In this week's Harvard Law Record (the student newspaper), a columnist wrote about how he's a Christian and a Democrat at the same time. Read it here. His major purpose seemed to be quoting New Testament scripture where Christ says, essentially, "Blessed are the poor; wo unto the rich." The author then says, "How can the Christian Right campaign against welfare, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, progressive income taxes, all that stuff? Aren't your positions just flatly contrary to the Bible?"

He invited responses, so I emailed him:

Well, you asked for responses from conservative Christians. I’m more of a social conservative than a libertarian conservative, but I thought I’d offer my take on your column in today’s Record. I think the first fundamental difference is a slightly different interpretation of religious doctrine, and I can’t hope to change your views (that is, you can say "baloney" all you want), but it might help for me to just explain what I think.

First, I believe that Jesus DOES love rich people. He loves all mankind, regardless of socioeconomic status. What he doesn’t like so much is people who make riches, not God, the focus of their lives. And riches seem to have a tendency to make people forget God. If you’re poor, you have a tendency to be humble and remember God. It’s really just a matter of priorities. God first, material things later. A scripture I believe in, from the Book of Mormon, explains it well: “But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.” Jacob 2:18-19.

In fact, one of the New Testament scriptures you quoted backs up this point as well. When, in Luke 18, the rich young man asked Christ what he yet lacked, Christ’s response was, “sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.” In your column, you left off the last phrase, but I think that’s the most important part. It’s not the giving up of his wealth per se that will be the “clincher” for the rich young man; it’s the demonstration that he loves Christ more than he loves his wealth. Rich or poor, Christ commands us: “Come, follow me.” Rich or poor, if we do, that’s enough.

That said, I’m not sure I follow your logic about taxes. Even if we assume that Jesus prefers poor people to rich people, I don’t see how that means that tax cuts are bad. Perhaps if you consider wealth an actual sin that deserves punishment, higher taxes on the rich could play the role of the punishment. But vengeance is the Lord's, not the government's. I suppose you could argue that the more taxes we pay, the poorer everyone will be, and therefore the more righteous. But if that’s the case, then wouldn’t Jesus want us to just simply forego gainful employment altogether and live in a ditch? The way I see it, nowhere does Christ say that we should take whatever measures we can to reduce people’s wealth for the sake of reducing it. All he says is that we shouldn’t make anything—including wealth—a higher priority than him.

His response:

Hi matt - thanks for the thoughtful email. . . . I don't think we disagree much actually. I am absolutely positive Jesus loves rich people. And I agree that his point wasn't that wealth is per se bad, but that working to get rich often runs the risk of drawing our attention away from the glory of God. I don't even take Jesus literally when he says "distribute your money to the poor." I think his point, as usual, was more profound. It was more like, "always see the opportunity for doing good that's staring you right in the face. And don't get too self-satisfied."

There's an implicit argument when I start applying his message to tax policy, which is that one of the principal things the government does is it redistributes wealth. People wince at that phrase, but mainstream economists would agree that there are only 2 basic functions for the government. One is to provide for public goods that get under-funded in a market economy - things like roads and defense. I would include in "public goods" the regulation of markets to correct externalities like pollution. The other function of government is redistributing wealth. No matter how much some people protest against wealth redistribution, no one in the 21st century except the staunchest of libertarians would disagree with at least some forms of wealth redistribution, like progressive income taxation.

some government programs blend wealth redistribution and public goods, for example medicare. health is a public good in that investment in health care helps us all and in that if some people don't get health care, we all suffer because they are contagious. but medicare also redistributes wealth since rich people could pay for their own health care. the rich are paying more into medicare than they are getting out, and vice versa for poor people. The vast majority of Americans, I think, would support this form of wealth redistribution; indeed it is so ingrained that we don't even think of it as wealth redistribution any more.

Still, the government has a finite pool of resources. When we cut taxes, the government has to provide less in terms of services, at least at some point. In that sense, tax cuts tend to reduce the amount of wealth redistribution the government is capable of performing. That's not the necessary result of a particular tax cut, but the tax cuts that Republicans seem most interested in are tax cuts skewed toward benefiting the rich, like cutting capital gains taxes, estate taxes, the highest bracket of income taxes, etc. The rhetoric behind these tax cuts is often, in my mind, very un-Christian - for example "it's your money." Well, in one sense it's "your money," but Jesus would seem to me to prefer that if you're already a millionaire, you give it to someone else. It seems like a very selfish attitude - "I earned it, I deserve it, hands off everybody else." I just don't think Jesus would like that very much.

Now you might say, people should decide for themselves how much to donate. The government should get out of the redistribution business and leave that to private decision-making. For one thing, I have a problem with this argument since the empirical reality is that if everyone decided for themselves, we would have a lot less wealth redistribution. Government steps in and makes us eat our carrots, so to speak - it's easier to vote for generous programs when we know everyone will share the bill than to donate on our own. We all know that when a millionaire keeps more money this year because of Bush's tax cuts, most of it stays in his pocket.

More importantly, this to me sounds like arguing against considering Christ's message when we design our tax policy. Yet the same people who would argue against thinking about Jesus's message regarding tax policy - i.e. Republicans - are much more likely to support infusing our social government policies with Christianity. I think that is hypocritical. After all, I think Jesus's instructions to help the needy, not to get too obsessed with wealth, etc. are very central to his message and key to Christianity. Whatever Jesus might think about, say, homosexuality, I think it is unarguably not the centerpiece of his gospel. He never said a word about homosexuality, at least not directly. He said a great, great deal about the poor and the rich, about charity and giving. So it frustrates me greatly that those who are most interested in investing our government with a Christian slant often seem to advocate for the least compassionate, generous, and I think Christian tax and welfare policies. And this is what I don't understand.

So I agree with you: Jesus wouldn't want us to tax rich people just to make them poorer. He is not anti-rich for its own sake. But I think he would want a greater share of the tax burden to fall on the rich so we could treat the needy with more Christian compassion and generosity - yes, through government just as in our private lives. And I think Jesus would be disappointed by rich people who spend a lot of effort lobbying for tax cuts instead of being happy to sacrifice a disproportionate amount of their own possessions to serve those less fortunate. But obviously, my views on Jesus don't matter much to most people, and that's fine I guess.

Best, Chris

My response to his response:

Thanks for YOUR thoughtful email. It's kind of fun to have polite debate. I'm
glad you agree with the main point I was making. I just didn't feel you made
it too clear in your column that it's not richness for richness's sake that
Christ disfavors.

As for tax policy, you make a powerful argument. I must admit that I haven't spent much time pondering tax policy or developing much of a personal opinion about it. I think it is undisputable that Christ would have the wealthy use their wealth to help those less fortunate. The scripture from the Book of Mormon I quoted makes that very explicit: "and ye will seek [riches] for the intent to do good." Whether he would have the government take over the role of requiring people to use their wealth to do good is a debatable question. You have a well-formed and well-thought-out opinion about it; I confess that I'm not sure. I guess one argument against your position (that I'm not sure I subscribe to) would be that tax money isn't always used to benefit the poor; a lot of it goes to bloated and unnecessary government programs that do few people any good.

Last summer I worked for the National Endowment for the Arts, an organization that uses taxpayers' money to do something as trivial as create art. In its most basic conception, I suppose the NEA's purpose is, as you say, to redistribute wealth. And I do support its purpose--a lot of great art couldn't get created if the government didn't redistribute wealth in this way. It's that whole libertarian bent of Republicanism that I'm not so sure I subscribe to.

For me, the bottom line is that I believe that if the wealthy really do put Christ first in their lives, as Jesus himself invited the rich young man to do, they will use their riches for good voluntarily. In my own personal life, I hope to always remember that, and use whatever riches I obtain for good, whether the government forces me to or not.

Thanks for this conversation. You've got me thinking about something I've never really thought about before. That's one of the things I most like about HLS.