Basic Christian Morals

I was scrolling mindlessly yesterday morning, on Christmas Day, and came across some outrage around unhoused people being put up in a hotel at taxpayer's expense. The naysayers clearly have never seen Dicken's A Christmas Carol or even Bill Murray's Scrooged. Remember when that line, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses??" came back to bite him in the ass?

Matthew 25:35-40

First of all, what the heck are taxes for but to ensure the basic needs of all?? If we decide that each person has to manage on their own without help from anyone, then we're back to law of the jungle, and we don't need much in the way of government or leadership at all or any social organization. If we're back to might makes right, with "might" referring to the power of wealth, then we're no longer in a civilization. For thousands of years we've known that a healthy, well-functioning society requires a way to care for the less fortunate. From the most base analysis, if we don't help others, they'll be more inclined to steal from us. This stance might claim to want social organization for education and hospitals, but it seems like they just want to ensure they have it for their own families, not for everyone in general. The things that they can afford to pay for somehow don't count as basic needs to provide for all. 

Curious.

Then there are all the memes about what a real christian looks like, rebelling against having a marketplace in a sacred area, teaching others to share food with all walks of life, help the poor, judge not... 

Aside: Every Christmas I think of an old student of mine who laughed and laughed when I said that of course we don't know for sure the day and year that Jesus was born (if he existed at all, but that's a different story) - it's typically estimated between 4 and 6 BCE. Historians generally agree that this newly formed religious group chose Christmas Day to co-opt the current pagan celebrations already taking place at the time, like Saturnalia, celebrating the birth of the sun as the days start to get longer in the Western hemisphere. Despite photocopies of all the historical evidence (pre-internet days), my student was adamant that Jesus was born on Christmas Day because it says so in the Bible. When that turned out to be unfounded, he insisted it's true because it's what we all believe to be true. I think the scene all comes back to me so strongly because I felt like I was trying to dispel his belief in Santa Claus. It's all a bit Miracle on 34th Street, and I'm the bad guy in the story! But we can follow the parables of Jesus and also know that he wasn't actually born on Christmas Day. We can follow the ideas even if we don't think he existed at all. And we can believe in the spirit of St. Nicholas who gave toys to poor children and remember to care for one another even if we don't believe in the physical existence of Santa Claus. 

Equity acknowledges that people aren't equal. To be truly fair, we have to recognize the uneven playing field. It's not fair to give everyone an equal amount when people aren't living in equal circumstances. For example, it's ridiculously simple-minded to decide to use taxpayer money to send $200 cheques to each person in the province. For some people, that money means buying groceries, but for many others, it just adds to their current accumulation, barely noticed. And for still others, those who need it most, they can't get a cheque because they don't have an address. Instead, a more equitable system to live by is, from each according to ability to each according to need. Those who can will work FOR those who can't, and share the excess created by their capable mind and body. Before Christianity and Marxism, there was Aristotle, who explained all this with an analogy to explain the correct intermediate amount to distribute fairly:

"If ten is many and two is few, six is the intermediate, taken in terms of the mediate according to arithmetical proportion. But the intermediate relatively to us is not to be taken so; if ten pounds are too much for a particular person to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this also is perhaps too much for the person who is to take it, or too little--too little for Milo [a famous wrestler], too much for the beginner in athletic exercises. The same is true of running and wresting. Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this--the intermediate not in the object but relatively to us." (Nicomachean Ethics, bk II, ch 6). 

It's moral to share, and it's immoral to keep more than we need when others are going hungry. That's something I learned before starting kindergarten. But it can't be something for each of us to contend with regularly because that leaves it in the hands of the dubious whims of human nature. Instead it should be the role of government, a group of people with a clear-headed focus on society as a whole, to ensure that taxes are taken only in excess of need -- i.e. a graduated system that takes a higher percentage from those with greater wealth, like we currently have but could have even more -- and distributes based on need. We could ensure housing and food to all, then access to health care necessary to funtioning, then access to basic education, then access to desired health care and education, and then and only then can we add in some luxuries, like spas that few want anything to do with.

This points to the evils of privatization. It's a system that refuses to acknowledge this natural inequity and pretends we all make enough money to pay for university and the pain meds for our hip replacement surgery. It's so painfully obvious the turn we've taken into an immoral system that benefits the few at the expense of the many that it's boring to continue to write about it or read about it. Yet so few of the voting populace seem to understand these pretty straightforward principles from childhood: