In a bid to reach a trifecta of indifference to the poor, commitment to free-market worship, and a Christianity unrecognizable to its founder, many who identify themselves as Christians have taken a page from the Libertarian playbook and have begun referring to taxation as “theft.” For them, the likelihood of Barack Obama’s win in November means that it’s time, as a certain local pastor blogged, to lock up the silver — an Obama presidency can mean nothing more than highway robbery skidding to an end in your very driveway.
To be fair, these folks decry, generally, the massive spending of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, and most understand the absurdity of cutting taxes during an infectiously expensive war. Still, their vitriol seems to be not just for taxation in general, but for taxation to aid those who, it’s safe to say, would fall under Jesus’ description as “the least of these,” or even “the rest of us” next door.
The common sense, common decency, and commonness-in-community of Americana used to assume that Christians would lead the way in supporting the funding of schools, parks, community centers and libraries; they certainly understood the necessity of maintaining roads, bridges, and tunnels that they and everyone else traveled on. It made sense, at a very recent point in U.S. history, that the church-going and Bible-quoting would be seen as decent, fair, civic-minded neighbors who could be counted on to understand that better public schools made for better communities, and that a fairly simple manifestation of their faith would evidence itself in cheerfully paying taxes to benefit everyone’s children and elderly, not just their own. To be a Christian was to be a good neighbor, a responsible citizen, and an advocate for the betterment of their communities. Those things weren’t salvific, but they were simple. If you were in government, especially in the public schools, you wouldn’t, in times past, even think of having to dread interaction with the churched, or fear the furor of their opposition.
But that was then and this is now, and it turns out that devotion to God really isn’t that simple; that “all for one, we’re in it together” spirit of community was an example of the Church gone astray, simple people simply wrong. The new “Christo-Libertarian” approach to government and taxation is really, it’s said, a return to the Law, and it’s remarkably simple to the arbiters thereof. In fact, it takes a pretzel-logic approach to exegesis and doctrine as well as a determination to chill the heart, but as we see in Moscow, it can be done — and it’s being done pretty damned effectively.
It grieves me to read a pastor’s bitter humor that suggests that an Obama presidency will result in the need for a lockdown of Christian purses and wallets — a “hiding the silver” mentality of contempt, selfishness, and false security. The lockdown, the “hiding of the silver,” is the hardening and closing of our hearts, not just the resolve to keep our wallets shut. We’re together on this Earth and in this community, and there is no greater apostasy than a Christian Church resolutely set on becoming the enemy of the poor, a closed door to its neighbors, and a slanderer of the governmental leadership given us by God.