Gary North

The constant theme is that the well-being of our parents and the next generation is spiritually connected to our own. Social Security is a major way in which our society honors the previous generation by representing a civilized nation's answer to the age-old problem of old-age poverty. -- Jim Wallis, "Honor Your Father and Mother" SoJo.net (May 5, 2005)

Mr. Wallis, you quote the commandment to honor our fathers and mothers. Then, with no biblical explanation, you move to the modern Social Security system, which extracts taxes from all working Americans at the same rate -- a flat tax, or "regressive" tax, as you refer to flat taxes in other contexts.

All of the revenue from the FICA tax is spent by the government on whatever it wants, after making payments to today's retirees. This extra spending amounts about $140 billion a year, for which the Treasury Department hands over non-marketable IOUs to the Social Security Trust Fund. This debt to the Trust Fund is not counted as a debt for the publicly announced Federal budget, but is relegated to the little-known off-budget debt.

All of this is well-known to economists and Congressmen. The voters have deliberately been kept from this information, although M. W. Hodges' website explains it very well with lots of charts and figures. The website of the Concord Coalition also covers this process in detail: www.concordcoalition.org

The Social Security system has been described as a Ponzi scheme, in which early members retired and got huge returns on their "investment," but later workers will face a system with no money and no marketable assets, except for money newly created by the Federal Reserve System, meaning mass inflation, which always hurts to elderly and the poor.

Yes, God told Moses to tell the people of Israel to honor their fathers and mothers. From this injunction, you have concluded that God's people should use the government to threaten violence against all sons and daughters, whether they have living parents or not, to support today's retirees. You are interpreting the moral injunction to support one's family members to mean a legal injunction to require strangers to support strangers. You write:

The Judeo-Christian faith tradition has much to say about intergenerational commitments. The Old and New Testaments could not testify more clearly that we must "honor thy father and thy mother" - and care for widows and orphans, the ill, and the disabled. And there is no trust more sacred to biblical faith than the injunctions to care not only for our immediate families but also the larger family of all humanity, especially the least, the last, and the lost. In Jesus' words from Matthew 25, "As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me."

Yet Paul specifically told Timothy to command the church at Ephesus not to support any widow who had relatives to support her (I Tim. 5:4). No widow, no matter how poor, was to be supported by the church until she reached age 60 (I Tim. 5:9). If God's church is prohibited from supporting widows in the congregation who are under age 60, on what biblical basis do you draw the conclusion that strangers are to be taxed to support my parents, or your parents, or us when we are old?

Social Security is an expression of national values -- and for Christians, our biblical priorities. It is about protecting the American dream, but also honoring God's community by providing opportunity and dignity. Fostering dignity for families, children, and elders in need is the true measure of our compassion, the true measure of our commitment to -- and covenant with -- the common good. Those who want to radically change a system that has worked so well are saying, in principle, that "me" is better than "we," that private solutions are better than shared responsibility. They want to weaken and shrink the places where we solve problems in common. They would rather each of us seek our own private solution to the issues of security, which always works to the detriment of the most vulnerable.

Again, if Paul told Timothy to tell the church at Ephesus that the church is not to give money to most widows, then on what biblical basis is the tax-funded State authorized to stick a gun in my belly and demand that I pay for a stranger's retirement? Isn't this merely a political quid pro quo, in which I vote for government compulsion today because I am promised that someday, government agents will stick a gun in someone else's belly to fork over the funds to pay me?

I understand that the Social Gospel teaches this. I am asking you to show me where the Bible teaches it.