By Lee Duigon
February 3, 2022
Were the first Christians… communists? It seems Francis I, the Red Pope, thinks so. He bases his opinion on the Bible, Acts 4:32, which says:
“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.” They sold their lands and houses and donated all the money to the church.
Well, that sounds pretty communistic, doesn’t it? But what was the context? After all, there’s nothing in the Old Testament that says there’s anything wrong with private property—very far from it. Certainly the laws, as handed down by God through Moses, established all sorts of property rights.
What the Pope didn’t see fit to mention was that this, in Acts 4, was the very first generation of Christians—the foundation of the whole Church, which would soon spread throughout the world. Their mission, far more important than any other consideration, was to establish the Church. From this mission nothing would be permitted to distract them. Property, lands, business, personal possessions—these would have been distractions. So they were set aside.
The Pope’s remarks centered around taxation, which he described as “a necessary tool of wealth redistribution”. In fact, he said, taxation “must”—yes, he said must—“promote the redistribution of wealth.”
What bunk.
From voluntary contributions to the church, for the purpose to establishing the Church as a new thing in a fallen world, the Red Pope swings effortlessly into involuntary contributions to the state, backed up by lethal force—as if they were the same thing! As if the early saints were the same as Bernie Sanders, Karl Marx, or any other socialist. As if there were no difference between creating the Church and scarfing down tax dollars to set up vast bureaucracies for the purpose of controlling people.
As soon as we come up against the question of who gets to redistribute everybody else’s wealth, the potential for abuse leaps out at us with a scream. The early church created deacons, appointed by the apostles themselves, to administer the church’s resources. The idea was to remove the distractions of ordinary, everyday life so that the saints could concentrate on the church’s mission. You can’t do that if you have to devote your time to paying bills and keeping your household from falling into debt.
Throughout history the Church practiced charity. Socialists practice control. Government gets swollen to enormous size and gets involved in everything. Most of the money they collect in taxes sticks to the government’s fingers, in the form of ever-bigger, ever-more complicated, bureaucracies. Some is doled out to favored groups of voters. The world has had many socialist governments, all of them focused on only one thing: accumulating power over their own people—and other peoples, if they can get them.
There is no comparison between the wealth generated by capitalism and the failure and frustration that never fail to accompany socialism. Or haven’t you had a look at Venezuela lately? Socialists took over a well-off, thriving country and made it poor. And miserable.
Whom does the Pope think will do the redistributing? Government, of course! Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama—very, very far from being saints. Take the working taxpayer’s hard-earned money and use it to grow the government. With sops handed out to various groups of dependents: just enough to keep them dependent.
Can he possibly be so naïve as to think that greedy politicians, with their private jets and mansions and $30,000-a-plate fundraisers, will ever do anything but have a damned good time at the public’s expense?
I’ll see your Lenin and raise you a Gavin Newsom.
I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Click the link and drop in for a visit. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .
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