Ask a Pastor Ep. 65 - Politics & Wealth Redistribution
Episode Description
This episode Director of Worship Arts, Dan Shields, talks with Teaching Pastor and Geneva College Professor, Dr. Terry Thomas, about the church speaking on political issues, the idea of wealth redistribution and what the Bible has to say about these topics.
Resources for Further Study
Politics According to the Bible by Wayne Grudem - https://amzn.to/2MQJroy
Episode Transcript
Dan Shields: Hello and welcome to Ask a Pastor. My name is Dan Shields. I'm part of the worship staff here at Orchard Hill Church and I am joined by Dr. Terry Thomas from Geneva College, who is also an adjunct teacher here at Orchard Hill.
Dan Shields: Welcome, Terry.
Terry Thomas: Good to be here.
Dan Shields: Good to see you. I'm thrilled to be able to interview you. I'm sitting in for a Kurt Bjorklund, today. He had to take off, so I'm taking over his spot. Normally, I'm over in that seat, but today I'm over in this seat and I'm glad to be with Dr. Terry Thomas-
Terry Thomas: That's the hot seat, watch yourself.
Dan Shields: It is warm still. I have to admit something to you, Terry. I don't know if I've ever told you this before, but my wife a long time ago, she was, for some reason I was thinking about a message of yours and I was thinking about how much I appreciate it and my wife looked at me and she said, "I love you." And I looked and I was just thinking this in my head as she said that and I said, "I love Dr. Terry Thomas." It's the truth. It's the honest truth. You can ask my wife about that.
Dan Shields: Anyhow, I'm glad to be here with Dr. Terry Thomas.
Terry Thomas: Good, good.
Dan Shields: A little awkward, but so we have a question here and this question just to let your viewers know, it's about a page-and-a-half long, so I'm going to sort of highlight what was said in this question. We're going to talk about some of these things.
Terry Thomas: It was very, very thoughtful.
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: I think the person took the time to make their point what they're interested in, and did a good job.
Dan Shields: It's very cogent in what they said and how they said it. I won't be able to ask all of it, but let me, let me walk through a couple of sections. I see this as a three-part question and we're going to start with the first question, which Bill O'Reilly was talking about the Johnson Amendment, and our ability as a church to speak into political issues and how far we should be able to speak.
Dan Shields: A lot of churches, they sort of have some political biases that they try to sort of portray a certain side of politics through what they speak from the pulpit. There are some laws regarding that and we'd like to talk a little bit about your thoughts on that and how far should a church be able to go in influencing politics and being a part of the political arena? And what's the proper response for us in the church speaking into the world of politics?
Terry Thomas: Yeah. Again, I thought that a little blog, a little thing by Bill O'Reilly, a helpful thing. You get ideas about things you've not heard about. I'd never heard of the Johnson Amendment before that. I did a little study on it and so forth, and what happened was that in 1954 when Lyndon Johnson was a Senator from Texas, he suggested an amendment to a tax bill, okay, that prohibited 501(k) tax-exempt organizations-
Dan Shields: Non-profits.
Terry Thomas: Non-profits from endorsing or opposing particular political candidates or laws overtly. Okay. Now two things. One is you should know is that when it came up and was added to the Tax Code, it not discussed and there was no opposition to it. It might've gone a little under the radar at that point.
Terry Thomas: Since then, there's been discussion in opposition of it, but it has never been repealed. It is part of the present Tax Code, this Johnson Amendment, which again, I was not aware of that before I, I heard about this-
Dan Shields: What it says basically, is there's a limit to what people can say from the pulpit endorsing a political candidate or certain political views.
Terry Thomas: Or, opposing them.
Dan Shields: Or, opposing them.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, now here's a little aside, in a sense context. 1954 okay, so you might wonder what issues might have been in the forefront in Texas in 1954 that made you want to do that? I'm thinking civil rights issues.
Dan Shields: Sure.
Terry Thomas: I think it was about personal and systemic racism issues and perhaps maybe a way of trying to hold back a voice that was speaking for justice. You can see why people today might have opposition to something like that. They might say, "Hey, why do you want to quell the voice of people who want to speak to issues of justice and fairness, and what's right?" Which I'm sympathetic to.
Dan Shields: Sure.
Terry Thomas: But on the other hand, you'd have to say this. One of the things is that these organizations oftentimes are not a regulated in the same way as other organizations are. And so you could easily see how one-sided contributions, for instance, could manipulate institutions to support or oppose a particular candidate and could be overwhelming in that sense.
Terry Thomas: But it's not just churches, it's all kinds of non-profit organizations, protection for animals or whatever, [inaudible 00:05:12].
Dan Shields: Let me ask you something then with that. The church, obviously, we are a moral institution, so there are certain morals that the churches would hold to and we're to speak the truth in love.
Dan Shields: Where is that distinction in the political realm then outside of the law? I mean, what would you see as being important for us to be able to ... How do we speak to a culture that might not be seeing things from our morals?
Terry Thomas: Well, you got to, you got to remember, that when the apostles were traveling around in the local authorities, the king at that point, told them to stop talking about what they were talking about. They said, "Hey, look, our primary responsibility is to God, and we can't stop, regardless of what the ramifications are going to be for us, we can't stop saying what we need to say to be able to do it." I think Christians have a sense that and Americans have a sense that freedom of speech is about that. You can't prohibit somebody from saying what they think is important and speaking their conscience on those issues. 0
Terry Thomas: Again, I think you're right, I think the church has a responsibility at certain points to speak. Now do they need to speak on every single issue and every single candidate? Probably not. That's probably not the case. Maybe in the clearest of cases it might become ... Hey, by the way, no one has ever been brought, there's never been any charges brought against anybody for the violation of the Johnson Amendment. So there's this ... And President Trump recently has said that he would try to abolish it if he could.
Terry Thomas: Now, you wonder again. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Do you want non-profit institutions that aren't regulated as to where all the money comes from and so forth, to become in a sense super PACs for particular points of view. Because I'm sure we could come up with one that somebody would say, "Well not that one."
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: Or, "Not that one," so that's an issue. On one hand, I'd say, hey, we want to speak freely and with conscience and have the liberty to be able to do it. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that we want to become the point of the church is to be political at that point.
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: Here's the second thing. We live in a highly-polarized political culture right now in America. It seems like to some degree we could hardly get anything done in Congress or through the government to some degree because people can't agree. Two opposite sides tend to be diametrically opposed to each other and they tend to be moving further away.
Dan Shields: Right, right.
Terry Thomas: And in their discussion of it, the rhetoric is so-
Dan Shields: Volatile. Inflammatory.
Terry Thomas: Yes, so volatile and inflammatory that it seems like you almost feel hopeless that you would ever come to.
Dan Shields: I heard somebody once say, "The opposite of pro is con and so the opposite of progress would be congress."
Terry Thomas: That's good. But you think, it's not that we want to simply say we want bi-partisan, we want justice for people. We want correct decisions to be made. If one group holds it and the other one don't, okay. Well, then the one that we think is right, we would be for that, whichever one it is.
Dan Shields: Let me push into that for a second because, we have gotten into a not only a polarization of parties that seem to hold more extreme views on either side in sort of the extreme voices have become the loudest voices and the median voices are a lot quieter. They're not as interesting for people in the media, I think. But there's a number of reasons for that happening, I think.
Dan Shields: But one question is, in Christianity today, there seems to be a strong alignment with the church, with a particular political party. Now it has not always been that party, incidentally, if you look historically at the church, but that's the case today. Do you think there's any dangers of the alignment of political party with the church itself?
Terry Thomas: Oh, no question about it. That in either way, in a sense, whatever party it is at that point, because as you said earlier, the church's job is to have a voice that we think is about accountability, and moral authority, and justice. The implication would be that if this institution is on your side, you must be right.
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: I think that's a dangerous situation to simply say, simply because these institutions on your side, you're right.
Dan Shields: Martin Luther made some real distinctions about the church and the state, and the state being able to wield the sword and be the arm of protection for the people. But the primary job of the church, really is to present Jesus Christ and redemption and what the story of redemption really is. And when there's an intermixing, he felt like things could really get ugly and volatile very fast.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, him being in Germany, there's the case.
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: You have the rise of Nazism in a certain sense, and if nothing else, the default approval of the church to be able to do it. And so, you have very few people like Life Together guy, what's his name?
Dan Shields: Bonhoeffer.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, thanks. Who were, in a certain sense, brave enough to speak out against that and you see what happened to them. They become a target of oppression.
Dan Shields: Sure.
Terry Thomas: From the regime because they counter the typical message.
Dan Shields: And again, the church there looked very different and looks currently very different because it was a state-run church. So the state-run church had a head that was appointed by the government. In this case, it was the Nazi government and Hitler was smart enough to put a Nazi in over them. So he essentially took over and usurped the authority of the church, so even Rome didn't quite have the authority over some of their people that they felt an allegiance to this guy that they'd put in power.
Terry Thomas: Here's the other thing I'd say, in spite of the fact that we have this polarization, everybody seems to think that the issues are black and white. I think that the issues of public justice are very complex, very, very complex and they're not getting any easier, they're getting more complex. I would say it's probably for Christians, okay, I would say that their responsibility is to be good citizens and to support, and develop a perspective about what just public life ought to look like. I'm just not so sure that they need to have the church be the one that's trying to work out the subtle details of that.
Terry Thomas: I think of an organization I supported, the Center for Public Justice in Washington DC. It's an evangelical think tank, so to speak, of Christians trying to figure out what does justice look like around the issues that are being discussed present day, and they're not right wing, left wing kind of a thing. They are trying to say, "Hey, look. Let's do our due diligence on seeing some of the complexity of these things and see where, as we're moving forward, what best seems to support that in terms of public policy?" The dilemma is, that even when that happens, you aren't guaranteed some sort of perfect public policy.
Dan Shields: Sure.
Terry Thomas: You could say, well, we were doing that but we're not getting what we want always from it. Yeah, that's life right there. You can do what you think is the right thing. It doesn't always turn out the way you want. But I do think Christians have that responsibility. And this is what I think is really great about this person's question is, that they have the responsibility to try to determine what does the kingdom of God mean to political life in the world, and how should we be involved in that faithfully, as Christians?
Dan Shields: I think that's an important point that you make. I often say, if you look through the glasses of politics and you view your religion through politics, you will get a twisted view of what Christianity really is. If you look first through the word of God in those glasses, and then you look at the world of politics, first of all, you'll see things on both sides of the fence that would agree and disagree with the word of God. And you realize, that we're Christians first, who serve our ultimate King, not just the King of this earth, first and foremost.
Dan Shields: All right, well, let me jump into the second question because we spent some time on that. So this guy's going to be asking about redistribution of wealth and how we should view our tax structure, and the sort of chasm of difference between the very wealthy and the very poor, and how we should look as a country. Should we look as we've looked for years, or should that begin to change as this country changes? Let me read a part of this question.
Dan Shields: He had a couple of pages of questions, but he said, "A significant political message being presented by almost 100% of one of the party's major political candidates proclaims that everyone should receive everything at no cost, be it free medical care, free housing, free tuition, free border access and free accountability from human moral responsibility and all other free rides, which I could list. So what gives with respect to how our Christian faith views this development, and does the Christian message subscribe to a precept that everyone deserves everything by definition because we're all God's children?"
Dan Shields: How would you tackle that? What would you say? The basic idea is this, that there are some who say, shouldn't we all enjoy the monetary benefits of the society that we're in? There shouldn't be poor. There shouldn't be people who are in need because there's people who are very wealthy and shouldn't we be able to distribute that and share it? And that's a common message that we hear today in some political arenas.
Terry Thomas: Yeah, and his description of it, is the description of the way in which the dialogue's been polarized. You can see, it's the free everything versus personal accountability.
Dan Shields: Right.
Terry Thomas: And that's the way it appears, and I think that's the way people play it, even though the politicians play it because they think it's easier to sell somebody on that. Or, as you said, it's better entertainment to sell it that way.
Dan Shields: Right.
Terry Thomas: Well, here's a couple of things. One is I would say we were talking about that quote by Winston Churchill, "That democracy was the worst type of government, except for all the rest." And someone else says, "Could you say the same thing about capitalism?"
Dan Shields: Right.
Terry Thomas: That might be the case. If you really were trying to say, "Hey, we should have a communist, not just socialists, but move beyond that to, in a certain sense, from each according to his ability to each according to his need, total redistribution of wealth throughout."
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: That experiment has already failed.
Dan Shields: For sure.
Terry Thomas: You don't need to know whether that was a good idea or not.
Dan Shields: We had 80 years of that experiment.
Terry Thomas: It did not go well.
Dan Shields: Right.
Terry Thomas: But now you see in a certain, in the very place where it didn't go well, they have to some degree modified it in a more free market of it. It doesn't seem to be going real well there. There's a lot of brokenness and a lot of stuff going on there that you wouldn't want.
Terry Thomas: I think that what we're talking about is we're talking about people being responsible, but at the same time recognizing that there are great needs of people in the world that you want to address. If you're just going to focus it on that issue about giving people things, if it's just about taking care of people who don't have.
Terry Thomas: Now should people be held responsible to some degree for the things that they're doing? Sure. In the New Testament, when people weren't working because they decided that the Christ was going to return the next day. The apostle told they, "Hey, if they don't work, don't let him eat."
Dan Shields: Don't eat, yeah.
Terry Thomas: He was trying to say, "Hey, motivate them to take responsibility, in a right way for where we're at right now," and so forth. I think we can demand that of people, that they be responsible.
Dan Shields: Yes.
Terry Thomas: But the reality is, that some people have great needs and we got to figure out how to meet those needs. That as Christians, that's our job to love people.
Dan Shields: Let me ask you this. In the Acts II church for instance, it said that those who had wealth, if they had a field or something like that, if they saw people in need, they would sell what they had and they would share it with others.
Terry Thomas: Right.
Dan Shields: Is that what our responsibility is? And to this question, as a society, is that which we should do not just with the church?
Terry Thomas: Well, let's make the distinction between the church and the state. Okay. The church of the state are two different things. Okay. In the Book of Acts, that idea of holding all things in common of living in community. And by the way, we have today Christian communities that live in that way, where they live in a places where they hold all things in common, and there is no personal property, and that kind of thing.
Terry Thomas: I don't think that's a mandate of the Bible. I think it's an option though. If Christians decide that they want to live in that [inaudible 00:18:56], I think it's legitimate for them to say, I want to live in that [inaudible 00:18:59]. I don't think it's legitimate to demand that of the state, when you could say, "Why are we doing?" Well, they're doing that for another reason because of the church, they're doing that, they're trying to show their love for their brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that is self-sacrificial and meets the demand of the need that they have, and so forth.
Terry Thomas: But I think the Bible's always leaned on that side. You think back in the Book of Leviticus, one of the things about the ... In Leviticus 23 about the fields being, reaping in the fields. They said, "Always leave the outside of the field unreaped or whatever you'd call it." The reason was because you needed to supply food for people who were in need. And by the way, when it says who's in need, it says the poor, the alien, and the person who's like the temporary resident.
Dan Shields: Right. And we have a really good example of that with the Book of Ruth. I mean, when Ruth came back, her mother-in-law lost her husband, and the girls lost their husbands. And they were basically women who are all alone in a very difficult society to be a single woman in. And they went back to Israel and they were able to glean from those fields. I mean, you can see how that was a safety net for people in that time.
Terry Thomas: Right, and I would say this. I would say, sure the state has a certain responsibility to help meet peoples' needs, but at the same time, the church has a responsibility, too, to meet people. How's the church doing on that? And this is where I'm thrown back to in Leviticus 25 about the Year of Jubilee, and canceling of debts, and taking a couple of years off from growing stuff.
Terry Thomas: The Bible's honest enough for God to say this, "I know what you're thinking when I ask you to do these things. I know what you're thinking, as you're thinking hey, a brother's going to come to you who needs some money and you're going to say, hey, it's two years before the Year of Jubilee, where the debts are all going to be canceled. If I give them money, I'm never going to get it back."
Dan Shields: If your credit card company said this December, we're going to cancel all debts, most people would run up there.
Terry Thomas: Exactly. So you're thinking, "Oh, man. This is unbelievable." As a result, what does God say? He says, "Look, don't be tight-fisted. Don't be hard-hearted, be open-handed. Love people the way that I've loved you in an unconditional way." That sounds very different than, "Make everybody earn their keep or they don't get what they need."
Dan Shields: Okay, so if I hear what you're saying, the church then should care for the poor and it should, in a sense, redistribute wealth. If there are people who have, and there are people who have not, the people who have should help out.
Dan Shields: How would this play then into us interacting with politics? Is that a right view for us to keep-
Terry Thomas: Well, here's what I would say. I would say, as Christians, it's not simply the church that has to do it. This is where the individualistic notion of the gospel versus a kingdom perspective makes a difference. When you realize that the kingdom perspective includes all various spheres of life, and Christians are involved in these various spheres, all of them have to say, "How do we take responsibility for justice in our sphere of life to be worked out?"
Terry Thomas: In business, I might say, "Hey, I got to figure out how businesses can be reorganized in a way and how I can encourage new business entrepreneurially and so forth, to provide poor people opportunities?" I want to think of new ways to do education, to be able to make sure that people aren't in some cycle of poverty. I want to figure out about how to do housing, it's not just the government, it's not just the church, it's Christians in all these different spheres of life. We don't have that right now. We don't have that kind of full-orbed approach to things.
Terry Thomas: Hey, by the way, back in the time of the Year of Jubilee, you mentioned, too, we were talking earlier, back to the time of Year of Jubilee where all these things are supposed to take place. Where land got its rest, and people got debts forgiven, and he got re-enfranchised into the culture. The people of God never once ever, observed a Year of Jubilee.
Dan Shields: Right.
Terry Thomas: Which makes you think, we tend to be selfish. What we need is we need God to come change our hearts. We need to have that tight-fisted, hardheartedness spoken to us about love and let us be able to meet peoples' needs.
Dan Shields: Yeah, I appreciate that. The Bible talks about a lot of moral issues, and a lot of times, the church will tout those moral issues. But oftentimes in the same list, you'll see greed as one of the moral issues that's in there. Well, that's a good word.
Dan Shields: Well, thank you Dr. Terry Thomas for being a part of this episode of Ask a Pastor. As always, if you have any questions, we would love to answer those questions. You can send them in on our website to Ask a Pastor, and we look forward to being with you next time.
