LICENSE TO CONFISCATE

 

 

Pastor Emeritus Tim Keller says many needful things:

 

·       "The Bible teaches that sin is pervasive and universal. We are each members of a race or nationality that contains much unique common grace to contribute to the world. But every culture also comes with particular sinful idolatries. No race or people group is inherently more sinful than others. But in this postmodern view of justice groups are assigned higher or lower moral value depending on their power, and some groups are denied any redeeming characteristics at all. To see whole races as more sinful and evil than other races leads to things like the Holocaust." https://www.christianpost.com/news/critical-theory-is-not-biblical-justice-it-locates-evil-in-the-wrong-place-tim-keller-explains.html

 

However, in the same article, Keller puts forth some dangerous and unbiblical ideas:

 

·       "To treat all of your profits and assets as individualistically yours is mistaken. Because God owns all your wealth (you are just a steward of it), THE COMMUNITY HAS SOME CLAIM ON IT (emphasis mine). Nevertheless, it is not to be confiscated. You are to acknowledge the claim and voluntarily be radically generous. This view of property does not fit well with either a capitalist or a socialist economy,"

 

While it is true that we belong to our Savior and so too our wealth, there is nothing in the Bible that states that the community can also lay claim to it. If our wealth belongs to God, then the community has no right to confiscate what belongs to God.

 

Yes, we are to be “radically generous.” However, if the community has a right to our wealth, then generosity is no longer generosity but obligation. Despite Keller’s warning that individual holdings should not be confiscated, he has justified confiscation, even muggings, home invasions, and other forms of criminality to reclaim what they “deserve.”

 

Keller correctly notes, “To see whole races as more sinful and evil than other races leads to things like the Holocaust." However, it seems like he fails to see the dangers inherent in teaching that “the community has some claim on” the possessions of others.