Taxation: Theft or Charity?

Some argue that taxation is a mechanism for collectively achieving social good.

Others claim that it is little more than extortion, with the force of law behind it.

Who's right?

As one with Libertarian leanings, I gravitate toward the latter.  But... it's mostly because I object to much of what our taxes are used for.  It's hard for me to see our global military presence as achieving social good, for example.  A social safety net is something I can support - if it's handled right.

Even in a fairly positive example from the Bible of when taxes were used for a good purpose (Genesis 41), the rich still got richer.  Joseph taxed the people at a 20% rate during good years when everyone was making profit, and built up surplus grain as a safety net (much like our strategic oil reserves).  When famine came, the surplus was ready, and was ridiculously excessive in size.

But how was it distributed?  The government SOLD it back to the people!  Sold it, not gave it.  Foreign trade went through the roof, too, as other nations bought grain from Egypt.  You think that Pharaoh might have made himself a little coin off the turn?  Tax it (get it for free...) and then sell it (make something off of nothing).  Even when the intent is sound and noble, the execution is flawed, per Ecclesiastes 5:8-9:

"If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields."

Perhaps if the vast majority of our taxes went toward things that I think really do achieve social good (in countrywide, comprehensive ways that private charity can't match), I would be less fussy about it.  Maybe I'd be a die-hard socialist/collectivist, if my taxes were doing real and permanent good for those most in need of it, and it were administered without incompetence and graft.  But until that happens, I will continue to feel extorted, and send the government its required tribute through gritted teeth (and so at least manage to stay out of jail where I might do some real good with my after-tax funds).

Keep your guns holstered, you revenuers.  I'll pay, I'll pay.  But I will definitely work through proper channels (read: the election process) to reduce your reach.

Truth, the Bible, and biblicism

Recently, I was involved in a dialogue on Facebook, the topic of which was a state voter referendum on a particularly polarizing social issue.

The state, the issue, and the people contributing to the dialogue are not the point of this post, so I'll leave them all nameless.  What caught my attention was the use of the Bible in the dialogue, to either affirm or refute an argument.  Several people in the conversation, myself included, referred to the Bible in one way or another, but the way we used it was quite different.

There is an approach to using the Bible, which I will refer to as biblicism, which ascribes to the Bible properties that I believe are excessive as well as internally inconsistent.  I will be over-simplifying the argument, no doubt, but only in an effort to keep this post concise.  A fuller (and excellent) treatment can be found here, and I will leave to the reader any further exploration of it.

No doubt you have heard people describe the Bible in terms like this: "I believe the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original manuscripts, and our only rule of faith and practice.  Because the Bible is the Word of God, it is by definition absolute truth.  And since God also made us, the Bible serves as the owner's manual and rule book for life, and can be profitably read as authoritative on all aspects of life."  Well... there's a lot in that statement, more than I can tackle here, so I will confine my comments to the ideas that the Bible is: 1) God's exhaustive revelation, 2) uniformly authoritative, and can be 3) comprehensively applied to life.  I think it is none of those things in total, and all of those things in part.

God's revelation it is, exhaustive it is not.  A quick read of the Synoptic gospels vs that of St. John certainly points out that the four gospel writers focused on different events in the life of Jesus.  None of them cover all the same things, nor all in the same way.  And if the life of Jesus isn't God's revelation to humankind, I don't know what is.  But, the Bible account of Jesus is incomplete.  St. John himself says that there were all kinds of other things that Jesus said and did than those which were written down in the Bible, but he only wrote those that were needed for us to believe.  (Jn. 21:25).  Jesus said and did more than was written down about him, and no doubt the same is true of the patriarchs, the kings, and the prophets. Those other things were transmitted to those who were around at the time, and preserved after that in oral tradition.  So, is the Bible exhaustive?  No.  Necessary and sufficient for salvation?  Yeah.

The Bible is authoritative, just not uniformly so.  You wouldn't hold Ecclesiastes to have the same level of authority over life and practice as you would Paul's epistles.  You wouldn't read the story of King Saul as being authoritative in the same way you would read the story of Jesus crucifixion and resurrection.  You wouldn't put Revelation on the same level of authority as Leviticus.  Poetry and historical narrative are not to be read in the same way.  Even within the same book and author, you don't necessarily give every passage the same authoritative weight.  When St. Paul tells the Corinthians how women should dress and behave in church, it carries a different kind of authority than when he is describing his sufferings on his mission trips, or when he is speaking about how to practice spiritual gifts or share in the Lord's Supper.  No one reasonably expects to give every single passage from Genesis to Revelation identical authoritative weight.  We use judgment (sometimes informed and sometimes not, but judgment nonetheless), to determine a passage's authoritativeness for our present circumstances today.  I mean, who among us has obeyed Jesus' command to "sell all you possess and give it to the poor."  (Mark 10:21)  I sure haven't.  You haven't, either.  Do Jesus' commands have authority?  Sure... but we would agree that they are not equally so.

You can apply the Bible to life selectively, not comprehensively.  Quick!  What does the Bible teach on the morality of 1) genetic engineering of plants, 2) funding manned space missions to the moon or Mars,  3) gastric bypass surgery for weight loss, or 4) hydro-fracking for shale oils & natural gas? 

NOTHING!

None of these issues existed at the time the Bible was written.  There is no reasonable expectation that the Bible would give explicit direction on these matters.  Now, of course, we can deduce some things that might possibly apply to those topics based on general principles, but... to do that we must infer, and to infer we must interpret.  And when we interpret, we leave straightaway the category of ABSOLUTE truth, for the truth then becomes relative to our interpretation of the Bible, and to what we infer from it about God's implied direction on a topic.  Truth becomes relative insofar as it depends on my interpretation.  No longer then can our rallying cry be "sola scriptura!" but instead it must be "sola (my interpretation of) scriptura!".  This calls for great humility in offering our opinions, for although God is not fallible, we certainly are.

As to the Bible being God's little rule book, our instruction manual for life, all I can say is - no owner's manual I've ever read has said things like "Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless!" (Eccl. 1:2),  "Your two breasts are like twins, fawns of a gazelle." (Song 4:5), "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"(Ps. 22:1, Mt. 27:46), and "They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company." (Acts 15:39)  What kind of instruction manual is that?

The Bible is simply far more complex and layered (and fraught with opportunities for differences in interpretation), than biblicists make it out to be.  As such, it should not be cavalierly appealed to, to settle an argument, as if it were simply a matter of looking it up, or "biblically Google-ing it", because the answer will be obvious.  It's far more complicated than that.

(and by the way, God is, too.)

My last (political) hurrah

(at least for this election cycle) was held last Saturday at Stuart, IA in the gymnasium of the West Central Valley Wildcats.  Roar!

Some 500+ delegates and alternates showed up for the District Convention.  I found out that it was as cumbersome and drawn out a process as the County Convention was, albeit not as poorly handled.  The leaders seemed to know the procedures well, and handled them as best they could.  It's just that the procedures themselves were clumsy ones.  Ballot after ballot after ballot was needed to elect representatives to the State Convention.  They really could have used Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) to speed the process along.

Still, the people were nice - just regular folks doing their civic duty.  Like me.  :)

Several of the elections to State Committees were hotly contested, with different factions of the GOP proposing slates of candidates that emphasized this viewpoint or that.  The small government, personal liberty types won the day by and large, so I went home tired but happy.

The State Convention is in capable hands now, so I can go on my summer vacation with a clear conscience, having held up my end locally.  And it wouldn't surprise me a lick to see not a few of those pesky Ron Paul delegates winging their way to Tampa in August.

The valor of manhood is fading

In his sermon this morning, the pastor in the church we have recently begun to attend used a quote from Tolkien to support one of his points. The sermon was part of a post-Easter series he's currently doing on God's desired restoration of creation and how the resurrection of Christ is linked to it.

This particular passage from The Lord of the Rings describes the appearance of King Aragorn upon the moment of his death:

"Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world." 

The point the pastor made is that this shows Tolkien's view of what we will be like at the restoration of all things. We will not be simply all youthful innocence, or captured just at the peak of our adult vigor, or fully wearing the weight & maturity of years, but... have all three together. :) That is a happy concept, and at some level it rings true. While human life may have three stages (youth, adult, senior), and they may differ in terms of physical characteristics (speed, strength, patience) or emotional ones (zeal, endurance, wisdom), why should we not expect to carry all of these into eternity in equal measure?

Regular readers will know that I informally divide these stages of life into the years from birth to age 28, from 29 to 56, and from age 57 to death at around 84, aligning with the months/seasons of the year (beginning in March and lasting about 7 years per month). Thus, March through June are the months of youth, the months of growth and flowering beauty. The months of July through October are the months of adulthood, the months of production and enduring green vigor. Finally, the months of November through February are the months of harvest, of ripeness and brilliant decline.

As I make my way gently into November, I think about leaving production and green vigor behind, looking forward to the harvest of the years and the preserving & distilling of it into wisdom (God willing...). But I can't help feeling a twinge of regret that in order to move inevitably into this new stage of life, I will increasingly leave the prior one behind. I kind of like the "valor of my manhood", that time of strength and vigor! :)

I see clearly (daily!) that both are in decline; I also see that it must be so. As Ecclesiastes says, this is what life "under the sun" is like. But, it's also good to know from the same source that "youth and vigor are meaningless". (Eccl. 11:10) Then I don't feel so bad about moving from chapter 11 to chapter 12.  ;)

A Perennially Favorite Day

... that's the day in Spring when the petals drop like so many snowflakes from the flowering crab trees. They lay like a throw rug (or rather, a tree skirt) on the carpet of the freshly greened-up lawn,

or drift up against a curb, swept there by the breeze to puddle.

When I can bend down, scoop up an overflowing handful of pink or white or red petals, feel their cool and slightly moist organic touch on my hand, still feeling full of life, and then

let them trickle through my fingers back to the ground...

that's a Spring day to remember, and one to watch for every year. When that day comes, everything around me is bursting, sprawling, spreading, smelling great, and showing off.

Six months later, Autumn has its own dazzling, drying, dying, crisping, drifting and rustling corollary - another perennial favorite. :)

If only we could go straight from one to the other without those extremeties of Summer and Winter in between...