Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Christian Socialism? (http://newworlds.50webs.com/letter13.html)

Apart from the god aspect this seems like socialism. So if we can get them to realise that God is false but the rest of the ideas are great then maybe Christians will become socialists.

The Ideal Christian Society
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Take the Gospel message to its natural conclusion. What does society look like? The two commandments of Jesus are

Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength
Love your neighbour as yourself
Our society at the moment is set up as follows. The economy is based around money. Money is earned by selling some of our time to an organisation. Money is then used to buy services and products, thus paying other people's wages. We can't serve both God and money. So what is so bad about money?

In general, it prevents us from seeing the people we serve or are serving us. It isolates us, so that we can't see the sweat shops that make our clothes for example.
Money is an incentive for greed and idolatry (people can worship money itself, even though it is really just a concept it doesn't really exist at all).
It promotes huge inequality.
It can easily be used for bad purposes and we often do not realise it.
It promotes the relationship culture where women marry for money. This in turn encourages men to earn more. A lot of money in this kind of relationship culture is spent on self-image enhancements (ranging from shoes and handbags to fast cars).
A Christian economy would not be based around money. There would be no taxes, because there would be no health service, armed forces, pension service or anything else that taxes pay for. Instead, there would be a system of local communities. Every person in the local community would be dedicated to serving everyone else. One way of doing this would be to have a central meeting place perhaps with request boards in it. If anyone needed anything (like a bedroom, transport, spiritual healing etc.) then other people in the community would do their best to fulfill the request of the person. Food products from local farms would also be brought there, and people would take what they needed. No one would take any more than they needed. Everyone would serve everyone else, so everyone would be perfect in the sight of God.

If a whole community became in need (which wouldn't happen because no one would sin there, so there would never be any punishment/consequences) then other communities would jump in to help. And if other countries needed help, then people would go to help them.

There are many advantages that will result from organising society in this way. No one would be working a 70 hour week in management consultancy. 95% of current job types would become completely unnecessary. People would have more free time, everyone would be their own boss; the Truth would set everyone free (because everyone would choose what types of things they can do to serve) and there would be no inequality. No one would have authority over anyone else.

One might think that a Christian society would spend all its time worshipping. In fact a Christian society would never engage in what has become "traditional worship". Certainly people could gather together (not necessarily every Sunday) to talk about what kinds of things need doing to follow Jesus, perhaps some evil has crept in and needs sweeping out. Jesus has no interest in being sung to or having large cathedrals built for him (in John 5:41, Jesus says "I am not looking for human praise"). Special emphasis would be placed on teaching younger people to follow Jesus.

Practicalities:

Electricity In our society, electricity generation is often polluting (eg. coal, oil and gas) or dangerous (nuclear). Initially I do not believe that electricity should be used. There's always wood for fires and candles for lights, which are renewable sources of light and heating.

Health service completely unnecessary. Anyone in the community could heal anyone else.

Police again not necessary.

Banks, insurance, finance no money, so these aren't needed either. In any case, because everyone is so willing to serve others, they are the real insurance.

Transport there may need to be a system of public transport, but it should not be run on oil or electricity. There are many problems with our modern transport systems. In the ideal Christian society, transport would be based initially around traditional methods (animals) and perhaps bicycles.

Education. People need to learn to read so that they can read the Bible. We also need to learn the things that we are good at so that we can serve others. So there is definitely room for practical education, probably helped by mostly everyone (eg. everyone could come and teach what they do so that young people can decide what they like doing best).

Defense. None required. There is no room for weapons in this society.

Pensions. None required. People stay young.

There would only be one job in this society and that would be servant. Everyone would serve the spiritual and physical needs of others.

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