No, the true cultists are those who look to the State for their sustenance, comfort, and security. Those who believe that without the all-mighty State, all forms of modern life are impossible. Who excuse the State's misdeeds and criminal activity as necessary for our safety. These cultists are so blind that they believe that the ever-broadening violations of our God-given and Constitutionally-codified rights actually somehow secure our liberty. And the funny thing is, these same Statists would certainly look down their noses in disdain or pity at the citizens of countries like North Korea for believing that their leader is a god.
Look, don't many religious cults start with a twisting of the basic tenets of their religion? Then, they build up individuals and groups of people as divine representatives. Their leaders or dogma must not be questioned. There is no thought or debate over these things, only calls of "heretic" for those who dare oppose the divine order.
How are these rabid Statists any different? They have allowed the basic tenets of our republic, the Constitution and founding documents, to be twisted and tortured in ways that defy logic to accrue more and more power to the deified State. While they may grumble about certain government representatives or individual agencies, they may never question the over-all necessity for government to sustain our "way of life." I have yet to see one of these people answer objections with thoughtful, objective apologetics for their view. You are only met with name calling...kook, racist, idiot, cultist...or changing of the subject. Many times I have prompted them to speak to just one specific point in my argument and tell me how I am wrong...They never do.
Then, to make the deification of the State complete, the true believers co-opt religion to justify their worship and eradicate any last resistance of the sheeple. They twist sacred scriptures to make you believe that it is unrighteous to question the truth of their dogma.
In particular, Statists use the Bible to attempt to justify the theft by government of more-and-more of your wealth. They say Jesus advocated taking care of the poor, the sick and the orphans...and indeed he did. Since they have been so indoctrinated in the Cult of State, though, they can't imagine how this can mean anything other than forced redistribution of wealth. In his book Biblical Economics, theologian R. C. Sproul, probably a cultist himself, I guess, begs to differ with the Statists:
"I am convinced that political and economic policies involving the forced redistribution of wealth via government intervention are neither right nor safe. Such policies are both unethical and ineffective…. On the surface it would seem that socialists are on God's side. Unfortunately, their programs and their means foster greater poverty even though their hearts remain loyal to eliminating poverty. The tragic fallacy that invades socialist thinking is that there is a necessary, causal connection between the wealth of the wealthy and the poverty of the poor. Socialists assume that one man's wealth is based on another man's poverty; therefore, to stop poverty and help the poor man, we must have socialism."The evidence is overwhelming that the government is a failure at caring for the poor. Trillions of dollars spent on the so-called "War on Poverty" and we have millions and millions of people who are generationally dependent government hand-outs. I am convinced that it is counter-productive and irresponsible to trust government with caring for the poor. In his book Rollback, Dr. Thomas E. Woods points this out about our so-called Welfare system:
"Another way to approach it is to recall that at least two-thirds of the money assigned to government welfare budgets is eaten up by bureaucracy. Taken by itself, this would mean it would take three dollars in taxes for one dollar to reach the poor. But we must add to this the well-founded estimate of James Payne that the combined public and private costs of taxation amount to 65 cents of every dollar taxed. When we include this factor, we find the cost of government delivery of one dollar to the poor to be five dollars."Is this good stewardship of the wealth with which we have been blessed? How would the master of the Parable of the Talents view this? Even the foolish servant only buried the talents. He did not waste them on some crooked scheme that had a long and continuous history of waste and failure. Especially in view of the fact that the government has no money. It continues to amass huge, crushing debts that will be pushed off to future generations not yet born to pay for its wonderful largess to the poor.
In his article Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist, Lawrence W. Reed provides this summary after an exhaustive study of the Bible:
In Jesus's teachings and in many other parts of the New Testament, Christians — indeed, all people — are advised to be of "generous spirit," to care for one's family, to help the poor, to assist widows and orphans, to exhibit kindness and to maintain the highest character. How all that gets translated into the dirty business of coercive, vote-buying, politically driven redistribution schemes is a problem for prevaricators with agendas. It's not a problem for scholars of what the Bible actually says and doesn't say.
Search your conscience. Consider the evidence. Be mindful of facts. Ask yourself: When it comes to helping the poor, would Jesus prefer that you give your money freely to the Salvation Army or at gunpoint to the welfare department?
Jesus was no dummy. He was not interested in the public professions of charitableness in which the legalistic and hypocritical Pharisees were fond of engaging. He dismissed their self-serving, cheap talk. He knew it was often insincere, rarely indicative of how they conducted their personal affairs, and always a dead end with plenty of snares and delusions along the way. It would hardly make sense for him to champion the poor by supporting policies that undermine the process of wealth creation necessary to help them. In the final analysis, he would never endorse a scheme that doesn't work and is rooted in envy or theft. In spite of the attempts of many modern-day progressives to make him into a welfare-state redistributionist, Jesus was nothing of the sort.
I am all for helping the truly needy. I am all for defending the defenseless. I just don't think Jesus will credit it as righteousness to steal your neighbor's wealth, through government force, to give it to the poor. And, if we are going to look to the Bible, let's look at the whole of scripture:
" For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." - 2 Thessalonians 3:10
"Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." 1 Timothy 5:8
They never want to talk about these passages.
Related Links:
The Ten Commandments of the Federal Government
Godless Socialists
The Sin of Redistribution
