Tim Keller Is Wrong: Helping The Poor Is Voluntary Compassion, Not Legally Required Justice

Does the Bible define giving to the poor as an act of mercy or justice? The question might seem like another medieval debate over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But the answer is crucial to the future of the country. Both socialists and capitalists claim to want to help the poor; they come to blows over the methods. If doing so is a matter of justice as socialists claim, then the government should enforce it because the sole reason for government in the Bible is to promote justice. If it’s justice, then the poor have a right, similar to the right to life, to the property of those who are not poor.

But if giving to the poor is an act of mercy then the state should have no role in the matter. It is a test of one’s love for God and people, but it’s voluntary and has no moral value if coerced by the state.

Dr. Timothy Keller, founder of the Redeemer Presbyterian churches in New York City, insists that helping the poor is a justice issue. In The Gospel and the Poor Keller wrote:

God is a Capitalist free December 1 - 5

The Kindle version of God is a Capitalist will be free from December 1 - 5. Merry Christmas!

Why not free universal health care?

Reading responses to an article on the Christianity Today web site I came across a lady who asked, "Why not free universal healthcare?" Her question reminded me of children who ask simple questions such as "Why is the sun hot?" If you give them the physics of how the sun works, they don't understand it. So I tell them God made it hot to keep us warm. Of course, then they ask, "Why?"

I gave the woman a brief response from economics and she responded that her Canadian friends were happy with their system so there was no reason for the US not to have something similar. Of course, if we limit our knowledge to just what the woman's friends in Canada say about their system then without a doubt we should rush to the ballot box and vote for the most socialist Democrat candidates we can find. The problem with her logic is that she assumes her personal experience and those of her Canadian friends are all she needs to solve the problem of healthcare.

If socialist healthcare is so great, what are all those Canadians doing in our hospitals?

I was in a hotel in Houston recently and ran into several families from the UK who had a family member receiving medical treatment for cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center there. I have read many stories of Canadians flying south for medical treatment. I began to wonder, if socialized medicine is as great as the UK and Canada claim, why are these people here?

So I began looking into medical tourism. Most of the information you will find on the internet talks about US citizens going to Asia for great care at a much reduced price. I have no problem with that. The American Medical Association wielding the sword of government has made US healthcare insanely expensive. I once told a doctor from Scotland what Americans pay for an office visit and he called me a liar. He said no sane person would pay that much. I had to agree with his last statement.

The Reformation financed the Industrial Revolution

After millennia of stagnation, why did the European economy explode in the 17th century into what economic historians call the hockey stick of per capita GDP? We know that Christianity had finally made an impact on envy; Christian individualism had broken out; modern science, created by Christian theologians, began to contribute; the Salamancan scholars persuaded people to respect commerce and protect property. Those are all necessary ingredients. Still, where did business people get the money to invest?

Marx claimed that Europe stole it from the Americas when Spain began looting it colonies of gold and silver. But Spain never took part in the Industrial Revolution and declined in wealth and power throughout the 17th century.

Europe lacked the wealth needed to ignite the revolution for two reasons. One was the conspicuous consumption of the nobility. They held to an economic principle that their spending benefitted the poor, so they were required to spend as much as possible on moral/economic grounds. Also, their status in the community required them to spend lavishly on houses and throw parties with great banquets. Had investing in business interested the nobility, which it didn’t, they would have had no savings to invest.

Envy caused the Kavanaugh Kerfuffle

A Slavic folktale has an angel approach a peasant with an offer to reward him for some good deed. The angel asks the peasant what he would like. The peasant thinks aloud, “Well, my neighbor has a goat.” The angel interrupts, “So you want a goat like your neighbors?” “Heavens no!” answers the peasant. “I want you to kill my neighbor’s goat!”

Helmut Schoeck offers the tale as a distilled description of envy in his classic Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. At the core, envy is resentful of the success of others and R.J. Snell, a contributing editor of Public Discourse, blames it for the Kavanaugh soap opera and similar dramas in US society. That may seem like a Grand Canyon leap in logic, but follow his argument for a moment. He includes a quote from Tocqueville:

The desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion as equality is more complete... It perpetually retires from before [men], yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on... To these causes must be attributed that strange melancholy which often haunts the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance, and that disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in the midst of calm and easy circumstances.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of Options And Futures

Buy-and-hold is the standard investment advice for rookies. They tell young people to grit their teeth through bear markets like those of 2001 and 2008 where some investors lost half their savings. They say you will eventually make back your losses over time if you stay in the market. They call that “diversification across time.” They suggest old folks like me should have most of our money in good bonds because we don’t have the time left to make up for losses, but we can’t do that because the Fed has forced interest rates to near zero for almost a decade.

One reason that diversification across time is a bad idea for young people is simple math. If a market crash takes half your life savings, the market will have to double in order to make up your losses. That may take five years, but then you’re only back where you started and have missed five years of potential gains. The math looks bad.

Few investors would buy a $300,000 house and not buy insurance on it against fire, flood, tornados or hurricanes. A few more might go without insurance on a $100,000 BMW, but not many. Consider that the odds of a bear market in stocks that steals say 25% of your savings are far greater than your house burning down or totaling your BMW. Bear markets happen every decade. So why not insure your investment in the stock market as you would your house or car?