Role of Govt.

[Douglas]

What is the Biblical view of the role of the Govt?

With the recent debate on healthcare and peoples different views of what the role of Govt should be I am looking for Scriptural support of how I (a Christian) should vervbalize my understanding of what God's view of Govt.

My current understanding is that God puts the "Govt." in power to enforce justice in society.

I am being "persecuted" in a sense by both non-Christians and those who claim to be Christians because I do not currently understand the Bible to teach that Govt. should provide health care of "welfare" to society. I believe that Jesus tells US to help those in need, that is THE CHURCH (the body of Christ).

I just want to take the Biblical view of this and am looking for Scriptural support for whatever is the correct view.

Thanks
Doug

[steve]

I see it as you do.

[Douglas]

Thanks Steve.

If I had just looked around the forum more I would have found that you already addressed this issue, as I thought you probably had since this is kind of a hot topic as of late. Thanks again.

Doug

Steves post from another topic regarding Govt....

The government has the right to provide certain services and to send the bill to the citizens, through taxation. Among theorists, there is a difference of opinion as to which services the government may justly provide and impose taxation for. It is clear that the government has the brute power to exact taxes in any amount by threat of force, even upon citizens who do not use and do not want the services for which they are being charged. There is no limit to the services that a strong-armed government may decide to provide and to charge its citizens for—but there is a limit to how much they may justly do so—that is, without becoming a robber of the taxpayer.

In deciding what the government may or may not include among the services involuntarily imposed upon the citizenry, one must either have information from God as to His thoughts on the matter, or else we must resort to personal sympathies of individuals. Unfortunately, the latter are not unanimous in their thoughts as to which government programs should be provided. The New Testament says that the government is authorized by God to enforce criminal justice, and to be paid for this service by the taxpayer base that is thus protected (Romans 13:1-7/ 1 Pet.2:13-14). This is the total sphere of governmental authority, so far as scripture informs—and it is enough. All citizens should willingly pay taxes for this necessary and divinely-authorized governmental intervention.

However, some citizens may wish to receive more services than the government is authorized to provide (e.g., free education for their children). Such benefits may not be the common desire of all taxpayers, however. Let those citizens find non-governmental (that is non-public) sources for those services, lest they end up robbing their neighbor taxpayers, who have no interest in them, nor any obligation to pay for them for others.

Similarly, some citizens desire to provide for the poor in greater ways than the government is authorized to do. This is fine. Let them do so as much as they wish. There are many non-governmental agencies through which a generous soul may do more to relieve the needy. However, charity is only virtuous if it involves the sacrifice of one's own resources voluntarily. For one man to impose on another the duty to support the charity of the first man's choice is not an act of mercy, but an act of oppression.

Since there is no limit to the amount of taxation the government may unjustly impose upon its citizens (because it controls the police, the courts and the prisons), an unjustified taxation to pay for services that the government has no authorization to provide amounts to robbery of the uncooperative citizenry at gunpoint. If this stolen money is then used to help the poor, this is not an example of mercy, but of injustice.

As I alway wish to point out, my concerns about this matter are strictly disinterested. I am one of those who would qualify to benefit, at no cost to myself, from the adoption of more government programs assisting the poor. I will pay no more taxes for national health care than I currently pay, or ever expect to pay. I have no personal monetary interest in this subject. However, I have no respect for any poor man who desires to receive aid in the form of goods unjustly stolen from others. This is not the system that God has set up for the relief of the poor.

In scripture, the obligation of ordinary people to help the very poor people is often affirmed. However, this assistance is to be discretionary. It is true that, in the Torah, some of the tithes (which were a religious tax), and also the edges of the fields, the gleanings, etc. were devoted to the poor, as was the return of forfeited land of the poor, original owners in the jubilee year. But these laws, which had to do with the disbursement of produce from the land, were examples of God's pressing HIs legitimate claims, based upon His ownership of the land. "'The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me" (Lev.25:23). The parallel today for the Christian is that all that we possess (not just the land we live on) is the Lord's, and He has every right to require us, as individual stewards of His stuff, to give to the poor or to dispense His funds in any way whatsoever He may choose.

It was never the government's prerogative to unjustly seize another man's land, as Ahab learned from Elijah, in the incident of Naboth's vineyard. The land was the Lord's, and He had apportioned it to individuals and families for their discretionary stewardship. The land was not the possession of the kings, to seize at will, in order to fund personal projects.

In a country where the citizenry is (theoretically) its own government, it is important that voting citizens do not seize property from their neighbors in order to support their own pet projects. Such would be the case if I, wishing to provide more health services to the poor than my private donations could fund, used my governmental power (my vote) to steal from my neighbor a portion of his wealth to help underwrite my pet project. My neighbor might have good reasons not to wish to participate in my project. He may have equally virtuous projects to which he would rather devote his discretionary money. He might even object, upon moral principles, to some of the activities he would be forced to fund under my project proposal. It is none of my business to tell him how charitable he must be with the things God has given him—and much less is it any of my business to take his resources from him by force, against his will, in order for me to feel that I am now being sufficiently "merciful" to the poor.

Bringing this back to the justice issue, if I have not enough money to help relieve a poor man, it is not merciful for me to go and rob a bank in order to make up the deficit in what I hope to provide. My moral obligations to help the poor end at the limits of my resources. When I must steal another man's resources to act "mercifully," I have lost sight entirely of the meaning of the word "mercy," and also of that other beautiful word, "justice."

[dalibor]

An interesting point of view on the Govt vs the Kingdom of God:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFz3IAT ... re=related