I noticed that Christianity Today, which has turned hard left in recent years, is now openly endorsing socialism. So, I thought it might be a good idea to listen to this new episode of the Think Biblically podcast, which deals with the issue of Christianity and socialism. The hosts actually brought an economist on to define socialism, then they analyze the teachings of Jesus.
Here’s the description: (H/T Nathan)
It has not been uncommon for advocates of virtually every economic system to invoke Jesus in support of their views, though some of the most ardent advocates for both capitalism and socialism did not have any particular religious views themselves (Rand, Marx). Over the years, some of the more recent advocates of socialist type economic arrangements have appealed to Jesus and the gospels in support of such systems. Economist Lawrence Reed helps us sort out the application of the teaching of Jesus to economics and its relevance for economic life today. Join us for this provocative conversation as he tackles the question of Jesus and socialism.
who should own the means of production in socialism?
how should wealth be distributed in socialism?
what tools does socialism use to provide people with health care, employment, security, etc.
which countries have adopted socialism? North Korea? Cuba? Venezuela? How about the Scandinavian countries?
what in the New Testament has caused people to think that Jesus was a socialist?
did Jesus ever advocate for concentrating power in the government in order to meet the material needs of people?
did Jesus ever advocate for voluntary charity in order to meet the material needs of people?
in our experience, is government seen to be more compassionate or less compassionate than individual people?
does voluntary charity have any advantages over forced redistribution by a powerful central government?
what about the example of common possessions among the earliest Christians?
what is the Bible’s view of wealth? is it always bad to be wealthy, or does it matter how you obtained it and how you use it?
what does the parable of the talents tell us about socialism vs capitalism?
what does the parable of the good Samaritan tell us about socialism vs capitalism?
what does the parable of the three different shifts of workers tell us about socialism vs capitalism?
what about socialist policies and higher tax rates in countries like Canada and Scandinavian countries?
I have to be honest. I think that some of the economics reasoning about the parables was a stretch, because those parables are talking mainly about other topics, not economics. But it’s true that the parables aren’t friendly to socialism even if they are interpreted as being about economics.
Here’s some helpful advice for women about choosing a man
I found a YouTube video featuring a conversation about the fundamental problem that I see with young, unmarried women: their decision to have recreational premarital sex with hot guys throughout their teens and 20s. I realize that this is controversial, but I think by listening to a woman who did this, we can get some clues about how to talk them out of it.
Here is the conversation: (just listen to the first 7 minutes to start)
Note: this conversation contains vulgar language. Listener discretion is advised.
Molyneux gets her talking about the most important question that women who fail with men never want to answer: why did your mother choose this awful, awful man, to be your father out of all the other men in the world? At the end, she really has learned her lesson and gives a good warning to other young women at the crossroads.
Summary of key admissions:
Caller: I’m a 41-year-old single white female who was a bad girl in my 20s. I was raised fatherless by a loving Christian mom. Question: what caused me to fail at life and be living with my (divorced) mother?
I was gifted, very intellectual, top of the class
My mom is a very caring person
My mom approached my Dad when he was already in another relationship (i.e. – her mom was the woman her father cheated with on another woman, then her mom married this cheating man and he dumped the previous woman)
My mom was very attractive, and could have chosen different men, but she was really attracted to this terrible man
My mom had a desire to get away from her strict parents, who she resented
when I was 15 I chose a man, I had recreational sex with him before marriage, and he stalked me and humiliated me
I felt like an adult at age 15, and I had sex with this man then so that I could put childhood behind me and become an adult
My mother counter-acted the absence of my Dad by raising me as a Christian – she was a radical, intense Christian and that hyper-religiosity made me not want to talk about sex with her
My mom divorced my father because he was a jerk
My mom did not mind that he had other children from past relationships, was underemployed, and was lazy
I used to sneak out of my room and sit on the back porch and drink alcohol with the neighbor kids
My mom was a worrier and a control freak, so I rebelled against her warnings and attempts to set boundaries on my wildness
I and my 15-year-old recreational sex partner used a condom from my devout Christian mother’s drawer
I had sex with 5 different boyfriends from age 15-18 and caught mono
My mom had temporary boyfriends after the divorce
In my 20s, “there wasn’t much to do except go out and drink”. “two to three times a week, me and my girlfriends would get dressed up, go to the clubs, and try to attract hot guys”.
From 21-30, I stopped looking for relationships, I just hooked up with hot guys for one-night stands and FWBs
I felt better about myself, more confident and in control when I would drink and have one-night stands with these hot guys
“I don’t know why I was so focused on looks” in these guys
The hooking up stopped at 30, then dating (with sex) resumed
I realized that the hot guys I wanted were not going to settle down, especially with new younger women available
From 15 to now, I’ve slept with 60 different men, sometimes repeatedly, and on and off
I never admitted the true number of men I slept with to any of these men
last relationship was 5 years ago (at age 36)
I have lost interest in sex, and lost interest in men
I don’t have the mental toughness to be in a relationship
I have “been broken” by too many failed relationships
nobody told me that my decisions with men were not going to go well
In the final 8 minutes where Stefan explains the larger consequences of women’s choices for civilization is very important, I think. I was surprised that he spoke directly to the “hot” alpha males that women want and told them that they are breaking women, and share the blame for destroying our civilization. The thing is, I don’t think those hot alpha males care about civilization, or anything except for themselves. So I don’t think it’s going to work to speak to these degenerate men. We have to speak to the women. They are the ones who aspire to marriage and security, and they make the choices that do not lead to the future they want.
I think we need to teach young women, especially fatherless women, to connect their choices with men to the tasks that men actually perform in a married home. I am talking about non-Christian women AND Christian women. What do men do in a marriage on a day-to-day basis? They protect. They provide. They lead on moral issues. They lead on spiritual issues. So, we need to sit down with women and tell them what is important in a man. I have heard Christian women tell me how they married non-Christian men who they were attracted to for superficial reasons, then spent the rest of their lives watching their children grow up without a spiritual leader in the home. I want this to stop happening.
I think the problem is that we need stronger men who are willing to confront women and speak about moral boundaries so that young women who don’t have guidance can at least have the opportunity to make better choices. What we need less is men who agree with women who are making bad decisions. And we need less men who blame that bad men that women freely choose for being bad. Bad men are going to be bad. The only way forward is to tell women not to choose them. This is hard to do, but it is the loving thing to do. It’s not loving to tell women that they can expect the man they choose to give them the traditional male roles when they chose him for superficial qualities that have nothing to do with the traditional male roles.
Well, I gave the reins of the blog over to my friend the senior software engineer last time, and it was one of the most popular posts of the year. So, we’re doing it again. I don’t know where he finds the time to write these things. This time, he has written a post analyzing the conduct of Joseph during the story of Mary becoming pregnant with a very special child.
If you haven’t heard it already, I encourage you to go listen to the classic holiday song “Mary Did You Know?”
Not because it is filled with inspirational content. Quite the opposite. It regularly gets panned, and rightfully so, as an example of a song with a great melody but terrible theology. More can be written about that song along, but I will simply leave you with this: Yes, Mary Knew.
But this post isn’t about Mary. It’s about Joseph. What did he know?
To find out, let’s turn to Matthew 1. Skip past the genealogy. Yes, it contains useful lessons on its own. And let’s look at verses 18-25:
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”
(which means, God with us).
24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife,
25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.
After genealogies, Matthew opens not with a focus on Mary, but with the focus on Joseph. We’re likely used to reading this passage in Church and especially at Christmas time knowing what’s going to happen next. But let’s step back and look at this from Joseph’s perspective.
First, we need to understand what Joseph’s relationship was with Mary. We are told that they were betrothed but not married. While we have those same distinctions today, our emphasis on weddings is the opposite to what the emphasis would have been in Joseph and Mary’s time. And that’s because marriage has historically been viewed as a financial transaction.
Until late in the Middle Ages, marriage consisted of two ceremonies that were marked by celebrations at two separate times, with an interval between. First came the betrothal [erusin]; and later, the wedding [nissuin].
[…]Marriage, as with any type of purchase, consisted of two acts. First the price was paid and an agreement reached on the conditions of sale. Sometime later the purchaser took possession of the object. In marriage, the mohar was paid and a detailed agreement reached between the families of the bride and groom. This betrothal was followed by the wedding, when the bride was brought into the home of the groom, who took actual possession of her.
There is no prescribed duration of time between betrothal and wedding but most of the sources I’ve read say the norm (and even recommended by some Rabbis) was a year. However, the interval between betrothal and wedding could be shortened depending on circumstances. So it’s reasonable to think that Matthew’s gospel opens up somewhere in the year between when Joseph and Mary, and their families, have hammered out, signed, and celebrated their betrothal and when Joseph took Mary into the home he was preparing for her.
It was in this time of waiting and anticipation that Mary comes to Joseph and tells him she’s pregnant. We may be tempted to read that in the modern sense of Mary telling Joseph privately, just between the two of them. But the reality is that Mary’s friends and family knew she was pregnant. This wasn’t something that could easily be hidden. Mary claims divine intervention. Although we, in the 21st century, know this is true, put yourself in Joseph’s position for a minute. Nothing like that had ever happened before. There is no prior reason to expect or believe such a claim. So, Joseph is right in rejecting this explanation and instead decides to dissolve the betrothal.
This is the right decision for Joseph to make. We tend to gloss over this point but I think it’s worth considering in our time where the very suggestion that men prefer debt-free virgins without tattoos is met with shock and rage.
It was not merely Joseph but Joseph’s family that had a contract with Mary’s family. In our time we treat engagements and marriages as if they were only the concern of the individuals who fell in love. The Jewish understanding of marriage is not focused on the individual and neither should we be when reading Matthew.
Joseph had three options for dissolving his unconsummated marriage. He could publicly accuse Mary of being promiscuous. He could quietly dissolve the contract by claiming he was displeased with her. And finally, he could move the taking-home ceremony up and claim the child as his own. Each one of these paths is distinctly different and deserves to be examined.
Public accusation and divorce
Since Joseph and Mary had already signed a contract, and the only thing left to do was take her home and consummate the marriage, Joseph could have made a big deal about Mary violating the terms of their contract. Deuteronomy 22:13-30 has a lot to say here and while it’s worth reading I’ll sum it up by saying this route involved an awful lot of drama. And again, unlike modern marriage dissolutions where the state tries to cover over the ugliness of tearing a one-flesh (i.e. consummated) union apart, the law in Deuteronomy 22 was to air all the grievances.
This would necessitate that Joseph accuse not Mary but Mary’s father of not doing his job in guarding Mary’s virtue.
20 If, however, this accusation is true, and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found,
21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house, and there the men of her city will stone her to death. For she has committed an outrage in Israel by being promiscuous in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.
To go down this route Joseph would first have to come to the conclusion that Mary was evil.
Instead, Joseph’s decision to divorce Mary quietly not only spared Mary’s life. It also spared Mary’s father from a world of pain and shame.
Displeasure
For years I thought this was the only alternative to simply continuing on with the wedding and that Joseph’s decision to put Mary away quietly was a cop-out. But it turns out that a quiet divorce was allowed for exactly this in Deuteronomy 24:1-4
1 If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce,a hand it to her, and send her away from his house.
2 If, after leaving his house, she goes and becomes another man’s wife,
3 and the second man hates her, writes her a certificate of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house, or if he dies,
4 the husband who divorced her first may not marry her again after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination to the LORD. You must not bring sin upon the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.
This could have been either before the wedding or after but there is a strong indication here that this is before the marriage has been consummated. I would argue that Joseph was still wisely holding this option in reserve even after the angel visited him by refusing to have sex with Mary until after the child was born. We know that Joseph eventually fully accepted Mary and the Angel’s explanation for Jesus’s conception, since he went on to have more children, that were fully his own, with Mary.
Shotgun wedding
It’s not uncommon for couples to fail in resisting the urge to come together sexually prior to their wedding night. As a response, most cultures have an acceptable way to fast-track marriages between couples who fail to wait until the wedding to consummate their union (e.g. Exodus 22:16-17). While such a situation is certainly shameful, it is not irreconcilable. It is certainly more desirable for the couple to go ahead and get married and form a family than it is for the child to be born outside of wedlock in a broken home.
I think it’s worth highlighting that Joseph’s initial decision to divorce Mary on the grounds of displeasure was counted to him as both righteous and loving. Righteous in the sense that he couldn’t simply ignore the fact that his wife had been unfaithful as far as he knew. And loving because, while the evidence of being with child wasn’t hard to deny, he didn’t have the other half of the equation needed to bring a solid charge against Mary. Presumably Mary had not acted dishonorably before and had offered him an explanation, no matter how odd or implausible, for her condition. So in light of this complicated circumstance Joseph decided not to act on the righteous fury he was no doubt feeling.
Enter into this the angel of God.
The angel that appeared to Joseph provided an additional witness and evidence to corroborate Mary’s account of her pregnancy. It’s not that Mary’s word was untrustworthy because she was a woman. Though that is certainly a factor. It’s that without evidence of divine intervention her story makes no sense. And like all miracles in Scripture, Mary’s conception of Jesus comes with God proclaiming his handiwork.
God provided the seeds of doubt in the circumstances of Jesus’s birth for anyone looking for an excuse to not believe Jesus is the promised Messiah. That’s likely why Matthew opens up with a robust genealogy. Because I imagine the #1 argument against Jesus by the Jews of the day was that he wasn’t pure enough to be what they were looking for in the promised messiah. In the New Testament, Christ regularly hides himself and invites men to seek him out. It’s incredible to think that even the circumstance surrounding his birth presents a stumbling block to the hard hearted.
What else did we expect from the promise made in Isaiah 17:14 quoted by Matthew in verse 23? The Hebrew grammar in Isaiah indicates that it will be the child’s mother who provides her son with a name. There’s no socially acceptable way for the promised sign in Isaiah to come about. From the beginning the promised messiah would be controversial.
And that controversy would start in the most intimate human relationship. Between husband and wife. Like Martha and Mary, Joseph was presented a choice. He had to decide whether to trust the angel and take the risk of accepting Mary into his house and the child he knew was not his.
