Entitlements (by T)

T is a lawyer friend of this blog, as many of you know. Here is a post on entitlements. Let me say how much I appreciate this sort of post, and how so many step to write posts for the blog. It is this that makes up the Jesus Creed blog.

Many people are concerned about “entitlements” these days.  Usually what we mean by entitlements are the government-provided benefits that some people become “entitled to receive” by meeting certain legally prescribed criteria, usually focused around their age and/or (dis)ability to work, their lack of income and assets.  In this country, the poor are “entitled” by law to receive certain minimum provisions from various state and federal agencies.  Let me say right off that as a Christian and as a person who majored in economics in college, I agree that we ought to evaluate such programs from the standpoint of incentives and even character and family development over time.  That said, I have another, larger, concern that arises in me whenever I hear Christians specifically start to make the standard chorus of anti-entitlement arguments, especially if and/or when they are anchored in classic liberal/libertarian notions of personal property rights.  “The government has no right,” it is argued in various ways, “to take money from people who earned it and then give it to those who did not.”

What concerns me from a theological standpoint when I hear these arguments within our larger American culture is the deep sense of entitlement and humanism/individualism upon which they are often grounded.  To put it more plainly, I am more concerned about the sense of entitlement (to my money for whatever I want) that pervades the entire culture, top to bottom, rich to poor, as evidenced in our whole economy, than I am about the nursing home care, food stamps and other benefits that our governments provide to the very old, poor and/or disabled.  I’m concerned about this much larger sense of entitlement that cuts across class lines and practically defines American culture because I honestly believe it is a much bigger deal to Jesus, and a clear rival to his reign actually functioning on earth as he would like, than all the programs we happen to have for the poor put together.

I’ve heard it said that Jesus talked more about money than anything else.  That’s not true; his favorite topic, hands down, was the reign of God, of which he is King.  But he couldn’t effectively preach the reign of God on the earth without confronting the reign of Money here, and so he did both.  One might think from conservative Christian circles that the thrust of Jesus’ teaching re: money was what we might call “stewardship.”  While stewardship is a fantastic thing to teach about money, it wasn’t close to Jesus’ main concern.  Attachment, i.e., or entitlement, and to one’s “own” money, was the clear thrust of Jesus’ concern when it came to money, over and over and over again.

Again, while I think it’s worthwhile to talk about the so-called “deserving” poor, or giving help to the poor in such a way as to not take away their incentive to work if possible, Jesus seemed categorically unconcerned about that, and simultaneously clearly concerned with the incentives that arise within concerning loyalty/entitlement to one’s money.  It’s the sense that we are entitled to spend what we may have (whether earned, inherited, or what have you) on what we want that Jesus confronted head on.  Loyalty to money, service to money, attachment to money, was mutually exclusive with loyalty, service and attachment to him.

Now, I realize this next question is blunt in more than one way, but I will still ask it.  After we actually read what Jesus taught on money (I actually did this thoroughly a few years ago when teaching a Business Law course—eye-opening stuff), what sense of “entitlement” do we think most concerns Jesus in the West?  Would Jesus, if he were alive today, be a prophet against our government “entitlements?”  Or would he be more a prophet against all our entitlements, whether to so-called “private” or “public” money, in the face of his kingdom’s benefits and demands?