Rich America is “backward” in terms of welfare legislation. Several European countries, such as Britain and Sweden, offer a far more extensive program of government-funded social services than the United States. Of course, they charge more for them in taxes, too. And thereby hangs a tale—one not gladly told by hopeful politicians before the election returns are safely in. As candidates vie with one another in promising to build a near-perfect replica of the Heavenly Jerusalem, we would do well to consider what it all will cost and who will foot the bill.
The urgent need for tax reform in the United States is evident to almost everyone. Less obvious are the ultimate consequences of some of the promised changes; many people will recognize them only when the tax collector presents his amended bills. There is a lot of talk about “closing the loopholes,” or, as it is more directly put, “socking the rich.” Unfortunately for the not-so-rich, it may prove more difficult to sock the rich alone than many of us imagine. After a few years of sharply progressive tax rates, there won’t be many rich left to sock, and the load will fall entirely on the much more numerous people in the middle and lower income groups.
In Sweden people of modest incomes often pay more than 50 per cent of their earnings to the state in taxes. Of course, Sweden’s government has some far-reaching social goals in mind. One of them is ultimately to tax parents so heavily that they will not be able to “keep their children in humiliating financial dependence”—i.e., support them themselves—but will have to obtain grants from the state for this purpose. Nothing like this has yet been proposed for the United States, but as Sweden is often held up to us as a model of enlightened social legislation, it may be useful to look at where that country is heading. (See July 7 issue, pages 36, 37.)
One of the largest “loopholes” in the current tax laws is at the point of contributions to religious and other charitable enterprises. Eliminating the tax deductibility of these contributions will enable the fisc to collect much more money from the general public. But we should realize that once this is done, the government will probably have to demand a good deal more in increased taxes than it now “loses” by allowing deductions. Taking funds away from religious and other voluntary organizations will cut down on their capacity to meet some of the social and welfare needs they now handle. When we bear in mind that much of the work of voluntary organizations is done by highly motivated people, often without pay, it appears likely that the government will need to increase taxes over and above its projected windfall, because the windfall will not begin to cover the necessary social work now done by voluntary organizations.
Many people feel that, as a matter of principle, the government should meet all public welfare needs and nothing should be left to private or voluntary initiative. This is official government policy in Sweden as well as in Communist countries—the difference being that in Communist countries private charities are forbidden by law, whereas in Sweden they are simply starved out by high taxes.
We may seem to have come a long way from observing the popular desire to close tax loopholes to warning of the possibility that all voluntary organizations, not excluding churches, will face eventual strangulation if the implications of the current “reform” proposals prevail. The late primate of Sweden, Bishop Reuben Josefson of Uppsala, said that humanly speaking it is impossible for a free church to exist in a welfare state. We are more hopeful; the Lord promised his church that the gates of hell would not prevail against it and presumably the Internal Revenue Service will not do so either. But there will come a point—probably before we reach the level of taxation imposed in Sweden today—when the existence of non-government operations in the areas of health, education, and welfare will become next to impossible, and when even purely religious activities will operate under severe burdens.
If this is what the people of the United States want to do with themselves and their society, they have the power to do it. But do they really want it? Voluntary associations of all kinds have played a vital role in American life and are among the major expressions of our civic freedom. Before we vote to abolish the conditions that permit them to exist, let us look at the ultimate implications—and demand that our political leaders and candidates do likewise.
Not Because They Are Gay
A few weeks ago two men engaged in a “marriage” ceremony in a Washington “church” that caters to homosexuals. The couple called their relationship a “holy union”; one of them said, “We’re having this ceremony because we want God to bless our union.”
Officiants at the ceremony were the pastor of the church, a Presbyterian minister from Charleston, West Virginia, and a clergyman from the Orthodox Catholic Communion. The couple received holy communion, had special prayers offered for them, and were told they will see persecution “not only because they are gay but because they are Christian.”
However sincerely these men want God to bless their relationship, it cannot happen. Scripture includes practicing homosexuals in the list of those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God, along with fornicators, adulterers, idolators, and others. They are condemned, not for being homosexual, but for engaging in forbidden acts. Heterosexual fornicators and adulterers fall under the same condemnation.
Practicing homosexuals usually accuse their critics of lacking compassion. What they mean by compassion is approval of their wicked ways. This is not and cannot be compassion. True compassion includes telling the practicing homosexual the truth of God’s revelation, pointing out the ultimate end of persistently breaking one of God’s commandments, and holding out the promise of forgiveness and restoration where there is repentance. True repentance always includes a turning away from the sinful conduct, whatever it may be.
Babylonian Dreams
One of the greatest urban-renewal projects in ancient history was the rebuilding of the capital city of Babylon in the days of Nebuchadnezzar’s Neo-Babylonian Empire—the same one that overthrew the Assyrians and Egyptians and conquered Jerusalem. And on a certain occasion the king boasted to himself, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Dan. 4:30). The king’s arrogance was chastised in a singular way: he became temporarily insane and lived as a beast of the field for several years.
Here in America we supposedly have the benefit both of widespread familiarity with the Bible and of twenty-five hundred more years of history. Yet we too are inclined to dream Babylonian dreams. On the occasion of the first manned trip to the moon, President Nixon maladroitly compared the accomplishment to the creation of the universe. An occasional boast of this kind may be passed off as a rhetorical slip, but unfortunately the President’s lunar lapse only reflects the feelings of all too many moderns as we contemplate the great works our hands have built.
And then something unexpected happens—like the East Coast floods of June 22–24—to show us that we are still at the mercy of the elements, and that our greatest construction projects cannot hold back the forces of nature. Nor can we compel nature to do all that we bid her, though we often delude ourselves into thinking we can. For example, we are only now becoming aware of the potentially disastrous ecological results of one of man’s most ambitious projects, the damming of the Nile. And we find that other, lesser attempts to alter the course of nature bring unexpected consequences.
This does not mean we should turn away from city-building, or even from dam-building. But it does mean we should be far less bold than Nebuchadnezzar or Nixon in admiring what we have created and in evaluating its impact on ourselves and our successors. In all these things it behooves us to remember the message that by sage custom was repeatedly whispered into the ears of victorious Roman generals as they passed through the wildly cheering crowds: “Remember, you too are but a man.”
Insecure Security
What is the real significance of the recently voted 20 per cent increase in Social Security benefits? The Washington Star wryly observed in a July 4 editorial that Congress cleverly provided for the benefits to begin October 1, before the election. The tax rise to pay for them, however, in the form of a 40 per cent increase in Social Security taxes on middle and upper income groups, will not take effect until January 1, 1973—after the election.
Of course increases in benefits have been made necessary by constant inflation—but the inflation itself is in large measure the result of financially unsound government economic policies. Since the rising benefits hardly do more than compensate for the constantly declining value of the dollar, the only long-term change for the worker is the increasing percentage of his earnings that is being taken from him to finance the system.
When Social Security was introduced during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first administration, it was presented as a kind of compulsory retirement insurance that would be a “floor” upon which people could build any additional retirement plan they chose. “Contributions”—i.e., taxes—from employees and employers were to go into a “trust fund” from which retirement and survivors’ benefits would ultimately be paid. Unlike private pension plans, however, the “trust fund” is not invested but is spent for current expenses. A worker of eighteen who contributed the equivalent of his and his employer’s Social Security contributions on his behalf to a private annuity could receive an annual pension of $17,316 at age sixty-five—much more than the government promises. Of course, Social Security provides other benefits that would require a complex private plan to match, but this difference remains: the insurance company would invest his money; the government merely spends it.
The recent increase in benefits means that the “trust fund” will be completely bankrupt. All further increases for the retired must henceforth be paid out of increasing taxes on those still working. It is not unreasonable to think that people currently in their productive years should contribute to the support of those who have passed them. But those now drawing pensions were led to expect that they were paying for them in advance. Now it appears that the “trust funds” have been squandered or melted away by inflation, and so their children must pay them in arrears. It seems that the congressional ploy of increasing benefits before the voting, taxes afterward, is not the only element of duplicity in the Social Security scheme.
We believe that our nation should make decent provision for its people of retirement age. But it should do so honestly, and not cover up bad planning with deceptive and dishonest verbiage about “insurance” and “trust funds.”
Objective: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
In Miami’s Convention Hall Democrats practiced the new politics, which turned out to be the old politics under a new name. Chairman O’Brien urged that the people be told the truth for a change. But no one really believes that when the rhetorical decibel count rises in the fall, either the Democrats or the Republicans will supply more light than heat as they work for votes.
Democratic standard-bearer George McGovern carries into the campaign an assortment of controversial positions that the Republicans will dwell on: his redistribution-of-wealth program, his proposal to reduce the country’s military might by simply curtailing the budget of the armed forces, his statement that he would go to North Viet Nam to beg for release of the prisoners of war, and his stand on busing. Likely to be liabilities are the statements of some of his more radical followers who want public approval of free love, abortion on demand, and homosexual marriages. The venom with which his delegates dethroned Daley, the rough handling of George Wallace’s minority effort to amend the party platform, and the alienation of organized labor will also hurt him.
The people who ran the McGovern show at Miami were obviously no novices. They have shown amazing expertise and are to be congratulated on a well-organized drive. They made it plain they are familiar with power politics and will not hesitate to use it in the days ahead.
Whatever may be said of the Democrats may be similarly said of the Republicans. They too have their fair share of problems. The ITT case, the bugging of the Democratic headquarters in Washington, continued unemployment, persistent inflation, and the unended war contribute to their predicament as the party in power.
Political parties are grossly imperfect and mirror all the weaknesses and defects of humanity. Still, the political process remains the major means through which Christians can have an influence and bear a witness. But traveling through this jungle is dangerous, and the temptation to compromise one’s convictions is ever present. It would be far easier to say “a plague on both your houses” and withdraw than to stay in to witness and to work at improving the process. History’s lesson is plain. If Christians default, they will get something far worse. So let’s get on with it.
Patriarch Athenagoras
The world will remember Patriarch Athenagoras, who died this month at the age of eighty-six, as the Orthodox leader who began to repair relations with the Vatican. His meeting with Pope Paul in 1964 was the first between an Eastern Orthodox primate and a Roman Catholic pontiff in more than five centuries. Two years later excommunications exchanged between Rome and Constantinople in the eleventh century were annulled.
The patriarch’s death set off something of a furor in that Turkey refused to admit Archbishop Iakovos of New York to attend the funeral. A delegation of American Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish churchmen, in a sympathy move, called off plans to attend. Turkey’s attitude toward Orthodoxy has been barely tolerant, but many Orthodox in Europe and the Near East have not shown much of an example in their relations with evangelical Protestants, either.
Athenagoras was an approachable man whose “reign” was characterized by stark simplicity. He lived in a two-room apartment in an old building in a poor quarter of Istanbul.
Who Is Our Pattern?
From the very dawn of human history, parents and educators have told their children the stories of noble and heroic men and women. Instead of simply presenting them with a list of do’s and don’t’s, they have sought to inspire the young with an admiration for people who lived nobly, gloriously, and self-sacrificially, and to encourage imitation by pointing out that such living is possible—people have done it.
The Jews had great figures like Moses, Deborah, David, and Daniel. The more secular-minded Greeks exalted the legendary heroes of the Iliad, but also the more recent and historical Spartans of Thermopylae. The Romans had Horatius at the bridge, Marius as a prisoner of the Carthaginians, and many others. The early Christians had Jesus Christ, and when his sinless perfection seemed too exalted to imitate, they told the stories of martyrs, confessors, and other warriors of the faith.
The modern Western world has largely rejected this traditional way of character training. On the one hand, respected figures are regularly “debunked” by revisionist historians—sometimes justly so, sometimes entirely fancifully, as when Sigmund Freud tried to prove that Moses was a renegade Egyptian. On the other hand, ridicule and abuse has been showered on present-day leaders, such as on Lyndon B. Johnson (Macbird, Che!) and Richard M. Nixon (Milhouse). Genuine villains and psychopathic criminals are made into world celebrities. And when the supply of real-life anti-heroes runs out, the media, especially the movies, offer a horde of imaginary—but very impressive—substitutes. Any reasonable man can see that if the earlier practices educated for virtues such as courage, altruism, and generosity of spirit, our present habits promote the opposing vices.
Christians can do little to stem the tide of negative models and patterns. But we can do something to counteract their nihilistic effect by reminding ourselves that worthy patterns do exist: Jesus Christ and many of his most faithful followers through nineteen centuries. Confronted with a tide of slander and character assassination, we should heed the Apostle’s words: “Finally, brethren whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is any thing worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8).
Whose Freedom?
Early in June, when academic institutions were handing out degrees, the American Association of Theological Schools presented a different kind of document to Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, the larger seminary of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. After a two-day investigation, the AATS placed Concordia on academic probation for two years because of “undue” outside interference in the school’s freedom of operation.
The background of this decision is a long-simmering uneasiness in the Missouri Synod over alleged liberalism at Concordia, specifically the teaching of liberal higher critical views of Scripture. Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, LCMS president, felt obliged by Missouri’s constitution and confessional documents to investigate the St. Louis school, which trains the majority of new ministers for Missouri. Preus holds—rightly, we believe—that the application of the so-called historical-critical method with its anti-supernatural presuppositions to the study of the Bible will eventually undermine its authority and lead to a serious misunderstanding of its content and its message.
The issue came to a head with the nomination of Old Testament professor Dr. Arlis J. Ehlen to life tenure. Ehlen is a practitioner of the historical-critical method, and has been supported in this by Concordia president John H. Tietjen and a majority of the school’s faculty. When Ehlen’s nomination for tenure came up for a vote, conservative opposition blocked the action; a compromise was reached in the form of limited-term reappointment for Ehlen. But the LCMS Board of Higher Education, which has ultimate jurisdiction, disregarded warnings and threats by Tietjen and Concordia vice-president Arthur C. Repp and refused to approve any reappointment at all for Ehlen.
Almost immediately the AATS, of which Repp is a vice-president, did as he had warned it would do: it discovered “serious infringement on the freedom of the Concordia Seminary Board of Control … damage to the quality of education and the morale of the faculty” and placed the seminary on probation. At the same time it warned Concordia’s sister school in Springfield, Illinois, of similar action.
The AATS has consistently claimed to be nothing more than an academic accrediting association without any interest in doctrinal issues. The AATS Handbook states,
An institution which has a confessional or doctrinal standard may expect that its faculty subscribe to that standard.… Any challenge to the doctrinal regularity of a faculty member should be subject to open hearing before his colleagues and before the governing board of the school as well as before ecclesiastical tribunals which may have jurisdiction [italics added].
Asked how these “Principles of Academic Freedom” from the Handbook could be squared with the action against Concordia, AATS executive director Dr. Jesse H. Ziegler told CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “These particular things are advisory to our members, not really part of our standards for accrediting.”
Presumably no one in the Missouri Synod or out of it would deny Ehlen the freedom to follow the so-called historical-critical methodology. What is at stake is whether the LCMS can be obliged to hire him for the rest of his life to teach it to Missouri’s future ministers. Obviously those backing Ehlen are counting heavily on AATS support to force Preus and the Board of Higher Education to knuckle under.
If the AATS succeeds in intimidating Missouri, it will mean that a “pluralistic” professional accrediting association has the last word as to what is acceptable doctrine in the LCMS and what is not. A seminary can survive without AATS accreditation, but a church cannot survive as a true church of Jesus Christ if it cannot teach its future pastors to rely on the trustworthiness of Scripture.
Southerners Under Scrutiny
What was it like to be a Christian and a slave-owner during the Civil War era? The Children of Pride (Yale, 1972), letters of a grand Southern family, tells us this and more.
The Reverend Dr. Charles Colcock Jones was a white Presbyterian clergyman known as the “apostle to the blacks.” Editor Robert Manson Myers comments: “This extraordinary man … was a rich planter, a gentleman of radiant Christian character, aptly described by his son-in-law as ‘one of the noblest men God ever made.’ ” Although a radiant Christian of evangelical persuasion (his and his wife’s concern for their unsaved sons is a recurring theme throughout the 1,845-page volume), Jones did not act against slavery. He and his family enjoyed the freedom from physical labor that slavery made possible.
Jones called the slave trade “immoral and filthy” while damning the abolitionists. He even warned his son “that you never can succeed and attain to any eminence in your profession if you have anything at all to do with the management of Negro property” (Jones also considered Christian moral excellence necessary for professional success). His son Charles didn’t listen.
The title of this volume is taken from Job 41:34, which contains the lesson the editor wishes to teach: “He beholdeth all high things; he is a king over all the children of pride.” God, comments Myers, chastises those he loves and humbles those filled with the pride of life. This is the sin of the Jones family. The pride of life, not slavery, is the book’s underlying theme; slavery just happens to be the form that the Joneses’ pride takes.
The Children of Pride eloquently reminds us—and warns us—of the evils of Christian complacency and conceit. Myers’s beautiful descriptions in the prologue and epilogue complement the contrasts of belief and act. The book also makes us consider that we, too, often knowingly or thoughtlessly, cleave word and deed; our hypocrisy will one day be revealed.
Sunday Laws And Human Welfare
A few weeks ago one of the big food chains in the Washington area began to open its Maryland stores on Sunday. The practice soon spread to its competitors, and to the District of Columbia and its Virginia suburbs. Attempts to force the stores back to a six-day week are being denounced by secularists as a campaign by religious fanatics to impose “blue laws.”
In Austria (largely Catholic, socialist government), Switzerland (mixed Protestant/Catholic, bourgeois government), and France (largely Catholic, militantly secular, bourgeois government), all or virtually all grocery stores are closed from Saturday afternoon until Monday morning. Newcomers quickly get used to the system, and the hardship is minimal.
These laws exist to guarantee a free Sunday to grocery employees. Without them, competition would force all the stores to remain open every day for as many hours as possible. This is what has happened in the Washington area. Who suffers? First of all, the employees. But what about the customers? They probably will not eat more food because they can shop for it seven days a week. But since the grocery chains will have to pay for a large number of extra hours, the customers will ultimately have to pay more for the same amount of food. For the sake of a hardly vital gain in convenience to undisciplined shoppers, employees lose their Sundays and customers pay more for the same food.
When store closing laws are up for reconsideration, whether they relate to the days or the hours when all stores must close, let them be considered in the light of the welfare of the employees and the general public, and not simply erased from the books as a further sacrifice to the militant secularists in their frenzy to eradicate everything in America that smacks of our Christian past.
The Other Side Of Jesus
Jesus wrestled with the world. He avoided minor conflicts so that he could engage his critics on crucial issues. He contended for things that mattered; advocates of appeasement must look for another hero. Jesus took the challenge of grappling with the great ideas that governed the world in which he was incarnate.
But this is not the image of Jesus that is best known today. He is recognized most broadly for a sweet and gentle compassion. This image has been emphasized so much, unwittingly or intentionally, that many people find it hard to understand incidents in the life of Christ that reveal another side.
Take the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16). Could Jesus have stooped to draw a lesson from the machinations of a first-century political type? Yes, he did. There is some controversy about the meaning and application of the passage, but at the very least we can say he used it to illustrate his lament that people solely concerned with the here and now often show more ingenuity than do those whose path is illumined with eternal light.
Some people also have a hard time believing that Jesus told his followers to be as “wary as serpents” (Matt. 10:16). This sounds out of character only if we have built up an erroneous impression of what Jesus was really like. Since the Bible is our only source of information about him, we must be careful not to read into his life any attitudes not actually recorded in Scripture.
We should not reduce our appreciation for Jesus’ compassion, but we need to understand that there is an intellectual as well as an emotional factor in genuinely Christian compassion. It is not merely behind-the-scenes first aid. Being concerned for the welfare of others entails identifying with their intellectual as well as their physical well-being. And the way that Jesus dealt with people at this level and the way he admonished his followers suggest that this is accomplished not by wishy-washy counseling but by hard argument.
To be wary (phronimos, translated “wise” in the King James version) connotes the idea of prudence, a word that is not part of popular vocabulary today. Prudence has to do with the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. The great challenge we have stems from the fact that Jesus not only urges us to take on the world but gives us the equipment to do so. We have God’s word, which is the bench mark for all truth and for reason at its best.
