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Each Day Already is a Challenge #690133 added March 13, 2010 at 3:35am
Restrictions: None
God is Not a Socialist
The other day, I received a surprise in my email inbox. Tommy Newberry, author of The War on Success included a link for chapter 7 of his book - God is Not a Socialist.
Here's the link in case you're interested. The email I received asked the folks share the chapter and/or the link with friends. And you're friends, right?
http://www.tommynewberry.com/newsletter/documents/GodisNotaSocialist-Chapter7.pd...
As I read through Newberry's chapter, I had one of those, "Well, duh" moments. 
Here's how Newberry begins his chapter:
Socialization is always accompanied by secularization—the smaller God becomes, the larger government grows. Of course, that’s a human perspective; God doesn’t shrink at all. But as God fades from our attention, so does liberty. Evil in all its varieties is just the natural outgrowth of freedom without God. Review the whole history of godless Communism and fascism—did anything good come of it?
No doubt about it, America’s system of free enterprise, like our founding documents, is inspired by the timeless truths revealed throughout the Old and New Testaments. But today, the diminishing of God has led Americans to feel lonely, confused, and isolated like never before. Disconnected from traditional and proven sources of value and love, more and more people now seek solace in government programs. The result has been a decline in individual freedom and the diminishing of our range of lifetime opportunities.
The writer reminds us that God is all-power, loving, all-knowing, just, merciful and unchanging. He knows every single thing about us - good and bad - and he loves us anyway. We are his creation. He wants what is right and best for us!
Here's more from Newberry:
We can begin to understand God by looking at the beginning, the beginning of everything. The first chapter of Genesis shows that God was well-pleased with each act of creation. And, after He put the final touches on the sixth day, God looked upon the universe and all He had made and proclaimed that indeed it was very good.
The original entrepreneur and innovator of the universe had established the model of productivity and excellence to be emulated by all humanity. God took special delight in His priority creation of man and woman. How do we know? Well, He made us in His image and likeness as individual souls so that we could mirror His nature. Moreover, our Creator granted us authority over all living things, blessed us, and charged us with filling the earth with our offspring.
The chapter is rather long, and although Newberry has given permission to share the whole thing, I'd prefer that you go and read it yourself at the link above.
It is good, though and well worth the read.
The author writes about how we're supposed to be striving to be like God, and that we imitate him when we love people, when we tell the truth, when we show grace, when we are faithful to spouses, when we are good stewards, when we are ambitious and industrious, when we demonstrate faith.
Paul said, Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children. (Ephesians 5:1).
So, we're imitating God when we're productive, when we are using the gifts that God provided for us, when we show empathy, when we love, when we encourage others.
As Newberry says, "He planted within us the instinct and drive to work, invent, produce, create, and own, because in doing so, we imitate Him, assign credit to Him, and further His creation."
It follows that if we're to be productive and industrious, that capitalism probably is not a bad thing. In a free market, we have to show creativity and resourcefulness, the very things that God wants us to show and be. Hmmm.
To succeed in capitalism, a business has to learn to treat customers and employees right, has to bounce back from mistakes (and make them growing and learning sessions), learn to serve others. Don't those sound like God-honoring traits?
Socialists, on the other hand, while they try to say that they care about everyone, the certainly don't want everyone to be a success. They think they can help a person by giving him something that was taken from someone else, from the person who worked hard and earned what he/she has - you know, the redistribution of wealth. Instead of imitating God and showing all those good traits above, socialism leans more towards man's bad traits - greed, envy, laziness.
Newberry uses many Bible verses to make his point. He says that the Bible is all about giving and socialism is all about taking.
Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you (Luke 6:38).
Anyway, go and read what Newberry has to say at the link above or at this one:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978087872
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