Taxing the rich to help the poor? Here's what the Bible says

Biblical principles have provided an understanding on how to help the needy. Lamppost Collective/Shutterstock.com

The new tax reform bill has led to an intense debate over whether it would help or hurt the poor. Tax reform in general raises critical issues about whether the government should redistribute income and promote equality in the first place.

Jews and Christians look to the Bible for guidance about these questions. And while the Bible is clear about aiding the poor, it does not provide easy answers about taxing the rich. But even so, over the centuries biblical principles have provided an understanding on how to help the needy.

The Hebrew Bible and the poor

The Hebrew Bible has extensive regulations that require the wealthy to set aside for the poor a portion of the crops that they grow.

The Bible’s Book of Leviticus states that the needy have a right to the “leftovers” of the harvest. Farmers are also prohibited from reaping the corners of their fields so that the poor can access and use for their own food the crops grown there.

Hebrew Bible. Darren Larson, CC BY-NC-ND

In Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible, there is the requirement that every three years, 10 percent of a person’s produce should be given to “foreigners, the fatherless and widows.”

Helping the poor is a way of “paying rent” to God, who is understood to actually own all property and who provides the rain and sun needed to grow crops. In fact, every seventh year, during the sabbatical year, all debts are forgiven and everything that grows in the land is made available freely to all people. Then, in the great jubilee, celebrated every 50 years, property returns to its original owner. This means that, in the biblical model, no one can permanently hold onto something that finally belongs to God.

Christians and taxes

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Jesus thus joins respect for the poor with respect for God. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus also states “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” which is often interpreted as requiring Christians to pay taxes.

Throughout Christian history, taxation has been considered an essential government responsibility.
The Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin drew upon Psalm 72 to argue that a “righteous” government helps the poor.

In 16th-century England, “poor laws” were passed to aid “the deserving poor and unemployed.” The “deserving poor” were children, the old and the sick. By contrast, the “undeserving poor” were beggars and criminals and they were usually put in prison. These laws also shaped early American approaches to social welfare.

The common good

Over the last two centuries, new economic realities have raised new challenges in applying biblical principles to economic life. Approaches not foreseen in biblical times emerged in an attempt to respond to new situations.

The Salvation Army bucket. Elvert Barnes, CC BY

In the 19th century, organizations like the Salvation Army believed that Christians should go out of the churches and into the streets to care for the destitute. During this period, the United States also saw the rise of the social gospel movement that emphasized biblical ideals of justice and equality. Poverty was considered a social problem that required a comprehensive social – and governmental – response.

The idea that government has an important role to play in human flourishing was made by Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. In it, the pope argued that governments should promote “the common good.” Catholicism defines the “common good” as the “conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

While human fulfillment is not just about material comfort, the Catholic Church has always maintained that citizens should have access to food, housing and health care. As the Catholic Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church makes clear, taxation is necessary because government should “harmonize” society in a just way.

And when it comes to taxes, no one should pay more or less than they are able. As Pope John XXIII wrote in 1961, taxation must “be proportioned to the capacity of the people contributing.”
In other words, believing that helping the poor is simply an individual or private responsibility ignores the scope and complexity of the world we live in.

Mercy, not the market

Human life has become more interconnected. In today’s globalized economy, decisions made in the heartland of China impact the American Midwest. But even with this deepening interdependence, by some measures, inequality has risen worldwide. In the United States alone, the top 1 percent possess an increasingly larger share of national income.

What social policy will do the most good? Fibonacci Blue, CC BY

When it comes to helping the poor in these current times, some argue that cutting taxes on individuals and corporations will stimulate economic growth and create jobs – called the “trickle-down effect,” in which money flows from those at the top of the social pyramid down to lower levels.

Pope Francis, however, argues that “trickle-down” economics places a “crude and naive trust in those wielding economic power.” In the pope’s view, an ethics of mercy, not the market, should shape society.

But given the Jewish and Christian commitment to the poor, the question is perhaps a factual one: What social policy does the most good?
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus taught:

“Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full.”

At the very least, this means that people should never be afraid to offer up what they have in order to help those in need.
Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy Cross
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Jellyfish have superpowers – and other reasons they don't deserve their bad reputation

Shutterstock

People rarely enjoy meeting a jellyfish. On the beach they appear limp, amorphous, and blistered in the sun. In the water it’s often a brush of a tentacle on exposed skin followed by a sting. They hardly evoke the serene elegance of a turtle or the majesty of a breaching humpback whale. But despite making a poor first impression, jellyfish are among the most unusual animals on Earth and deserve a second chance to introduce themselves.

They’re survival masters

Jellyfish are among the most abundant organisms in the sea. Recent research suggests there are about 38m tonnes of them just in the mesopelagic, the upper 200 metres of ocean. What’s more, they are common in all oceans and have colonised the majority of marine habitats including the deep sea.

One reason they are so common is that contrary to appearances, a body made from jelly is a very successful strategy. Gelatinous bodies have evolved independently three times and have existed, largely unchanged, for at least 500m years, surviving all five major extinction events in the Earth’s past that wiped out 99% of all life.

Very successful jelly.

They have super powers

Many jellies have evolved unique abilities, some of which seem almost supernatural. Comb jellies produce mesmerising bio-luminescent displays. One tropical species has formed a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic algae, which act like their own personal solar panels and let them obtain energy straight from the sun. Other species can produce copious amounts of offspring: large moon jellyfish females have been witnessed releasing over 400,000 young at a time.

The pièce de résistance is surely their second chance at youth. When conditions are unfavourable, certain species including compass, barrel, and moon jellyfish can reverse their development and effectively turn back into jelly-children in order to wait out the hard times.

Super jelly. Shutterstock

They have an amazing childhood

Many jellyfish belonging to the class scyphozoa have a remarkable and complex life cycle. These different life stages are so different they were thought to represent entirely different species for a long time. Adult jellyfish reproduce sexually, releasing thousands of babies known as planulae into the plankton. Planulae spend a handful of days floating around before settling on hard substrata such as rocks, or artificial surfaces such as concrete or plastic.

Each planula then develops into a polyp, a small (2mm-3mm), stationary lifeform that feeds off floating bits of plankton. These polyps reproduce asexually, forming a colony of clones. When the time is right, the clones undergo a process known as strobilation, which transforms each one into something that looks like a stack of pancakes. One by one, they are then released into the surrounding plankton.

Although only a few millimetres in size, and lacking the obvious characteristics of an adult, the “pancakes” are in fact tiny jellyfish. Eventually they will mature into sexually reproducing adults and begin the cycle anew (assuming they don’t reverse develop if conditions are bad).

Depending on the species, a polyp can produce one, a handful, hundreds or even thousands of jellyfish at a time, sometimes over a period of many years. The combination of the amazing reproductive ability of adult jellyfish, coupled with the asexual reproduction of polyps, is thought to be one of the reasons why vast swarms, known as blooms, of jellyfish can apparently appear out of nowhere.

Let a thousand jellyfish bloom.

They have been a boon for mankind

Jellyfish can undoubtedly cause ecological and economic problems for humans. Mass outbreaks of jellyfish can overrun fish farms, block cooling pipes of power stations, burst fishing nets and damage tourist businesses. Their stings can also cause a severe allergic reaction known as anaphylaxis and even kill people. But jellyfish are also a source of medical collagen, which can be used in wound dressings or reconstructive surgery, and they are considered a delicacy in Japan and China.

But the greatest jellyfish contribution to humankind must be the green fluorescent protein (GFP), a common biomarker synthesised from crystal jellies. GFP allows scientists to monitor how certain genes work in real time, and has proved invaluable in medical research, being used in well over 30,000 studies including the study of HIV and Alzheimer’s disease. As such, the scientists behind the synthesis of GFP were awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2008. Jellyfish may well have started the villain, but to many scientists around the world, they have become the inadvertent hero.

Unlikely heroes.

They remain a fascinating mystery

There is still so much to discover about these amazing organisms. There is a lot of evidence to suggest jellyfish numbers are increasing in certain areas due to climate change and overfishing of other species. This has lead to the idea they may be increasing worldwide. However, at present, we simply lack the hard data to say with any confidence what is happening to the majority of these populations.

Another mystery is the actual role jellyfish play in ecosystems. Until recently it was thought that jellyfish may not be eaten by anything aside from the occasional turtle or sunfish, and they didn’t make a significant contribution to the food chain. This prompted concerns that as jellyfish populations swelled there would be no natural control, and ecosystems may become jelly-dominated.

This concern is not totally trivial and a jellyfish-dominated ecosystem seems to have established off the coast of Namibia. But new analytical techniques involving acoustics, marine cameras, chemical analysis and DNA analysis have shown a variety of species actually do eat jellyfish. This means jellyfish likely play a more important role in marine ecosystems than previously thought. Documenting and understanding this is a top priority for jellyfish researchers.
Philip Lamb, PhD Candidate in Marine Biology, University of East Anglia
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

When should you unfriend someone on Facebook?

English106, CC BY

The nature and ethics of “fake news” has become a subject of widespread concern. But, for many of us, the issue is much more personal: What are we to do when a cranky uncle or an otherwise pleasant old friend persists in populating our news feeds with a stream of posts that can run deeply contrary to our own values?

One option is to unfriend people who share material that conflicts with our values. But a siloed environment where people self-select into echo chambers could also be worrisome. As a researcher working on the ethics of social technologies, I start with what might seem like an unlikely source: Aristotle.

Oliver Dunkley, CC BY-NC

Classical Greece may bear little resemblance to today’s world of smartphones and social media. But Aristotle was no stranger to the struggle to build and maintain social connections in a contentious political climate.

Value of friendship

The first issue is what should real friendships look like. Aristotle argues that a

“perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue.

On the face of it, it would appear then that friendships are essentially about similarities, arising where like-minded people group together. This could be a problem, if you thought that a good friendship involved respecting difference. It would also be a reason for people to unfriend those who disagreed with us politically.

But Aristotle doesn’t say friends should be "alike.” What he says is that best friends can be different and yet share good lives together so long as each is virtuous in his or her own way. In other words, the only similarity necessary is that they both be virtuous.

By “virtuous,” he means the features of excellent people, those character traits like courage and kindness that help individuals be good to others, their own selves and live good lives. Such traits help people flourish as rational, social animals.

Appreciating differences

Again, if you thought that these characteristics looked the same for every individual, you might worry that this still means that friends should be very similar. But that is not what he says about the nature of virtue.

A virtuous character trait, he says, consists of having the right amount of common human disposition – not too much and not too little. Courage, for example, is the middle ground between an excess and a deficit of fear. Too much fear would keep people from defending what they valued, while too little would make them vulnerable to unnecessary injury.

But what counts as the middle ground is relative to the individual, not an absolute.
Consider how what counts as the right amount of food is different for an accomplished athlete than a novice. Likewise for courage and other virtues. What counts as the right amount of fear depends on what needs defending, and what resources are available for defense.

So courage can look very different for different people, in different contexts. In other words, each individual could have his or her own moral style. This seems to leave room for appreciating friends’ differences on social media. It should also give individuals reason to be cautious in exercising the “unfriend” option.

Living together

For Aristotle, shared lives are key to explaining both why friendship matters to us and why good character matters to friendship. Friends, he says,

… do and share in those things which give them the sense of living together. Thus the friendship of bad men turns out an evil thing (for because of their instability they unite in bad pursuits, and besides they become evil by becoming like each other), while the friendship of good men is good, being augmented by their companionship…

For Aristotle, virtues are by definition those traits that help you to flourish as a rational, social animal. Being your best self helps you to live a good life.

Aristotle’s statue. Ahmed Sagarwala, CC BY-NC-ND

The opposite, he says, is true of vices. What he means by a vice is the wrong amount of a characteristic: for example, too much fear or too little concern for others. Vices can make people’s lives worse overall, even if more enjoyable in the short term. The coward cannot stand up for what she values and so harms herself and not just those she ought to protect. The selfish person makes himself incapable of close friendship and deprives himself of an important human good.

Difference isn’t bad, and can even enrich our lives. But having vicious people as friends make us worse off, both because we care about them and want them to live well and because of their influence on us.

How can we use Facebook wisely and well?

What I take from this is that we ought not to think that friends’ differences, political or otherwise, pose a problem for friendship. But at the same time, character matters. Repeated interactions, even on social media, can shape our character over time.

So, in considering the question, should you disconnect from that Facebook “friend,” the short but unsatisfying answer is, “It depends.”

Facebook connects people, but it imposes both physical and psychological distance. One could argue that this makes it easier both to share our thoughts (even those that many wouldn’t air in person) and to disconnect from others, even when social pressures might make it harder to do so when face to face.

Figuring out when to exercise these different abilities could require individuals to exercise the virtues. But as I have explained, they do not give anyone a uniform guide to action. What counts as a virtue depends on the details of the circumstance.

Landmarks for navigating

Several factors look relevant. Social media makes people happier when they use it to interact rather than passively observe. Diverse connections and conversations can enrich people’s lives. On Facebook, we have an opportunity to experience “ideologically diverse news and opinions.”

How should you negotiate Facebook? Sarah Marshall, CC BY

Sure, sometimes unfriending an obnoxious co-worker or relative helps keep the peace… but this can be cowardly. And sometimes arguing with someone online just reinforces our own belligerence, making us worse in the long run. What we want to do is have good conversations that strengthen good connections.

But here, too, we need to remain sensitive to details of context. Some conversations are better had at a distance and others face to face.

In the end, some reasons to connect or disconnect are rooted in concerns about our own character, and some revolve around others’ characters. We have reason to foster a courageous and compassionate willingness to consider others’ worldviews and to be mindful of our own tendency to vilify posts (and people) because we disagree with them. But we also want our friends to be good people.

What we need to remember is that the devil is in the details. I think the reason we grapple with this issue is that it resists easy or uniform answers. But using the tools Aristotle provided to reflect on where we want to end up, we can find ways to connect that make us better off, both singly and together.
Alexis Elder, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Minnesota Duluth
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

One Major Reason Why We Can't Get The Most Out Of Our Bibles

"But continue in the things that you have learned and have been assured of, knowing those from whom you have learned them, and that since childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through the faith that is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." – 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (MEV)

God is so good that He gave us His infallible Word to guide us, instruct us, and tell us what's in His heart for all of us. We have it in various forms: printed in paperback, in smartphone apps, in computer software, and even in sound form through audio Bibles. Yet, despite the abundance of Bible copies and versions available to us, many are unable to make the most of the Word of God in their lives. Why?

It's because many of us don't obey what it says.

Obedience Is Key

The Bible contains God's commands and instructions for all of us to follow. The problem we have is not just reading the Bible, but in taking it for what it is and doing what it commands us to do.

One of the most dangerous things we can do as Christians is to grow familiar with what God says in His Word but not become obedient to it in the fear of Him. James tells us,

"Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man viewing his natural face in a mirror. He views himself, and goes his way, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was." (James 1:22-24 MEV)

Receive It, Then Obey It

Friends, we who confess to love God know that loving Him means doing what He says. The Lord Jesus Himself said,

"If you love Me, keep My commandments ... If a man loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. The word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me." (John 14:15, 23-24 MEV)

If we want to see the power of the Word of God work in our lives, we must believe it. When it says we should do something, we should do the something that it says. Obedience is key to getting the most out of the Word of God for our lives.

Source

The messy reality of religious liberty in America

The wedding cake on display at Masterpiece Cakeshop. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

On Dec. 5, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court will again tackle the contentious issue of religious freedom, when it hears oral arguments in “Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.”
The case involves a Denver bakery owner who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, citing his religious belief that marriage can be between only a man and woman. The couple sued, and a lower court ruled the baker violated Colorado’s public accommodations law. The statute forbids discrimination by businesses serving the public, including on the basis of sexual orientation.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the bakery’s lawyers have emphasized free speech issues by presenting the baker as an artist who has a right to choose how he expresses himself. But religious freedom remains central to the case. A key question is whether a business owner must provide services that conflict with his or her religious beliefs.

This case highlights the vast difference between the reality and the rhetoric of religious freedom, which is often considered to be the ideal that promotes harmony and equality. But, history suggests that it does, in fact, lead to more conflict.

The rhetoric: Equality and goodwill

It is true that throughout U.S. history, Americans have idealized religious freedom and imagined that it brings harmony.

Text of the First Amendment. Jack Mayer, CC BY-NC-SA

The First Amendment’s clauses guaranteeing religious free exercise and preventing establishment of an official church seemed to promise less discord to the Founding Fathers. In an 1802 letter, Thomas Jefferson, for example, wrote that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God.” As the nation’s third president, he argued that a “wall of separation between Church & State” would give all people equally the right to free conscience.

Later presidents echoed the view that religious freedom brings equality and unity by preventing government from favoring particular faiths.

Before his election in 1960, John F. Kennedy tried to ease fears about his Catholicism by affirming religious liberty. Kennedy believed this freedom kept one group from oppressing another. It formed the basis of a society, he declared, where people would “refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.”

In the early 1990s, George H.W. Bush identified religious liberty as the basis for other rights. He credited it as a major reason for the vibrancy of American society.

The reality: Conflict and debate

But, the promised harmony has proved elusive. Scholars such as Steven K. Green and Tisa Wenger have documented arguments about religious freedom throughout U.S. history.

Minority communities, ranging from Catholics to Mormons, have fought to have their traditions and customs recognized as religious. As I show in my work on pluralism, Americans have debated what constitutes a religious expression rather than a cultural practice. People have also argued whether religious expression can extend into political, social and business interactions.

These debates have required the intervention of the courts and have often ended at the Supreme Court. Thus, a right intended to free Americans from government has instead necessitated frequent involvement of a major government institution.

Further complicating matters, the Supreme Court has changed its position over time. Its evolving interpretations show how religious freedom debates create shifting categories of winners and losers.

To the courts

Like Masterpiece Cakeshop, one of the Supreme Court’s first religious liberty cases involved marriage. In 1878, a Mormon resident of the Utah territory sued the federal government after he was charged with bigamy. He argued that the law violated his religious liberty by criminalizing his polygamous marriage. The Supreme Court disagreed. In Reynolds v. United States, the court ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed only freedom of belief, not freedom of practice.

In the 20th century, the Supreme Court showed greater sympathy to religious liberty claims. In several cases – including one brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses challenging a statute requiring a permit for public evangelizing, and another by an Amish community that objected to Wisconsin’s compulsory public school law – justices sided with those who claimed their freedom was violated.
That changed in 1990. The court ruled against two men who lost their jobs after using Peyote, the cactus, which has hallucinogenic properties, and has long been used in Native American religious practices. Because they were fired for drug use, the men were denied unemployment benefits. They claimed that as members of a Native American church, they used the drug for religious purposes.

United States Supreme Court. Josh, CC BY-NC-ND

Moving away from earlier decisions, justices ruled that religious belief was not a ground for refusing to obey laws “prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.”

New century, new conflicts

The peyote case set the stage for Masterpiece Cakeshop. It was in response to the case that Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. It required that laws restricting religious expression must show that they serve a compelling need.

RFRA was central in the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. That contentious split ruling allowed small, closely held companies the right to deny contraceptive benefits mandated by the Affordable Care Act on the grounds of protecting their owners’ religious liberty.
Similarly, in October 2017, the Trump administration invoked freedom of religion when it allowed all employers a religious exemption to the contraception coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act.

Critics saw that policy change as an attack on women’s rights. Reaction to it on both sides again showed that government involvement in debates about religious freedom invariably produces winners and losers.

In our polarized society, the verdict in Masterpiece Cakeshop, whatever it is, will almost certainly continue this pattern.

David Mislin, Assistant Professor, Intellectual Heritage Program, Temple University
This article was originally published on The Conversation.