Our preacher gave a sermon today that was simply stunning. I wish I could convey it in its entirety, but I had to walk out about midway to avoid a stroke. He began by relating a recent group meeting he attended wherein the folks were broken into groups at different tables and left to share a meal of what was on them. He noticed that different tables had greater or lesser quantities of food on them and he perceived that as being very “unfair”. While the occupants at his and other tables had no problem sharing the food on their own tables, his mind only arrived at the “proper” solution on the drive home. “We should have moved all of the tables together into one big table and shared everything!”

Of course the "tables" are clearly a metaphor for the nations of the world, and pushing them all together is unmistakably the One World solution. But his premise rests on the faultiest possible base. If the tables are nations, then isn’t the food on them the result of the productivity of those seated at them? Isn’t this disparity the result of differing approaches to governance, freedom, and ingenuity? The fact that one table had more on it than another merely indicates that different results were achieved by different means. The proper response would be to look at those with less on them, and to try to determine why the results reflected there were so small in comparison. Perhaps less freedom, more government, and other social dysfunctions in the less productive are at the root of the problem? You see, different systems produce different results. This is something that the multi-cultural moral relativists deliberately ignore. To them, unequal results emanate from “unfairness”.

The good reverend’s answer (i.e. Socialism) is to simply usurp the fruits of the more productive in order to assuage the poor results of those less so. This is always the preferred solution of the Left. Don’t improve the behavior of those achieving poor results; instead, penalize those that are more productive.  What is Christian about enabling your neighbors to continue to live in squalor and rewarding their social dysfunction? Does anybody benefit by preserving the illusion that their system is just as good as another when it clearly isn’t?

I wonder how “fairly” the contents of his table would be shared if he was seated across from someone that loathed everything about him and had as their deepest desire his immediate extermination? It might be an eye opening exercise for him. Doesn’t he realize that there are people that would starve him to death before sharing a crust of bread with him at some of the "tables" in the real world? His lifestyle and education seem to have blinded him to the possibility that there are people in our world that wish him dead simply because of his religious beliefs. They don’t share his ideology or his tolerance, nor do they share his willful blindness to reality.  The belief that everyone at every table shares the same values is absurd; and different values also produce different results.

Continuing his table theme, he next invoked one populated by Palestinians and Israelis that had each lost children in the violence of that internecine conflict, presumably to point out the obvious moral equivalence of the two groups. Yet there is no equivalence between them beyond their loss of children. Apparently, how and why their respective children died is irrelevant to the good reverend. Dead is dead and it doesn’t matter why it happened. It isn’t the Israelis that strap bombs to their children in order to inflict as much damage as possible upon the innocent. Israelis don’t teach their children to hate the Palestinians. That some children in Palestine are accidently killed by Israel’s legitimate acts of self defense is in no way equivalent to the Palestinian’s penchant for strapping explosives to their children in order to deliberately kill and maim innocent Israelis. Does any rational person believe that Israel lacks the means to eradicate the Palestinians in their entirety if it chose to do so? And yet they haven’t.  Does any rational person believe that the Palestinians wouldn’t eradicate the state of Israel if it had the ability to do so?  Since doing so is enshrined in their charter, I tend to believe it. How are the two morally equivalent?

I thought Socialism was antithetical to religion, a construct that substituted the secular state for the church. And yet here its tenets are being preached with earnest sincerity from the pulpit of a mainstream church. No doubt, those that refuse to share the fruits of their labors “fairly” should be compelled by force if necessary. I wonder if the good reverend would be so sanguine if I took his vehicle away from him using the same logic. It just isn’t “fair” that he has more than me. And if he won’t give it to me, I should take it from him by force. You see, his education and work aren’t the reason he has more than me; that can’t possibly be the reason. It’s just not “fair”! He’s just being greedy and selfish to have more than I do. Pity he can’t extrapolate that the cushy lifestyle he currently enjoys would have to come down considerably to be “fair” in the eyes of the residents of sub-Saharan Africa. And by destroying his own wealth and lifestyle, does he truly believe the lives of those residents will be greatly improved? I don’t.

It would seem the good reverend has been educated to the point that ideology has replaced his ability to reason. Unfortunately, I fear he is irretrievably lost intellectually. I’ll grant that he actually believes in his heart that he is correct. But I’m equally certain that if the world he envisions actually came to fruition, he wouldn’t like it very much. How sad for the congregation politely absorbing this twaddle from the pulpit as “Gospel”. It’s time for me to find another church. I need spiritual guidance, not political indoctrination; particularly when it advocates a system that has failed miserably every place it has been tried. God help those remaining, they're going to need it.

Scottie