Mark Byron has a couple of posts about altruism and capitalism. I haven't finished reading them yet, but I'll comment here anyway.
My path to Christianity from Unitarian Universalism went through Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. I credit it with breaking the hold of postmodernism which held me in its grip back when I was a UU (always searching for truth, but never being allowed to admit finding it). It took a lot of soul searching to come to Christ, and some lost sleep over leaving a congregation I had attended for ten years (and where Amy and I were married).
The conflict between collectivism and individualism is one that is dynamic in my life. I want to do God's will, give myself completely to Him, however on the other hand, I resist any concept of anyone else telling me what God's will is for me - though I will admit its possibility.
One thing I do not accept however, is the attitude that government can be used to promote God's work, by taking from the rich and giving to the poor. As I've said before, government cannot be compassionate, only individuals have that capacity. Over at the John Heron project (no permalinks), which I link to cautionsly, as he fights back with invective, Wood states:
Of course, running a state along these lines - and I do believe that they are Christian lines, inasmuch as, in my own flawed way, I believe that Christ would have approved of them - is not going to work without laws. But does that make the sharing of property confiscatory? Only if you labour under the misapprehension that anything in a world that belongs to God can belong to mere people in the first place. You look at it that way, you look at our "property" as simply held in trust while we're in this world, well, what's the point of clutching it. You're not taking it with you, are you? So don't be so clingy, already.I don't believe that Jesus was a socialist. The term's too loaded. But I do believe utterly that in working towards socialist principles, I am following Jesus.
I wonder if Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao-Tse Tung, and Fidel Castro considered themselves to be following Jesus as they implemented their socialist principles, and killed 100 million people doing so.
Posted by joelfuhrmann at December 3, 2002 08:40 PM