Of course people got sick in Jesus's time. All I'm suggesting is that modern states, with modern medicine, have the capacity to promote people's health in ways that would have been utterly unimaginable to the rulers of first-century Galilee.

I just don't think Jesus gave much mind to the appropriate role of government, whether large or small. What mattered to him was that individuals did not treat one another with love, because, he felt, they had forgotten God.

"you've got a long way to go to demonstrate that God thinks its particularly compassionate of YOU to make SOMEONE ELSE pay for a 'charitable' service.

All government is inherently redistributive. Every single payment we make to government is redistributed to ends that the government considers a "public good".

I don't have kids of school age; but my taxes pay for other parents' kids to be educated. I don't support either war we're currently fighting, but my taxes still pay for them.

Even so, that is fair and just, because it was agreed by the representative democracy under which I live that we should collectively pay for those things.

Jesus never suggests that making payments to government is an inherently bad thing, even when that government is as corrupt, undemocratic and tyrannical as the Roman government was. Remember, when Jesus refers to Caesar, he's talking about Tiberius, a gloomy, paranoid tyrant noted for executing traitors without trial. Jesus was simply more focused on the Kingdom of Heaven than on the particular policies followed by earthly governments.

As for whether health insurance reform of this kind works, the closest example of this kind of system is in Massachusetts where I live, and it does appear to work here. Oh, it's a half-reform - it doesn't control costs nearly as well as a more socialized system would - but it works much better than what prevailed before.

just because some kids don't have good parents (or no parents at all) that doesn't mean we turn parenting over to the state. Just because some people lack the ability to pay for their own health care it doesn't follow that you turn health care over to the state.

Anthony, ObamaCare does not turn health care over to the state. It doesn't even offer a government insurance program. All it does is to require people to buy private insurance, subsidize them if they can't afford it, and require private insurers to cover everyone for a reasonable set of medical services. That's it.

So we're not even discussing whether it's a good idea for the state to provide health care, like it does for veterans and Native Americans, only whether it's a good idea for them to intervene in the market to ensure that nearly everybody gets covered by private companies. Focus on the matter actually at hand!

If this means that Christians ought to be deeply ashamed that the government had to step in to help people because the Church dropped the ball... well, you'll hear no arguments from me. But the solution is not to turn to the government, but to call the Church to task.

Churches, and nonprofits, do great work; but they can't shoulder all the load. If they could, they would have done so - it's not for lack of trying.

But again, we're not talking about church versus government provision of care, but whether people should receive subsidies to enable them to buy private insurance coverage, and be required to buy it, in exchange for a guarantee that the coverage will be of reasonable quality.

If you're proposing that churches should provide those subsidies rather than government, then tell me how it would work.

I can see that they might provide such subsidies to their members, and would be able to do so if the church was rich and large; but people not affiliated with such churches will not get the subsidies unless rich and large churches are required by law to provide subsidies to members and non-members alike, which would violate the Free Exercise clause. Members of poor or small churches would get covered only for the cheapest preventative care, and would logically be left in the cold if anything really expensive came along.

I just don't see that this would work better, or be any more just, than what ObamaCare will do.

Hi Zander, in response:

"You might as well argue that he considered aeroplanes immoral."

I don't think this is a very viable way to go. There weren't airplanes, but there were governments. Are you trying to suggest that people were never in need of medical care? They were never hungry or poor? Seriously?

"What we do have is his refusal to denounce tax-collectors simply because they were the agents of government."

That's because nothing in Jesus' message is to be construed as being 'anti-government,' which we agree upon. But to advance your case- even a little- you would have to offer some discussion on Jesus' views on the PURPOSE of government.

Good luck. :)


"I do think that Jesus would prefer the wounded man to get care rather than not"

Well, you're welcome to provide actual evidence for your view about what Jesus would prefer.

"and would be unlikely to feel that the person providing care was only being neighborly if the money he used was from his own pocket."

Maybe Jesus would prefer someone receive care than not- although he did get a little annoyed when people came to him in John 6 wanting only to have their bellies filled.

But even if we grant that, you've got a long way to go to demonstrate that God thinks its particularly compassionate of YOU to make SOMEONE ELSE pay for a 'charitable' service.

I'm not interested in sentimentality here. As far as sentiments go, I'm like the next guy wishing that we could help everyone, and otherwise entertain whatever solution creates warm and fuzzy sensations in my stomach. But then we get into real world application. What actually works? What actually is right? Setting aside notions that make us FEEL compassionate, what ideas actually ARE compassionate?

So, if you can think of any place in the Bible, old testament or new, where it is presented as a morally sound idea to compel others to do good works instead of you doing them yourself, I'd be happy to hear them.

As far as the question about what to do if there is no one to do those good works, I think that isn't a bad question and is worth asking. However, just because some kids don't have good parents (or no parents at all) that doesn't mean we turn parenting over to the state. Just because some people lack the ability to pay for their own health care it doesn't follow that you turn health care over to the state.

If this means that Christians ought to be deeply ashamed that the government had to step in to help people because the Church dropped the ball... well, you'll hear no arguments from me. But the solution is not to turn to the government, but to call the Church to task.

In Jesus's time, there was no government provision of such services. Jesus's not referring to them cannot be taken to signify disapproval, merely that they did not yet exist. You might as well argue that he considered aeroplanes immoral.

What we do have is his refusal to denounce tax-collectors simply because they were the agents of government. He does not argue that they should not collect taxes, nor argue for the overthrow of the Roman administration as a corrupt tyranny, though in many ways it was.

In your parable, you also introduce conscious anachronisms. Nobody filed for bankruptcy in first-century Palestine either.

My point in the parable is that, if nobody else is coming to help the wounded man, it is better that someone paid by Caesar to do so comes and does it.

Would Jesus appreciate the kind of person who hears about someone's health care woes, and superciliously lectures him about how he caused his own injuries by showing insufficient personal responsibility?

Jesus, no doubt, would prefer it if someone came along and paid for him out of his own money, and so would I; but sometimes, sadly, nobody does come.

I do think that Jesus would prefer the wounded man to get care rather than not, and would be unlikely to feel that the person providing care was only being neighborly if the money he used was from his own pocket. There's more to this story than the source of the money spent.

Hi Zander,

I don't think you're playing the game right. For you to play the other side of the issue, you'd have to find a passage where Jesus was on record saying that we should use Caesar to do our good works... but of course there aren't any.

Your telling here proves the point: in this famous parable, Jesus does not say anything about the 'neighbor' being someone so designated or delegated or paid to do so. The neighbor was the one who stopped and paid for the man's care out of his OWN funds.

That's what made what he did 'special.' So, unless you had intended to further my point, I don't think you played it right.

Luke 10:29-37

"Who is my neighbor?"

Jesus said:

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.

A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side, saying, "How sad that he has, by being unarmed, improvidently caused himself to be assaulted! I would help him, but then it would reduce his incentives to learn how to defend himself from robbers."

Then a physician, who was paid to assist travelers using taxes we pay to Caesar, came to the place and saw him, went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on a donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him, again out of the money we pay to Caesar.

The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, Caesar will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these two do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied,
"The priest, because the physician was a socialist lackey of a tyrannical government who tramples on our freedoms."

"No," said Jesus. "It was the one who had mercy on him. The fact that his neighbor cared for him using money derived from taxation is not important, because we render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and what is God's to God. What matters is that his wounds were bound. The physician who bound them was truly a neighbor to him, even if he was being paid through taxation to do it.

Go and do likewise."

Also,

Let us not forget the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25...

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:14-30&version=AMP

The master, upon returning home, rewarded the man who took 5 talents and turned them into 10. He rewarded the man by taking the 1 talent given to another man who buried it.

Using the left's logic, the man who buried his one talent should be rewarded.