Economics for Priests and Other Liberals
Those of you who are conservatives do not need to read this. You have your own problems that I addressed in my essay,” The Purpose of Life.” I am writing to those of you who are liberals. First of all thank you for holding beliefs that defend the personal freedom of each one of us. This is a very libertarian position and it is in keeping with Gods gift of freewill. God will cut you a lot of slack for your heresies due to your intuitive understanding and defense of personal freedom. However, you are only half way there.
Have you ever wondered why you feel uncomfortable talking about stewardship? Have you ever been disappointed in the performance of your stewardship director? Do you feel dirty talking about money? You know that something is wrong; something doesn’t quite gel and you feel that God shouldn’t really dirty himself with mammon.
I am not asking you to believe the following statements, but I am asking you to operate on the possibility that they may be true.
Man is no different in his needs than any other of God’s creatures. He has to eat, stay warm, and protect himself from the elements. For thousands of years he tried to do all these things himself. Like the lion, he had to get up each morning and find something to catch and eat. When he was injured or old and unable to do this, he died.
Today we have money. Take a bill out of your wallet or purse. You will notice that is a Federal Reserve Note. It is an I.O.U. that is redeemable only for other Federal Reserve Notes. It has no intrinsic value. Yet every day you go to work and trade the hours of your life and the sweat of your hands and the strain on your brain in exchange for this token. This token is a representation for all your creative yesterdays. You trust that other men will honor this token and take it in exchange for what they have created with their lives. To love money is to love the nature of money and that is being able to trade without barter, to be able to conveniently give, to move wealth easily, and to bank the hours of your youth in order to provide for yourself and your family when you are too old to work. Money is our noblest creation.
Only four percent of the people in America inherit their wealth. The remaining ninety-six percent of the wealthy have earned theirs. They did not take it from anyone else. It did not exist before they applied their time and talents and created it. It is symbol for what they have created. God created them and they used their life and liberty to create wealth. It did not exist before they created it. It is theirs and no one has a right to any of it any more that some has a right to one minute of another persons life.
Our American state papers make it clear that we created government to protect the rights that God gave us. It exists for no other reason. We are the first people to do this. No other government on the planet was ever created with this premise, that life, liberty, and property (John Locke’s original writing, copied by Jefferson and changed to pursuit of happiness over issues of slavery by the assembly) are rights from God. No other government that ever existed before was a creation of God. I know that you studied this in seminary, but you were misled. God only created one government and that was a King over Israel. He only did that to punish them for asking him for a king. No government that ever existed that did not support the rights of man was legitimate in God’s eyes. Any priest that served these governments was an abomination to God, or in the words of Thomas Wosley,”Oh would that I have served my God as well as I served my king.”
Government is force. You cannot use force to do good. It cannot be controlled. It degenerates in to tyranny if it is not bound by law. Law is the collective organization of the individual right to defend life, liberty, and property. It is imperative that this be understood. Two very good books to help you explore this truth are The Law by Frederic Bastiat and The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. Both are available from Amazon.
Just as you would no more make a person a slave by forcing him into servitude you have no more right to take his money, either by robbery or by voting for people that will take it from him for you. People that do this are called socialists. They make slaves out of their neighbors. All socialists always go the hell. Trust me. Not only is it a system that last century alone murdered over one hundred and sixty million men, women, and children, but it doesn’t even work well. God’s plan is freedom. Bastiat writes that, “Trust in liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and His plan.” This plan is called free enterprise. You will not find a better book explaining the wonderful way our system works than Economics in One lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It is an easy read and it will open your eyes. The best source is Advocates for Self-Government in Cartersville GA. It can be ordered on the web.
God wants your money because it represents what is best about you. It is the hours of your life that you spent in creation. God created you; you created something of value and now you give it back to him.
Pat Bratton
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