Because Jesus Wasn’t Kidding About Loving Your Neighbor
The tendency of many leaders of the religious right and Republicans to focus on purity and on following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit is not a problem unique to American politics…the idea–repeated by the prophets, Christ, and then throughout the epistles–that more is required of us than simple belief or a statement of faith is made especially clear in James. “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and they shudder!” (James 2:18-19).
The Ryan-Romney budget and Republican campaign talking points are based on an appeal to wealth and using wealth as a proxy for a person’s worth and value. Plenty of secular and economic arguments can be made for those appeals, but one cannot make a Biblical argument for those values.
The Bible is quite clear and unambiguous about our responsibility to the poor. The question Republicans need to ask themselves is if they think the teachings of Jesus and the prophets are still relevant today…or do they need to be taken with a grain of salt and not at face value?
Indeed, the Republican rhetoric to support tax cuts completely undermines any idea that the money will be freed up to help the poor—for Republicans, the tax cuts boost the economy by being reinvested (usually as capital), not by being bestowed upon the poor as private charity. Simply put, starving the social services is starving the poor. Cutting social services is the policy option railed against by all the prophets, and it is thoroughly unbiblical.
The Bible has a lot to say about economic policy and the responsibility of government leaders to care for the vulnerable. The Bible leaves no room for trickle-down economics. Jesus and the Prophets do not say, “Help the widow and orphan by supporting businesses in an effort to prop up the stagnant economy”! The Bible’s call is for direct action, and it is a call placed on both society and government.
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