Liberation Theology And Academia

I usually get academic news about the University of North Carolina from Mike Adams over at TownHall. But once in awhile, an academic will make pronouncements that get beyond the local news. And so it is with UNC Chapel Hill professor Jonathan Weiler. Says the good professor, "the right's hostility to socialism is quite striking given its simultaneous insistence that our first duty as Americans is to pay fealty to God's law which explicitly calls for re-distributing wealth."

That thought is one of the tenets of liberation theology. Depending on which preacher and which pulpit it comes from, Jesus was himself something between a Euro-socialist and a communist. But hearing this nonsense from an alleged intellectual speaking from a secular pulpit drew a bit more public attention. We expect this sort of thing from the Rev. Jim Wallis, who finds things in the Bible that would mystify the Apostles. Wallis is President Obama's unofficial guru, which only partially explains Obama's trip down the road to serfdom. It must please The One that a professor at a respected university agrees with both Wallis and himself.

What brought the professor's crazed rant to the public eye was his fury at Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck quoting Wallis, who said: "My hope is that more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes." Professor Weiler promptly went on that bastion of clear-thinking, the Huffington Post, to say that "Beck says Christians should leave their social justice churches, so I say Christians should leave Glenn Beck." I've mentioned before that though I admire his good intentions, and his blackboard style of presenting his ideas, I personally find Beck a bit too emotional and a bit too simplistic in some of his interpretations of historical facts. But that's a matter of preference in style, not an indictment of Beck's basically very logical and very patriotic stands.

As always, leftist theologians and leftist academics read the Biblical texts on the poor as meaning that the rich should willingly or by force give up their wealth to those who have nothing. Willingly, OK. But the Bible says nothing about the state taking it away from the rich and giving it to the poor. The most often out-of-context quote of Christ regarding the matter is when He said that the chances of a rich man entering into Heaven are the same as those of a camel passing through the eye of a needle. When a follower said that was impossible. Christ responded: "With God, all things are possible."

Likewise, the left repeats that the rich should give up all their goods to the poor. Once again, that's out of context. Christ spoke those words for those who would become his messengers on earth. In other words, his disciples and their successors, and all who preach the gospel. "Many are called, but few are chosen." He drove the money-changers out of the temple, but he did not condemn commerce. There is a time and a place for everything. Christ spoke out against pride in wealth and class, not wealth itself.

The Bible is clear that those who reap the harvest from their lands leave some gleaning for the poor. "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field . . . thou shalt leave them for the poor and strangers." But if everybody is poor, who will take care of the poor? That's a question the left ignores. If the creators of wealth cannot do their jobs, then there is no wealth to be spread around. Except, of course, for the ruling elite, who give nothing away. Check on Obama's and Biden's charity-giving if you think that's not true.

Then check on Bill Gates, or the history of Carnegie, Ford, and the Rockefellers. Those who make great wealth, then horde it to the exclusion of helping those less fortunate are to be condemned, at least in Christian theology. "For those to whom much is given, much is asked." And however, wrong the foundations set up by them may have gone over the years, their clear intention was to give back in the form of great sums of money to help the helpless.

And while we're at it, why not ask liberationists like Jeremiah Wright and Wallis why they are living so large? Wright, particularly, preaches to some of the poorest people in America. He preaches government redistribution of wealth, but seems a bit reluctant to give up his own wealth. Of course, Wright claims that mansion he lives in belongs to the church, so he's not really all that well off. When half his congregation moves into the residence and starts eating his food and spending his money, I'll believe him. For now, the word "hypocrite" comes to mind.

Back to our illustrious professor. He seems to have overlooked the fact that the Founders recognized that equality of opportunity was the only real way to level the playing field between the haves and have-nots. The Bible itself says that "the poor are always with us." We should teach them how to fish. So consider some of the Old Testament words that showed up in the Constitution and oaths of office. "Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause (show preference for the poor man in a dispute)." "Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the great as well as the small (equal justice under law)." "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty (government is to be neutral between the rich and the poor)."

Christ did not preach poverty for the world at large. This was reserved for his disciples, who should not become servants of Mammon. But both the New and Old Testaments make it very clear that all acts of charity are to be done for the love of God and fellow man, and that reward would follow in the Kingdom of Heaven. Supporting the poor rather than helping them is not a Biblical concept. That doctrine which grants the state the power to support the poor at the expense of those who have wealth comes from a different testament--the Communist Manifesto.

As my mother said when I was advocating for the perpetuation of the poor through welfare, "to be poor but proud is a virtue; to be poor and proud of it is a vice."