Politics With Peyton: Christ Cares for the Poor — But He Is Not a Socialist

When studying politics, I believe it is important to begin where it matters most: Scripture. My beliefs are firmly rooted within the Bible. 

It shocks me when I hear people tell me Jesus was a socialist. This could not be further from the truth. 

What is socialism? Socialism includes much more than merely being kind to people. This idea was popularized by Karl Marx, who wrote “The Communist Manifesto.” According to History.com, the roots of socialism go back to the ancient Greeks times during the Plato era. Socialism’s intent was to respond to the capitalist system, by proposing a system that would improve the working class and shape society to be more egalitarian (the political philosophy that emphasizes equality for everyone across all statuses, genders or beliefs). 

Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental; ownership and administration of the means or production and distribution of goods.” 

I understand the rationale behind believing Jesus, on the surface, was a socialist. He spoke out against those in power and was an advocate on behalf of the poor. 

While Jesus was certainly political, he was not a socialist. 

While studying this idea in the Bible, I looked for a few key traits: Jesus defending the ideas of the government punishing the rich, Jesus believing in using tax money to help the poor and supporting state ownership of business and central planning of the economy. 

However, I didn’t find those to be parallel with what Jesus preached. 

Here’s what I found instead: in Luke 12, Jesus rebukes a man who asks for equal distribution of his brothers’ wealth for being greedy. In Matthew 22:15-22 and in Mark chapter 12:13-17, Jesus commands to render to Caesar what is Caesars, and to God what is God’s, but this is all dependent on what truly belongs to Caesar (a powerful endorsement of property rights). 

And of course, the most notable is the 8th Commandment: thou shalt not steal. Whether it is a person or the government as the actor, it is still stealing when one takes something that does not belong to them. 

The key distinction between Jesus and socialism comes down to one word: voluntary. 

Jesus advocated for the voluntary exchange of goods and services, not forced redistribution. Jesus advocated for the Holy Spirit being the determining factor of you voluntarily giving something to the poor, not the government. “Excuse Me, Professor”, a book edited by Lawrence Reed, highlights how within Acts (the focal point of the argument at hand), the early believers contributed their goods freely and without coercion. 

The reality is that Christ never asserts within Scripture that wealth that is obtained through peaceful commerce, as Reed puts it, is wrong in any means. Paul never said money was evil, but said it was the root of all evil. The love and obsession of money (which inevitably turns into greed) is the root of evil. 

As American economist Thomas Sowell said, “I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.” 

Jesus certainly inserts Himself into the political scene while on earth. It is there He advocated for caring for others, giving to charity and ultimately listening to the discernment of the Holy Spirit. This was not for socialism; instead, it was to teach us to be more like Him in loving and serving others.

MacKenzie is the opinion editor. Follow her on Twitter.