# Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Sider)



## RamistThomist (Jan 31, 2015)

My page numbers are going to be from the 1981 edition. I will be nice and begin with some good points Sider makes. He has a fairly decent take on the Sabbatical year (83ff). I don’t think he realizes that his master, The United Nations, isn’t that concerned with biblical law. Further, I like how he notes that Scripture “prescribes justice” (83; cf. Dt 15:9-10). Sider even approaches (and at times affirms) the godly principle that “sinful persons and societies will always produce poor people” (83). Amen, and amen. I have to ask though, if Sider can name some societies in the 20th century that adopted his principles and if they were sinful and produced poor people. One such society had four letters in its abbreviation.

Sider has some surprisingly astute comments on interest and he realizes that Christendom’s painful back-and-forth on interest wasn’t pretty and so we shouldn’t generalize (85). So far, I have no disagreement with him.

He further notes that Marxists and Capitalists worship the same god: Economic forces (105). Of course, Sider himself labours (pun) for world revolutionary forces, so he can’t be taken all that seriously. Nevertheless, he rightly criticises the business model that has infected churches today (107).

He has an excellent section on asceticism (111ff) and its false ontology/anthropology. He writes, “Christian asceticism has a long history, but Jesus’s life undermines its basic assumptions” (112). Amen. I've spent the last three years attacking this false ontology. Of course, a lot of the biblical examples Sider cites assume that one can legitimately spend one’s wealth on grain, alcohol, or feasts without feeling guilty by socialist agitators.

Criticisms:

_Hidden assumptions
_Sider makes routine comments like “And justice, as we have seen, means things like the Jubilee and sabbatical remission of debts” (115; statements like these are throughout the book). It raises the obvious question: Who will enforce this?

_Holier than God?
_He makes comments like “It is sinful abomination for one part of the world’s Christians to grow richer year by year while our brothers and sisters in the third world suffer” (98). This would be a true statement if a number of other conditions were met. Are North American Christians causing other Christians to suffer? If they are, Sider has given us no argument nor shown any evidence. Further, would he have N.A. Christians be just as poor? If so, then how could they help? If they didn’t have any wealth, then how could Sider’s globalist masters take it from them? He hasn’t thought these things through.

_Plainly Misreads Texts
_The most glaring misreading of texts is his appeal to the Jubilee principle (80ff). While he correctly notes that the text says “all land should be returned to original owners,” and that “it was the poor person’s right to receive back his inheritance” (81). While he doesn’t draw the conclusion, this is a brilliant argument against the evil and satanic practice of Federal inheritance taxes.

He does correctly note that Yahweh says “The Land is mine” (Lev. 25:23), but what principle should we draw from that? Only the dominum (per Wyclif) can thus distribute the land. This is the same dominion economics that Wyclif argued. Well and good, but one suspects that Sider has another dominum in mind: The State.

I don’t know how he thinks his model will work. He says “the specific provisions of the Jubilee year aren’t binding today” (85). I agree with him, so how does he apply it? Why is this law binding today but the ones about stoning sodomites and idolaters not? He gives us no answer.

_External Contradictions with Scripture
_Sider’s most notorious point is the graduated tithe. I just want to point out one Scriptural difficulty with it. The Bible tells us that a godly man leaves an inheritance for his seed (Prov. 13:22). Yet, if Sider has his way it’s hard to see how this could happen. There would be no inheritance. It would all have been taxed away!

_Sider’s Recommendations
_
Graduated tithe: he realizes he can’t make this binding on Christians today, so I will ignore it.
Communal Living: This is almost funny. One should study the history of communal living in America. Besides a nigh-100% failure rate, they more often than not end up being sex orgies. In any case, the agrarian in me does gravitate towards simplicity, but not because of Sider’s guilt trips.

How should we live in response to Sider? For one, who are these cozy, fat-cat, presumably white and conservative Christians that are so callous to the poor? He doesn’t list any names. Further, I am not aware of conservative churches that don’t give money to charities (who are better able to manage it than some bureaucrat in Washington). In fact, one can point to cases like George Grant, whose model was so successful that he ran the government out of town.

The danger isn’t that my feelings are hurt because Sider shamelessly libeled his brothers in Christ. No, he isn’t stupid. He is against charitable giving. Therefore, the only solution is the Government. But even here we have a problem. At least in theory, America’s government is democratic. Those white capitalist males don’t elect socialists. That’s no problem, though, for Sider has a stronger play: The United Nations.

Sider is long on saying governments should adopt biblical principles (79, 144, 194) but I get the sneaky suspicion that this is merely suppressing fire for a globalist order. He says America and Russia have biblical obligations to give their resources to poorer countries (194), yet he lists no bible verses proving these obligations.

He says this is not a call for a violent revolution (194). Okay, how will you enforce it then? What if I say no to your demands. What are you going to do then? At this point Sider has two options: something like harmless recommendations or the point of a bayonet. This is particularly ironic since Sider advocates pacifism.

There are good alternatives to the Austrian economic model, yet one feels hard-pressed to say "Yay!" to Sider's globalist politics.


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