Letter to the Editor

Books and Culture, May 2001

Sent 2 May 2001 in response to May/Jun 2001 issue, published at CTI website

Good Works, Wrong Thinking

Dear Books and Culture editor,

Thanks for the interesting May/June issue. While I found Mark R. Gornik's 'Practicing Faith in the Inner City' interesting and informative, his distinctly left-of-center political perspective compels me to offer comment based on an alternative view. He reveals his bias in several ways; criticizing our 'winner-take-all' economy and an excessively 'individualistic framework' in diagnosing the ills of urban poverty, praising egalitarianism, equality and 'jubilee justice', blaming urban decay primarily on 'structural injustice' rather than personal moral failure and claiming all Christians should feel 'indignation' at the gap between rich and poor.

Although he acknowledges the need to preserve the spiritual message and relational core of ministry to the poor (government programs must always fail on both counts), he nevertheless calls for more government involvement, seemingly unaware of the sadly consistent results of such intervention; the breeding of corruption in government, while discouraging virtue and encouraging vice in citizens. I also appreciate his recognition (rare on the left) of what Robert L. Woodson, Sr., terms 'Pharaohs', those who have a vested interest in keeping the poor down, and of the tough fight that will be necessary to dislodge them in getting voluntary help to those who need it.

Gornik cites the Hebrew prophets who, when discussing the plight of the poor, focused on the behavior of the privileged and powerful rather than of the poor. But this obscures the clear biblical emphasis that ALL bear responsibility for sin and must repent and change. 'The cross deconstructs moral superiority', he says, apparently failing to see that the cross leaves intact (and fulfills) the eternal formula of justice that virtue will/must be rewarded and vice punished (here and hereafter).

He says more than once that the gospel is good news for the poor. It is, in fact, good news for everyone, rich and poor, strong and weak, powerful and powerless. Like some early converts, who tried to coopt Jesus in their project to overthrow Roman oppression, latter-day social gospelers try to coopt Him in their push for their version of 'social justice'.

Gornik claims 'for Christians, social and economic inequality is a distinct gospel challenge. It must be if divine reconciliation makes all things new'. But equality of outcomes is not (and never has been) a properly Christian goal. Rather, it is a utopian vision based on fantasy and is the underlying reason for untold worldwide suffering during the 20th century, as forced levelling schemes have imposed misery on trapped populations, all in the name of equality, egalitarianism and fairness.

Gornik flatly states that 'voluntary compassion will not transform the fallen systems and structures of the inner city'. This questionable axiom, for him and others on the left, somehow morally justifies the employment of government force to resolve this issue. This puts them in the awkward moral position of Robin Hood; advocating immoralities (coercion, theft) in support of (dubious) morality.

In summary, I applaud churches and others who voluntarily offer assistance to those in need. Indeed, this is a fundamental responsibility for Christians. But when they demand access to the public trough to finance these activities through coercive taxation, they've left the realm of biblical principle behind and are venturing into a set of ideas and practices of very different origin. The fruits of Christianity (in theory and in history) are individualism, liberty, the rule of law, progress, voluntarism, community and justice in an atmosphere of limited government, while those of paganism are collectivism, total regulation, the rule of man, fear and repressed civil society, centralized, top-down power and eventually total oppression in the absence of Christian mercy and restraint.

Steven P. Sawyer