Who Would Jesus Tax?

In an interesting article in the New York Times, Susan Pace Hamill, a law professor at the University of Alabama, cited biblical text in faulting tax policies of states that put a heavier burden on the poor than the rich. Of course, conservative Christian organizations are decrying this, as they focus on charity as the way to help the poor, not redistribution of income. Some have even criticized as using the bible wrongly to justify socialism. After all, we all know that Jesus, had he been alive today, would be a venture capitalist.

While I am neither a Christian nor a biblical scholar, I do think that she is on to something. A couple of things, at that. I’ve long thought that conservative Christians have misused the biblical texts to justify greed, avarice, and power grabbing. In any argument between public and private morality, it is difficult to imagine that the intent of biblical text was a laissez faire attitude to individual greed.

The problem is that we’re dealing with extremes - extreme greed, extreme and false holiness, extreme anger. In “socialist” environments, we deal with extreme socialism - where the greed of individuals is subjugated to the greed of groups. Neither paint the proper picture.

Instead, a gentle, socialist environment - where people get what they need without overt, extreme compulsion - seems to be what is expected. Not a libertarian world without rules, nor an authoritarian “workers” world. Maybe this is what we need to strive for.