In his important booklet titled Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel, Dr. E. Calvin Beisner examines the modern appeal to social justice and the problems that arise from strategies implemented to practice it. Often proponents of social justice advocate policies that redistribute wealth to achieve “fairness” and “equality.”
Is redistribution of wealth a biblical concept? For example, did the early Christians practice it? Sometimes progressives contend they did by pointing to passages in Acts that describe charity in the early church. Beisner examines these and other passages and shows that the Bible doesn’t call for wealth redistribution. Consider that Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-35 describe voluntary giving, not the forced apportioning of resources. The Bible certainly encourages generosity among individuals, but it also affirms the concepts of private property and individual sovereignty.
Calvin Beisner, Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel, (Burke, VA and Washington, D.C.: Cornwall Alliance for The Stewardship of Creation, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, 2013), 7-8.
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Copyright © 2014 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image credit: The Death of Ananias by Raphael ~ see Acts 5:1-11