A Further Perspective
Does God Favor an Unlimited State?
A compelling response from an Iowa bishop.
The Religious Left sacramentalizes nearly every proposed expansion of the Welfare State, with government-controlled health care its favorite sacrament. Supporting arguments are usual superficial: Jesus loved the poor, therefore the state must displace all other human institutions and provide every human need.
Although trending left in recent years, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has provided some implicit caution against Obamacare, thanks to a 1994 policy position. A recent NAE news release on health care warns against any government promotion of or funding for abortion or euthanasia. It urges health care “accessible to all.” But it warns that an equitable system must include “judicial and tort law reform that will bring into balance legitimate claims and fair compensation.” It also calls for maximizing the “creativity of the private sector while minimizing governmental control” of health care. Only a few words, but at least NAE does admit to the moral good of restricting government power while affirming non-government social institutions. In a 1994 resolution, NAE elaborated a little on tort reform, faulting health care costs on “medical malpractice insurance, apparent frivolous claims, and extreme awards.” Most of the Religious Left, including the Evangelical Left, at least in its sloganeering, will not acknowledge “frivolous claims” driving up medical costs, preferring to demonize insurance companies and their supposedly immoral expectation of profit.
Evangelicals often excel at organizing and activism but less so at complex moral reasoning that includes but is not limited to Scripture. Sometimes Roman Catholics are better equipped. Bishop R. Walter Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, recently explained why government is not God’s only tool for relieving distress. Of course, he insisted that no government policy should underwrite abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research. “A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have,” he wrote.
More interestingly, Bishop Nickless asserted that Roman Catholicism does not teach that health care is a “natural right.” This seemingly conflicts with a recent common assertion from Jim Wallis’ Sojourners group, a leading cheer leader for Obamacare, and one of whose recent polemicists opined that health care is a “a human right” mandating the “obligation of governments to provide access to health care for all of their citizens.” But the Bishop more carefully explained that health care is “political” right, not a natural right, whose logistical provision is a matter of “prudential judgment” and not direct church doctrine.
As a prudential judgment, the Bishop said Catholicism does “not teach that government should directly provide health care.” Unlike national defense, for which “government monopolization is objectively good” because it limits violence and deters abusive private armies,” health care should “not be subject to federal monopolization.” The bishop cited preservation of “patient choice” through a “flourishing private sector” as the “only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily.” He warned that a “government monopoly would not be motivated by profit” but would be motivated by “bureaucratic” quotas and self-defined “best procedures” over which most citizens would have little influence. Government should properly regulate the private sector “to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses,” Nickless wrote. But “any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect,” he said. And special protections are needed for private, religious hospitals that “most vigorously [are] offering actual health care to the poorest of the poor.”
Bishop Nickless also cited the threat of a nanny state mandating “preventative care,” which is a “moral obligation of the individual to God and to his or her family and loved ones, not a right to be demanded from society.” He similarly warned that the growing number of elderly concurrent with diminishing numbers of younger people in the work force will make social provision of health care for the poor increasingly difficult financially, unless a culture of life is restored. The Bishop specifically criticized the “public insurance option,” which will encourage smaller employers to dump their employees into the federal plan, denying their employees access to private health insurance. It will also “saddle the working classes with additional taxes for inefficient and immoral entitlements.” And it will “impinge on the vitality of the private sector.”
How novel that the Bishop should argue that higher taxes, bureaucratic inefficiency and suppression of private initiative would actually harm the working classes. Religious Left groups like Sojourners and Mainline Protestant lobby offices love to insist that Jesus’ command in Matthew 25 to care for the “least of these” is an automatic divine ordinance for government control of health care, and virtually everything else. In this mindset, only government, lacking the profit motive, is an honest arbiter of justice and protector of the vulnerable. The Religious Left ignores history, and the Scriptures, when it forgets that the greatest evils often arise from government, especially when exceeding its proper boundaries, and suppressing other divinely ordained institutions such as the family and church.
Explaining that God’s face is not automatically found in coercively expanding government bureaucracy requires more verbiage than most bumper stickers allow. But Bishop Nickless, with a little help form the NAE, offers intelligent alternative thinking to the Religious Left’s blind faith in Obamacare.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Appleby| 9.8.09 @ 7:05AM
At last the Church is beginning to stir her stumps and speak to the people in a voice that carries!
Now if the Bishops would only get about pruning the ranks of those who have come to believe that it is possible to be a Catholic without supporting any of the tenets of the Catholic Church, chiefly because their priests and Bishops have enabled them, we might possibly get somewhere along this Damascus Road.
Democrat Joe| 9.8.09 @ 7:58AM
Folks,
to wave the bible at people and do what Republicans are doing today borders on what the bilble says about what will happen in the last days.. fake Priests. Lets agree on one fact. Modern republicans hold the bible and preach hatred. That is not Christian!!
S.L. Toddard| 9.8.09 @ 8:09AM
Just so we're all on the same page: it is illogical and inconsistent to simultaneously argue A) against an unlimited state, and B) *against* enforcing the laws that limit state power (such as our laws against torture).
Tim| 9.8.09 @ 8:41AM
"First, do no harm" is a mandate for Doctors and it should also guide policy makers in the current health debate.
JP| 9.8.09 @ 9:20AM
The Holy Scriptures say nothing about Health Care; but the Bible does say quite a bit about charity (Caritas). Caritas appears to be the main focus of Pope BXVI reign. Caritas (or the kind of "love" God posseses) is what all Christians should strive to at the very least internalize.
On the one hand, an all providing federal government makes Caritas almost impossible. And as some Catholic thinkers insist, a centralized public bureaucracy will eventually compete with if not stifle the mandate for Caritas. As we've seen so clearly in the 20th Century, politics eventually replaces the religious instinct. And in its most sinster forms, politics itself becomes a kind of religion. Fascism is nothing more than the replacement of religion by the State.
ObamaCare is nothing more than the replacement of not only the perogatives of the doctor and patient by some bureaucrat, but it puts the State in command of such contentious issues as abortion, euthanasia, and medical research. These issues are best decided by legislators not bureaucrats.
Dan| 9.8.09 @ 9:25AM
To Joe: What about the democrats hatred of the unborn.
Kent Lyon| 9.8.09 @ 9:26AM
Actually, God has opined on the American government, through the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith. God tells us that he raised up wise men for the very purpose of writing the US founding documents, the Declaration and the US Constitution. Hence, these are part of God's plan for human governance, with their objective of limitation of government power with natural rights granted from God unalienably retained by the people as individuals. Further, God states that, regarding individuals, "...the power is in them wherein they are agents unto themselves, and inasmuch as men do good, they shall in no wise lose their reward." Individual liberty with rights as guaranteed in the Consitution are the will of God.
Dadofhomeschoolers| 9.8.09 @ 9:28AM
Hey DC, Hell no, I will not agree on your "fact".
What are you calling hate? or are you fulfilling the other prophecy of the end times where the deluded are calling evil, good and good, evil?
Dadofhomeschoolers
Dadofhomeschoolers| 9.8.09 @ 9:29AM
Guess that would be DJ, even the wrong hand on the keyboard.
Dadofhomeschoolers
hqd315 | 9.8.09 @ 10:35AM
If everyony has a opportunity to live a happy life,god happy too....
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MNTim | 9.8.09 @ 2:25PM
My last Sunday in a Catholic church occurred when the pastor compared those who would limit Leviathan to 'whited sepulchres.'
Gill O’Teen ✝✡| 9.8.09 @ 2:39PM
obumassiah, the lord of the flies, demonstrated beyond any attempt at refutation exactly how much he really cares for the least of these when he voted to allow American Citizens to die simply because they had inconveniently survived an abortion. To prove his false god’s approval of these actions, he recently declared himself god’s partner. I don’t think our golden calf had a limited partnership in mind. Obviously, he is now blurring the line of separation between Church and state. Why is the ACLU silent?
Gill O’Teen ✝✡
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
Don’t Tread on Me!!
Doctor Right| 9.8.09 @ 4:23PM
"Evangelicals often excel at organizing and activism but less so at complex moral reasoning that includes but is not limited to Scripture. Sometimes Roman Catholics are better equipped"
Just what in the heck does that mean?
Sorry to say, but the best, most well informed Biblical scholars ARE NOT Catholics. Catholic teachings and practices are, in many cases, in complete contradiction to scripture, both New and Old Testament.
Additionally, to imply that "Evangelicals" (presumably Protestant Christians) are not especially good at "complex moral reasoning" reinforces the myth of Evangelicals as ignorant, backwoods hicks who dance with snakes and speak in tongues. When I'm at Church this Sunday, I'll make sure I tell that to my Plastic Surgeon, Chemical Engineer, and Attorney friends...No need for "complexity" in those professions, right?
This is nothing short of stupid, and is not what I'd expect from TASOnline.
Charles Teachout| 9.8.09 @ 4:26PM
Alas! It is a thrill to see a bishop making fine distinctions in social teaching, something noticeably deficient among our American Bishops since Vatican II. "Preferential option for the poor" is certainly a concern of any Catholic policy making statements. But the problem has been that "preferential option for the poor" has become "preferential option for socialists and their programs to 'take from the rich and give to the poor'. Jesus did NOT come on earth to devise statist policy among his believers! He did NOT come on earth to say that Catholics must have a preferential option for the socialist policies and programs of the Democratic Party, and resentment and distrust toward the policies and programs of the Republican Party. Such thinking is way too common among American bishops, and it is a delight to see a few of them stand out and follow the calm reasoning of the Scholastic tradition!
Nick| 9.8.09 @ 4:47PM
Dr. Right,
As a Roman Catholic, I found that quote to be very astute and wise! (Ha Ha)
I guess it depends on whose pulpit is getting gored, huh?
I think you are reading WAY too much into what Mr. Tooley is trying to say.
Look again, "Evangelicals often EXCEL [...]". Then, "[...] but LESS SO at [...]". (Emphasis mine)
How can you infer that Mr. Tooley is claiming that Evangelicals "[...] ARE NOT ESPECIALLY GOOD AT [...]"? He is clearly stating that Evangelicals EXCEL at both, just more at organizing.
And I completely concur!
Jane| 9.8.09 @ 5:48PM
It is so refreshing to read the reasoned remarks of Mark Tooley and so predictable to read the comments by those who fail to even comprehend the issues discussed.
Becky| 9.8.09 @ 5:52PM
Jesus did not heal all the sick when he was on earth. Nor did he raise all the dead at that time, although he could have.
I am a Lutheran who believes we are saved by grace not works. Works based doctrine is pre-reformation. It does not mean that someone like myself does not have to care for others, on the contrary, the knowledge that I can not do anything to earn redemption frees me to do acts of kindness without expectation of a future payoff.
I do not think that any rights are acknowledged in the Bible, not women's, childrens, handicapped, etc.
Many of our most popular evangelical preachers do more damage to mainline centuries old understanding of religion than the most ferverant atheiests. Wallis is one of them.
As a Christian, he does not speak for me, nor many of my fellow believers. Nor do I speak for him. In this matter, religion is not the issue, but a vehicle to further a political interest.
Pingback| 9.8.09 @ 6:53PM
The American Spectator : Does God Favor an Unlimited State? | AlternativeInsuranceGui links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Tony in Central PA| 9.8.09 @ 8:21PM
Ironic that we have an Administration that never misses a chance to define itself as " Pro - Choice " yet appears dogged in its determination to remove all choice from health care.
jordan 6 rings | 9.8.09 @ 9:28PM
Nice work guys!
this is just Amazing!
Thanks
A.B. Normal| 9.8.09 @ 11:12PM
SO, Becky| 9.8.09 @ 5:52PM, How much harm did the atheist Stalin do?
SO, Becky, How much harm did the atheist Hitler do?
SO, Becky, How much harm did the Christian Billy Graham do?
score 2 to 0
Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's.
adios,
ab
Lancaster, Prop8ifornia
p.s. there are no atheists in the foxhole. I was there and it is true.
LINDA MENKING | 9.9.09 @ 3:27AM
ALL providing federal government makes Caritas almost impossible. And as some Catholic thinkers insist, a centralized public bureaucracy will eventually compete with if not stifle the mandate for Caritas. As we've seen so clearly in the 20th Century, politics eventually replaces the religious instinct. And in its most sinster forms, politics itself becomes a kind of religion. Fascism is nothing more than the replacement of religion by the State.
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Many of our most popular evangelical preachers do more damage to mainline centuries old understanding of religion than the most ferverant atheiests. Wallis is one of them.
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Joan | 9.9.09 @ 3:30AM
How can you infer that Mr. Tooley is claiming that Evangelicals "[...] ARE NOT ESPECIALLY GOOD AT [...]"? He is clearly stating that Evangelicals EXCEL at both, just more at organizing.
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Pingback| 9.10.09 @ 11:07PM
The American Spectator : Does God Favor an Unlimited State? links to this page. Here’s an excerpt: