Socialism Can’t be Forced
Spurred on by our pastor, my wife and I are reading through the entire Bible this year. We had completed such plans before, but stopped when they became more of a system of checking off boxes than a time of study and reflection.
Now that we are intent on reading and comprehension, one reminder of biblical truth lately is the Word’s apparent endorsement of socialism.
That is a topic on many voters’ minds these days. From Zohran Mamdani becoming New York’s mayor to other political upsets, Democratic Socialists have sparked a nationwide fervor.
It’s one that is intensifying with next month’s midterm elections.
Two specific passages that socialists can cite for support:
- Second Corinthians 8:13-15 – This is the culmination of a long treatise by Paul, where the apostle talks about one group’s abundance supplying the other’s needs. And vice versa, so “that there may be equality” (v. 14).
- The other comes from the early church, when signs and wonders broke out after the Holy Spirit fell on Christ’s disciples. – Acts 2:42-47 sounds like heaven on earth: the apostles performing signs and wonders, breaking bread from house to house, making daily visits to the temple, and people sharing everything in common.
The passage concludes: “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”
Important Caveat
As wonderful as this may sound, a huge caveat—the size of five boulders—must be inserted: The reason this socialism worked was its voluntary nature.
Sharing took place because of mutual faith in Christ. When the world takes a spiritual concept and mixes it with the force of government and political forces who care nothing about God, the result is a nightmare.
Sadly, whenever humans set out to create a utopia, no matter how noble their goals or enlightened their ideas, it usually produces misery and death.
Especially when you vest power in a supposedly compassionate government. All too often, history shows that power goes to bureaucrats’ heads and creates an onerous burden on “the people.”
Great Nightmare
The Wall of Grief is a monument in Moscow to the victims of political persecution by Joseph Stalin during the country’s Soviet era.
Go back to 1917’s Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Those who overthrew the ruling tsars turned into the 20th century’s greatest nightmare.
Exhibit A: Ukraine, where nearly four million citizens starved to death in 1932-33 during Joseph Stalin’s man-made famine. One rooted in cruelty for daring to oppose his collectivist mindset.
Even worse is this estimate from a book—that 61.9 million people died during 60 years of Communist rule in the USSR.
Another butcher socialists admire is Mao Zedong, founder of the People’s Republic of China.
The same ruler that biographers Juan Chang and Jon Holliday say was responsible for more than 70 million deaths in peacetime. In other words, worse than Stalin and his successors.
Closer to home is Cuba, the supposed socialist paradise. Yet hundreds of thousands fled the island in the 1960s and ‘70s.
I have a personal interest in Cuba, since I have been talking to an author about editing his memoir later this year.
He is a second-generation Cuban immigrant whose grandfather fled from the island under threat of death. All because the physician refused to fall in line with Castro’s dictatorial push to exert ironclad control.
I can go on and on. Whether Romania, Venezuela, East Germany, or the nightmare known as North Korea, socialism rarely ends well.
