I started this series because of a post on Instapundit about why you need to be a conservative in order to be a real Christian. With this post, I think I can end it.
Some points about why God is not a libertarian:
- Libertarians tend to believe that what you do in the privacy of your own home is no one else's business. God not only disagrees with this, but active conducts surveillance of said "private conduct between consenting adults" and makes legal judgments about that behavior.
- Libertarians tend to not believe that those with money have any obligation to those that are poor and struggling to make it. God commands believers to feed and clothe the poor. This is problematic to libertarians because if one is not a believer, one is going to Hell.
- Libertarians often oppose the death penalty. God imposed the death penalty for something like sixteen different offenses that ranged from saying bad things about God, to homicide.
- Libertarians believe that every individual is sovereign. God says that only He is sovereign, and any sovereignty you have is directly delegated from Him, for His purposes, not to just make you a "sovereign citizen" or something to that effect.
- Libertarians tend to be vehemently opposed to the use of weapons of mass destruction. God has been known to rain down heaping quantities of "indiscriminate mass destruction" on populations that have royally pissed Him off. Where conservatives might nuke Iran for a few small insurgencies around the Middle East and getting nukes, God "nuked" a few cities for engaging in sexual debauchery.
- Libertarians believe that government exists to keep us safe from criminals and foreign invaders and protect our rights. They also say that it cannot stop doing this. God has been known to not only withdraw his protection, but use foreign invaders as a big stick to whack His people with really, really hard.
- Libertarians believe that animals have no rights. God gave animals a right to rest on the sabbath, and said that a righteous man will have regard for the life of his animals. We all know what happens to men who aren't righteous in God's opinion... (hint: a decidedly non-libertarian outcome)
Those were just the ones that came to mind this morning.
Mike, I have written most of a reply to this. I have some things to finish up though so look for it tonight on my blog.
Someone had said that www.BarrRoot.com was a smear site. I went there to check it out, and while it might not make Barr look all that great- There is nothing there that is not true. It seems more like a fact site then a hit site. So whoever posted that it was a smear site. Must not be that familuar with Bob Barr or Wayne Root. I will leave the link if you want to figure it out for your self. Its barr root08
www.barrroot2008.com
I think where you and I disagree is that God is libertarian only insofar as God generally allows us to live our lives here as we see fit. What I am getting at in this post is that God's actual policies, when you look at the big picture of both this life and the next life, are not libertarian at all. When we stand before God, we will not know anywhere near the freedom that is allowed in this life to make or break our own lives because we will be judged by God and either sent to Hell or will be spared judgment and God will rule as our king.
None of this is an argument as to why Christianity is fundamentally incapatible with libertarianism on this side of eternity. It's just a clear statement that in the scheme of things, God really isn't anywhere near as libertarian as you and Vox may think.
MikeT,
That is one of the best posts I have read on a blog. I had a friend that wrote something similar, but mainly the difference between conservatism vs libertarianism. He kind of got into the religios aspect, but not like your post. If your interested I copied his post to my blog
http://craigscogitations.blogspot.com/2007/08/conservatism-vs-libertarianism.html
Mike,
Great post. God is a totalitarian, and a greedy one at that. Don't do what He wants, and you get the death penalty.
But God is a libertarian insofar as He doesn't compel anyone to follow Him. God isn't about compelling people to do anything. He allows free will for people to screw stuff up. That's very libertarian in my book.
Similarly, I'm a libertarian because that's the political philosophy that my faith compels me to have. Faith informs my libertarian nature toward the public sphere and where the public sphere and private sphere meet.
For example, Believers have a duty to the poor and oppressed, as a spiritual matter. But I believe that God has said that our duty is a private one--done in secret, so that none may boast--not a public one, thus I think that all forms of welfare and foreign aid are proscribed by God's law.
God isn't a libertarian because He's God, not a human being. He's in a class by Himself. I am a Christian libertarian, so I'll express my thoughts from that vantage point.
Christian libertarians believe that what you do in the privacy of your own home is no one else's business but yours and God's.
The important distinction with charity is that it's something God commands BELIEVERS to do. His purpose is not simply to fill the bellies of the poor but for believers to act in a manner which is a picture of Christ. Charity is joyfully done from the heart with love and personal sacrifice, not stolen from someone else and reaps a positive benefit spiritually for both giver and receiver. Government theft and wealth redistribution on the other hand creates feelings of animosity between the two and usurps the demonstration of Godly love and self sacrifice.
There were many capital offenses in the Old Testament. Even a child, disrespectful to his parents could be killed. It is important to remember that these laws, "Mosaic Laws," were given specifically to Israel. God's law for Christians is the law of love, having to do with our attitudes rather than the specific actions which come from them. As Christians we are to demonstrate Christ's love with Christlike actions. I personally oppose the death penalty because we are fallible. Our judgment is imperfect. From that perspective, I'd rather see the guilty live than to chance that one innocent man be murdered by the state.
Libertarians believe in individual sovereignty. It's a bad choice of a descriptive word considering what libertarians mean by it. It is an equality of justice in regard to authority and rights. No individual has the right to initiate force or fraud against another and vice versa, regardless of whether or not that individual is acting alone or is a member of a group such as the government. This deals specifically with human interaction only. Only humans can have rights. Only humans can violate them. God, on the other hand, ,the supreme omnipotent creator and ruler of everything may snuff out the lot of us and rightfully so. His actions don't require rights.
Libertarians understand that we're not God, neither are the individuals in government. God's judgment is perfect, that's something of which fallible humans are incapable. God's wrath is imposed against sinners, something we all are. None of us are exempt. Let he who is without sin drop the first nuke.
Here again, God's not a fallible human being and we're not God. Government does have Biblical authority to punish wrongdoers.
Robert Orlee's dissection of Romans 13 is very instructional here.
“God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid; for the authority does not bear the sword in vain. It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer†(Romans 13:4). At first blush, this sounds like it would be more compatible with “big government Christianism†than with Olree’s more permissive prescriptions. Except that the specific government Paul described as “God’s servant†was a pagan one that permitted abortion and prostitution while funding forms of idolatry. And if, as Paul says earlier in Romans, “There is no one righteous, not even one,†then what sense does it make to identify a separate class of “wrongdoers†who need to fear civil authority? If all have sinned and none are wholly good, then perhaps government’s purpose is only to punish a specific kind of wrongdoing.
Olree posits that because the Bible teaches individuals not to seek revenge, God needs a “servant†to “execute wrath on the wrongdoer.†He argues that “what is forbidden is individualized vengeance. The first verses of Romans 13 strongly imply collective vengeance through the civil government is not only permissible, but part of God’s plan.†Libertarians may balk at the idea of government having a divine mandate for collective vengeance, but such a mandate is clearly very limited.
Animal rights in the Bible? That's a pretty poor interpretation of Exodus 20:10. First, it's not a RIGHT to rest on the Sabbath, it is a command. Secondly, the Bible doesn't contradict itself. (If you think it does, the mistake is yours, not the Bible's.) If animals had rights they would not be slaves to human beings to be used as beasts of burden. We wouldn't have been burning them on alters or having them for lunch. A righteous man will have regard for HIS animals. This refers to stewardship and has nothing to do with rights.
Want more?
I have a primer on rights on my blog at:
http://bryandmorton.blogspot.com/2008/03/rights-101.html
Peace, liberty, justice and prosperity,
Bryan
The general libertarian attitude toward animals is that they are nothing more than property, that you could do literally whatever you want to them and it's no one else's business because they're just property.
The reason I brought up the Mosaic Law is that it is instructive in how God would have us be governed under His laws. The Mosaic Law is definitely not libertarian in most meaningful sense of the word, but that's not really a problem because membership in Israel was optional for the resident; they could leave Israel without any problems.
I will also point out that the death penalty is actually significantly more humane than life imprisonment. There is, in my estimation, something truly insidious about the idea of locking a sentient being up in a cage for the better part of their life.
Mike, I agree with you about imprisonment. Let me ask this: for lesser offenses, would you consider corporal punishment as an alternative to incarceration?
Absolutely! It makes far more sense, especially when dealing with the poor, to use corporal punishment for lesser offenses because it doesn't disrupt their ability to support themselves and their families anywhere nearly as badly as imprisonment does.