First Things: Budget Cuts of Biblical Proportions Jordan Ballor
… But in the final analysis the Call must be judged to suffer from the same fatal flaw that mars its less sophisticated and more strident cousins. Christian campaigns to make particular federal programs immune from funding reductions sends the wrong basic message both to politicians and to Christian citizens.
The reality of our debt crisis is that the federal government has been trying to do too much for too many for too long. Instead of focusing on ways to empower other institutions and levels of government and galvanize them to relieve the burden of the federal government, these efforts simply feed into the fundamentally false dilemma of federal action or no action at all.
This dichotomy is reinforced by both major political parties. We have only two solutions at our disposal, we are told: cut spending or raise taxes. We are faced with the basic choice: pay for the federal government to do it (raise taxes) or it won’t get done (cut spending).
What we don’t have in any of these efforts is a framework for determining which programs and types of spending the government should prioritize. All we are provided with is the directive that “effective” federal welfare programs cannot be cut, as if some absolute level of spending on a particular program, like Pell Grants or Head Start, is a clear moral, even scriptural, imperative. …
… While privatization and localization will not always be the appropriate solution, such efforts can often advance the Christian social principle of subsidiarity, which emphasizes the sovereignty and legitimacy of the responsibilities of lower and decentralized forms of organization and social life.
There are at least two basic threats that undermine the viability of such an approach, however, and they come from the government and the church, respectively. From the government there is an increasingly disturbing trend that locates the solution to social problems simply either in business or in government.
The logic of this either/or mentality places us between market and state, restricting the vitality and independence of mediating institutions, particularly private charities. …
… Even more troubling is the mounting evidence that Christians have adopted this mentality, too. We see this in giving patterns among American Christians. …
… Douglas LeBlanc, author of Tithing: Test Me in This, recently described the importance of tithing as “the beginning of breaking out of that self-indulgent life, primarily because it says to you that your money is not your own. And it’s a small sacramental way of saying that your money in your life is coming to you through the grace of God, through the gifts that He’s given you.” …
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