properly want the judge to decide my case independent of the facts or the law if I'm better off than the person I'm suing and therefore can't want anything less if I'm poorer than the person suing me. In fact, it specifically says *not* to consider a man's poverty.
There is no "social justice" in the OT and none in the NT; these are foreign concepts. There is merely personal justice between people. The poor may be poor, but laws protect them--and only those laws protect them. The law may say that they need to sell themselves into slavery to pay their bills. The law says that slavery is of short duration. The law says that land belongs to tribes and families and cannot be sold in perpetuity. It's a rather different sort of justice. But it defines justice. We don't get to, even if we try really, really hard.
However, there's more to it. I may have a right to sue my neighbor for every last penny and take it, if my neighbor's wronged me. Even if I'm rich and he's poor, if he stole $100 I have a right to have him repay the $100 and pay me a fine of an additional $100. Righteousness would demand this. (It works the same if he's a spoiled rich kid--the fine's the same.) However, it's unmerciful and harsh for me to demand this if it would constitute a hardship. How merciful I'm to be isn't well defined. But I have no right to expect more mercy than I've shown. I'm to love my neighbor as myself. It may be that my neighbor is poor. It may be that he has $23 billion in the bank. He might be the guy mowing my yard or the owner of the bank I keep my money in. He might be an arch-liberal, he might be Rush Limbaugh. "Love thy neighbor as thyself." Welcome to a tough row to hoe.
One problem--and this is a structural and systemic one--is that the 'state' in OT law is different from the modern state. There's essentially religious law--some of which explicitly allows mercy, some of which doesn't but permitted it. In many cases the religious law had a two-tiered system of offerings or sacrifices, one for the poor and one for everybody else. But criminal law usually was interpersonal: the judge would issue a verdict, but in most cases fines (etc.) were paid between the victimizer and the victim. The judge had no business engaging in mercy in these cases: He was just the judge. The wronged could engage in showing mercy. Now, if I'm wronged as the result of some crime I'm left wronged and the state inflicts any fine or penalty. Just as the state was different (notice that this is utterly different from Babylon or Assyria, as well) under OT law, the community structure was assumed to be different. There was no real jail: The perp's community would ensure that the verdict was carried out. Enforcement would be by the perp's peers, as required by the victim.
Many conservatives I know would fail to worry about mercy as much as I think appropriate. Many progressives I know would exult in having judgment wrested so that mercy was always shown to the "proper" person, no less a problem. The first only look at following the rules. The other believes that the rules are to be disposed of when it gets in the way of what they think should be, that their compassion overwhelms anybody else's right to justice. From Genesis to the Pauline epistles, the balance is the same: Be clear about what's right and what's wrong, but temper justice with mercy. Both liberals and conservatives are just as vindictive when they feel wronged, and both squirm when discussing justice and mercy.
At least a number of liberal Protestant groups don't echo Luther's "sola scriptura," instead looking to tradition and "inspiration" as well to interpret Scripture. As the KJV translators were told to hew to the Bishop's Bible except when the text wouldn't allow it, so many denominations hew to tradition except when they can't find a way to interpret scripture to allow it. Even then . . .
As for the use of the word "liberal" in the KJV, it just means "generous." If you look at personal giving to non-profits that serve the poor (as opposed to museums or colleges) liberals aren't all that liberal. Conservatives give more to churches, but after factoring out churches and large institutions, they're more liberal than liberals in absolute dollar amounts, even if their family income is less. The blogger is apparently in need of a decent English language dictionary, hoist on his own petard like that. I only have one English-English dictionary and use it in my work. Perhaps somebody else could donate one to him, or perhaps just email him the link to dictionary.com. At least he didn't claim intelligence.
On edit: Hope your sabbath is going well.
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