The First Christians Were Not Socialists

Kevin DeYoung (click here for a bio) just wrote an article whose title strikes instant fear into the hearts of most religiously conservative Christians in America. The title of his article: Were The First Christians Socialists? Such a question raises the blood pressure of every good patriotic conservative American Christian because we all know that Socialism or Communism goes against their view of America. For their view of America centers on Capitalism, the Free Market, individualism, and speaking American English.

Now because the very first Christians shared everything in common, DeYoung felt compelled to address the subject. According to DeYoung, the first Christians were not Socialists, or even Communists (click here for his article). And DeYoung is correct in his assessment though perhaps not  for the reasons he specified.

DeYoung is correct, the very first Christians were not Socialists despite sharing all their possessions with each other. DeYoung goes on to say that neither were the very first Christians Capitalists either as far as we can tell. But then he grants Capitalism an indulgence that he does not share with Socialism/Communism. That indulgence states that we need to rely on Scriptural evidence other than explicit Biblical statements or specific examples provided by the very first Christians to determine if Capitalism is promoted by the Scriptures..

Now though DeYoung shows a bit more knowledge of Socialism/Communism than the average conservative American, he demonstrates that he has much to learn. What his article demonstrates about religiously conservative Christian Americans is their desire to use the Bible to enable Christians, if not everyone, to recover the Garden of Eden. Though they may not say that in those exact words. the moment they use the Scriptures to try to find what kind of economy would best meet the needs of people as they were created before the fall, they are looking to recover the Garden of Eden to some extent.

However, such a question itself may be at odds with the New Testament. After all, there is a danger in trying to use the Bible to sanctify one's preferred economic ideology. That danger is that by claiming that a particular and personally preferred school of economics is the Biblical choice, then one's Christianity becomes an avenue to self-worship, not the worship of God. That is because the Bible and the Christian faith become servants to a preferred sacred cow of one's own choosing.

How do we know that the First Christians were not Socialists or Communists, or Capitalist or whatever else? It simple. Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, and whatever else remains deal with economic or political-economic ideologies. What the New Testament is concerned with is to how to equip Christians to live as pure and reputable ambassadors of Christ who are always looking to enlist new citizens into Christ's Kingdom. The New Testament is not concerned with telling us how we can recover Eden.
 
Does that mean that Christians do not need to be concerned with political and/or economic ideologies and how they impact the world? Not at all, especially in these times. For though we don't have any examples of any First Christian endorsed ideologies or systems, our very placement in the world requires that we share society with unbelievers. So did the very First Christians. But unlike those First Christians, we live in a world where the Gospel has been spread throughout the world and we Americans live in a democratic political system that calls on us to participate with others. And thus the matter of how will we address political-economic ideologies and systems becomes mandatory for us religiously conservative Christians.

The above is said with one caveat: that though neither the New Testament tells us nor the First Christians demonstrated what kind of economic system we should have in the society that we share with unbelievers, we are called to speak out against the injustices practiced by any political-economic system by even, or especially, our favorite systems. Perhaps all of us will have our favorite political-economic systems, but there are two things we cannot do with those systems. First, we cannot say that our favorite system is endorsed by the Scriptures. Second, we cannot shy away from speaking against the injustices that our favorite systems promote or allow.

The above is the approach that DeYoung should have taken. He is more than correct in saying that the First Christians were not Socialists. He also shows that he is no opportunist by claiming that the First Christians belonged to some school of Capitalism. But in trying to show that the First Christians were not Socialists, he went out of his way to list the differences between how the First Christians lived and his understanding of Socialism or Communism.

DeYoung is correct in saying that if we can't make our case for a particular ideology or system from the Scriptures then we need to be upfront in correctly attributing the sources for our thinking to non-Scriptural sources such as practical considerations, history, or the Social Sciences. And overall, DeYoung's article is good and deserves to be read. It is that he could have taken a better approach in answering the question posed by the title of his article.










 

It's All About Trade-offs

I was just visiting a music store where I had taken drum lessons a while back. The owner of the store was telling me how he has had to change his business model because of the sharp increase in internet shopping. In addition, he was telling me how people would go to discount stores to buy the same name brand products he was selling but at a cheaper price only to find out they were buying products of a lesser quality as the products he was selling. In addition, the increase in internet sales not only threatens his business, it threatens many stores where people work and owners earn their wealth.

So in two ways, what my friend was pointing out was that people were shopping without considering the 'trade-offs' of their actions. The term 'trade-off' here is all about the costs-benefits results that comes from a given decision. In my introductory Information Technology class, the definition of 'trade-off' was the first definition I taught.  For with most, if not every, decisions we make, there are costs and there are benefits. And it is our responsibility as adults to research the costs and benefits of each potential decision before making a choice. That is because those who are trying to sell us on a product, policy, or person will only tell us about the benefits of what they are selling; they will rarely, if ever, tell us of the costs. An example of a trade-off was when I bought my one and only sports car for a good price. What I didn't consider when purchasing the car was the costs of maintaining the car so that, in the long run, the car costed more than I anticipated and it broke down to the point where I had to get rid of it much sooner than I anticipated.

When people listened to the campaign speeches of both Trump and Clinton, they were drawn to the benefits promised by each candidate. And what each campaign directed people away from were the costs of what they were promising.  So when Trump won and started his making America great again agenda, some of the costs that people ignored included the loss of regulations that protected both workers and the environment, the still possible loss of healthcare established  under the Obama Administration, and having an unstable person in charge of our Armed Forces and nuclear arsenal at a time when a serious conflict with a nation like North Korea could emerge. It's not that people weren't aware of Trump's personal flaws, it's that they chose to believe that those flaws would not interfere with what he promised to deliver and how he would rule as President.

Those who adhere to political or economic ideologies can also be at risk of making decisions without adequately considering trade-offs. This is especially a concern the more ideological one becomes. For the more ideological one becomes, the more tribal one becomes as well so that one, over time, loses their ability to be objective in recognizing the flaws in their own group and its ideas and the merits that come from other groups and their ideas. The more ideological one becomes, the more one believes that their own group must be fully in charge in order to save whatever portion of the world they are trying to save. The more ideological one becomes the more one believes that their own group cannot afford to share power and work with other groups to solve our problems. That is because the more ideological one becomes, the inherent tribalism that accompanies that affinity for that ideological approach causes one to believe that their group has everything to teach and nothing to learn from others--note that description borrows from a Martin Luther King Jr statement about the West during the Vietnam War.

As mentioned before, as tribalism results from one's growing adherence to a given ideology, the more one's ability to be objective diminishes so that there is not just an inability to recognize the trade-offs of the ideas one is promoting, there is an unwillingness to acknowledge the costs incurred by the carrying out of one's beliefs. That unwillingness becomes hostility to any challenges made to one's own grup and ideology. And that is where we sit now. 

On most websites that promote a given political-economic ideology, we see that the description of one's own ideology is one that claims to have an exclusive ownership to the solutions of our most pressing problems. And it is that belief that their ideology alone will save us is what blinds them to the trade-offs that are inherent in their ideas. And whether their ideological tribalism will blind us to the trade-offs of their views and the automatic rejection of anything that other ideologies have to offer depends on whether we will choose to act as adults. 

The adult decision when presented with any given political-economic ideology is to first be skeptical of any exclusive claims a group makes to having the truth and owning the solutions to our problems. The adult decision when presented with any given political-economic ideology is to investigate and find at least some of the costs that any ideological proposal carries if implemented. And the adult decision when presented with any given political-economic ideology is to examine other political-economic ideologies to see what trade-offs they have so that one starts to borrow from different ideologies in order to create hybrid solutions.