Letter - Is God a socialist?

To the editor:

Is God a capitalist or a socialist? In other words, is He in favor of government ownership of property or private ownership of property? The Bible is clear. God owns everything, including the land we live on and the businesses we own (Leviticus 25:23). Yet He has chosen to let us manage the land and have individual property rights to it that the government may not usurp.

God established laws protecting individual property rights in Israel, and even demanded that the prince (a king serving under God) not be allowed to take away people’s property according to Ezekiel 14:16, which says: “The prince shall not take any of the inheritance of the people, thrusting them out of their property” (something our current inheritance taxes are guilty of). When King Ahab stole away a man’s property through the machinations of his evil wife, Jezebel, God cursed Ahab with the severest punishment of all, death (1 Kings 21:19).

Our current experiment with socialism is doomed to fail because a socialist government places itself in the place of God, promising to do for us what only God can do, such as be all things for all people. It will also fail, as the Pilgrims learned at Plymouth Rock when they tried it, because it destroys personal incentive. Not until Governor Bradford divided the garden plots of ground into individually-owned sections did the Pilgrims take diligent care to make sure their plot was well tended so that they could eat and sell the proceeds of what “they” worked so hard to produce.

May we learn as quickly as the Pilgrims did that socialism never works. It never has and it never will. Therefore, once again, God’s way is better than man’s way.

Pastor Darryl Knappen, First Baptist Church

Alexandria, MN

Tags: darryl knappen, opinion, letters