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Impeach George Bush
The Poor
In 1988, 11.4% of all taxes were paid by people making more than 100,000/year. In 1999, only 1.36% of all taxes were paid by peole making more than 100,000 a year.
Source: Robbie Lindauer, 2005-10-03
Candidate: Big Government
Jesus’ public ministry began in Galilee, after his temptation by the Devil. He stood up in the synagogue one day and read what he found in the prophet Isaiah (from Isaiah 61 and 58) regarding himself:
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and the regaining of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
(Luke 4:18 &c)
Upon reading this, the crowd was so enraged that they wanted to throw him off a cliff. They were enraged both with the content of what he said – that the year of the Lord’s Jubilee was announced – and with the gall that Jesus had to say it. How dare he say that he was going to announce such a thing?
The year of Jubilee was an essential part of the social law of the ancient Israelites, the law that God had handed down to them by Moses. It protected people from entering into permanent slavery by insisting that all debts be forgiven every seven years – without exception. This and the laws prohibiting the charging of interest on loans, the practice of usury, provided a de facto net for people upon whom poverty fell. Their familial lands were returned to them every seven years and they could never feel the burden of heavy debt because they could never owe more than they borrowed.
Leviticus 25:10 ordains a year of release – when all the inhabitants are to be released from their debts, and they are to return to their lands. And Leviticus 25:14 notes that land can never be truly sold, but only rented for a period of years until the jubilee. In Leviticus 25:17 he says why he’s made this law – because nobody should oppress his or her brothers and sisters. And in Leviticus 25:23 he says why we can’t sell land in perpetuity – because the land belongs to God – we are all renters. We have no right to do so, neither to buy it or sell it.
Leviticus 25 continues to provide conditions for what to do when someone becomes poor – they are to be treated as hired workers until the year of jubilee when they can return to their lands and live as free people again. They are not to be treated as slaves, in fact, God says in Leviticus 25:36 and following that you can’t take interest from someone who has become poor, you can’t treat him like a slave, but instead must take care of him and employ him – and not harshly, and in the seventh year, let them go. And he reminds the Israelites again of why they should be kind this way – because the Egyptians oppressed them, made them slaves – and God saved them from their slavery with zeal, and he reminds the Israelites to fear God who would do the same to them should they become oppressors as well.
In fact, the Israelites did become oppressors. Isaiah and Jeremiah both accused Israel of obeying the sacrificial laws but not obeying the laws of justice – of oppressing the poor, the widow and the orphan. Isaiah 1:4 says:
“The sinful nation is as good as dead,11
the people weighed down by evil deeds.
They are offspring who do wrong,
children who do wicked things.
They have abandoned the Lord,
and rejected the sovereign king of Israel.
They are alienated from him.”
What had they done wrong? He explains first that he’s not interested in “religiousity” – sacrifices, prayers, church-going, etc:
1:13 Do not bring any more meaningless offerings;
I consider your incense detestable.
You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations,
but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations.
1:14 I hate your new moon festivals and assemblies;
they are a burden
that I am tired of carrying.
1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I look the other way;
when you offer your many prayers,
I do not listen,
because your hands are covered with blood.
Who’s blood? The blood of the poor, the oppressed, the widow and the orphan for in Isaiah 1:17 he says what he DOES want:
1:17 Learn to do what is right!
Promote justice!
Give the oppressed reason to celebrate!
Take up the cause of the orphan!
Defend the rights of the widow!
What’s he talking about? He’s talking the following dynamic:
When we sin, we offend God. Some of the things we are what I call “personal sins” – things we do that hurt only us – like having false idols in our houses. But some of the things we do are what I call “social sins” sins that hurt other people. These are by far the majority of sins, both in the extended law of Leviticus and in the Ten Commandments. Lying, stealing, murdering, adultery, covetousness are all “social sins”, their effects are pain for other people, our brothers.
Now God had provided for the forgiveness of sins in his law – by sacrifices and by days of atonement, by prayer and faith. But what he really wanted then and wants now is that we don’t do these things – in particular that we don’t oppress the poor, that we defend the widow and the orphan. How? By treating them as brothers and sisters, as proscribed in the law. By not charging interest, by giving them jobs and treating them as family, by allowing them to return to their familial lands.
So terrible was their failure that by the time Christ got to them, he had nothing but condemnation for them, he said:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone. “
(Matthew 23:23)
What laws are he talking about? He’s talking about the laws of justice – the laws of Leviticus by which the poor and oppressed are redeemed. And he notes that while they’re good at fulfilling some parts of the law, they’ve forgotten the important ones – justice, mercy and faith.
That was before Christ, right. Now that Christ’s here, it’s okay to oppress your brother, right?
No.
In fact, it’s just as wrong now as it was then. And we are reaping the fruits of our disobedience today. OUR disobedience?
Yes. First off, we need to recognize some things about our country and the way it is organized. Our country’s economic system is organized around money, not land. And our money has no “objective value” – it’s useless paper. The value it has is given to it by our government-system. Those people who do things that advance the purposes of our government and the corporations that support it make lots of money and are able to live well while they are doing those things. Those people who don’t, don’t. What do I mean? Well, a corporate lawyer, for instance, makes 200,000 a year and is able to buy an expensive house. A Sunday-school teacher makes 20,000 a year and is barely able to afford his or her food. Is the lawyer really that much more important? Well, it depends on your perspective. From the point of view of money and worldly power, absolutely. They provide an essential service – protecting the interests of corporations from legal disputes that can be devastating to a corporation. A Sunday school teacher relays the messages of the bible to children. Our society doesn’t value that kind of activity as highly. Accurately transmitting the word of God, however, is a very important and objectively valuable thing to do; it requires skill, wisdom, patience, kindness and determination. Not all the people who do it do it well. Some in fact do it badly doing a disservice to the faith even while they try to do the right thing. But that’s not the point – the point is that our monetary system is set up to reward those who promote the earthly power of those in control of that monetary system.
This is why Jesus said “Give to Caeser the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” when asked whether we should pay taxes. He took a coin and noted whose image was on it – whose power and authority and image were served by it. Nothing has changed in these two thousand years. Take out a dollar, whose image is on it? Who’s name is on it? We say on our dollar “in God we trust” but who believes that of our dollar? We trust in our military, in our agriculture, in our science, and our ability to ensure that our dollar is exchangeable. People that promote those goals are rewarded with money and earthly honor. What about people who visit old people in hospices or watch children for single parents?
If the world were organized right, I think, kind people would be the rich ones – with all the land and money and power they could handle. As a result, everyone would have need of nothing for the kind generous people that owned everything would give it away as needed. But that’s not our world. Our world is ruled by the devil. Jesus said so himself in John 12:31:
“Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”
And who is the rule of the world that is to be driven out? Satan.
But back to our theme. In our world – in the United States of the 21st century, we are ruled by money and worldly power. The important institutions in our government are the Military which takes up a whopping 50% of our tax budget in order to ensure the long term military domination of the world by the United States (and which has exploded in recent years to much more than 50%), and the IRS which ensures that the government goes on being funded. But note that while in 1900 the wealthiest 1% of Americans paid 25% of the taxes, now it’s the poor who take up the tax burden by far. In 1900 the highest tax rate was 46% paid by millionaires and billionaires. The lowest tax rate was 12% paid by upper-middle class people. Poor people – those barely making enough to survive didn’t pay taxes. Now, everyone who has a job pays taxes and the poor pay 24% and the rich pay less due to tax shelters and tax schemes that apply to wealthy and not to poor people. For instance, how many poor people do you know that form a corporation in a separate country and make all their checks go to that foreign country in order to avoid American taxes? And yet this is exactly what Vice President Dick Cheney’s company did while he was the CEO. Vice President Cheney continues to receive $1 Million/year from Haliburton for the great job he did, nearly 5 times his salary as vice President.
And what about the poor? In the United States, almost nobody owns a home. Everyone has a mortgage or rent to pay. In terms of Old Testament laws, then, we are slaves. Personally, I owe in my mortgage far more than I have in terms of assets. What does that mean? That I’m a slave. If you owe more money than you have, you are a slave too. We treat our own countrymen as slaves – and with no right of return. There was a time when you could declare bankruptcy at least – start over. It was the 7-year law. But that time is past. Now debts are permanent. We don’t declare any kind of jubilee for the oppressed. Nothing is new, though, under the sun.
When the sharecroppers of Virginia were set free from their slavery, they were rented the land on which they could work to farm and produce for the same people to whom they were enslaved. While they were technically free to go, they had not the resources to leave – no horses, no cattle, no tools, no money. Earning and saving enough money to leave was near impossible – less than 1% of sharecropper families were able to save enough money to buy their own land.
Consequently, we have a society of homeless people. Even people who live in houses are just borrowing them from the almighty American Union. But this isn’t as it should be. God said that the whole world is His, not Uncle Sam’s.
In Revelation 3:14 Christ says to the church at Laodicea
“Because you say, “I am rich and have acquired great wealth and need nothing,” but do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked, take my advice and buy from me gold refined by fire so you can become rich! Buy from me white clothing so you can be clothed and your shameful nakedness will not be exposed, and buy eye salve to put on your eyes so you can see.”
I am convinced that he’s talking to us. For Americans generally regard themselves as lucky – rich, in need of nothing. And when we look around, it’s mostly true – if we want something to eat we can usually get it. If we need clothes, we can usually get them. But the truth is, we’re simply blind to our poverty, both worldly and spiritual. In worldly terms, our debt-culture has ruined our economy to the point of desperation for the poorest among us and has made our “middle class” into servants of the Federal Reserve System and what Roosevelt aptly called the Military-Industrial complex. And in spiritual terms because we’ve forgotten our primary duties, just as the Jews had, to be kind, administer justice and mercy to the poor.
I am urging us to do what Christ said to the church at Laodicea to do, he continued:
“All those I love I discipline. So be earnest and repent! Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking. If anyone opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me. I will grant the one who conquers permission to sit with me on my throne, just as I too conquered and sat down with my Father on His throne.”
How can we get there? By faith we will get there. He says to buy from him white clothing - the clothing of forgiveness of sins so that our sins are forgiven. He says to buy from him gold refined by fire – the fire of obedience in a world of adversity, the treasure stored up in heaven of kindness, mercy and love.
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User Originated Comments:
From: Karl
2005-10-06 11:57:25
bravo!
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