You ask how I arrived at the view that love is a personal duty. My answer was given in my post: love requires voluntary sacrifice, which, by definition, cannot be forced on others. On this point, you wrote:
True. And insofar as the ones in disagreement are forced to make the sacrifices that the majority impose on the group, none of the individuals are actually acting out of love. The reluctant is acting under compulsion, not out of love. Nor are the seemingly generous majority acting in love in compelling the reluctant to do the "generous" thing.I think groups of people very often - and very naturally - become communal organisms. Such an organism thinks together, emotes together, acts together. This does not mean that all the constituents of the organism are in total agreement.
Let them do the loving thing themselves, and they will be acting in love. If they force another man to be more generous than he is willing to be, then they are being selectively, and hypocritically, "loving." They are feigning a generosity that really involves their giving away someone else's extorted money, not merely their own, and they are being unloving to the man whose money they are taking by force against his will.
Allow me to seek clarification - do you, or do you not, believe that a communal organism may have a duty to love? I imagine you might consider a Christian communal organism to have this duty. Do any non-Christian communal organisms?
Also - would you consider a communal organism to be loving if most (but not all) constituents were living in a loving way, voluntarily? About what percentage of the whole would have to be doing so, for you to characterize the communal organism as loving?
Is a disciplinarian not acting out of love when they force somebody to behave in a suitable way? May they not be motivated by a loving desire to inculcate positive patterns of behavior, and/or to prevent the reverberating effects of negative behavior?
I think a disciplinarian may act out of love for the recipient of the discipline, and out of love for the persons whose lives are affected by the recipient's behavior.
There is no hypocrisy on the part of the disciplinarian, so long as everybody understands what is going on.
Is it hypocrisy to make a child say "I'm sorry" when they may not feel much in the way of contrition? No, because the intent of the exercise is not to playact. The intent of the exercise is to mold the child through learned patterns of behavior, and to mitigate damage to the social fabric that might ensue if the child were let to behave in a sincere and sociopathic fashion.
Most everybody has experienced an episode where a misbehaving child, forced into apologizing, was obviously not fully sincere. But when the intent is disciplinary, most everybody will recognize that the event was not merely an exercise in hypocrisy.
The generosity of the majority is not in bestowing the money of others. The generosity is in the time, effort, and social capital expended on shaping the conduct of the communal organism, including the disciplining of others.
Of course, I prefer to shift the discussion and nomenclature from "rights" to what is right. I think that shift opens the mind and heart to discernment. An appeal to "rights" often serves to shut down discernment (much like appeals to scripture, sad to say).You asked where I got the idea that compassion cannot be exhibited without the sacrifice of someone's rights. I also answered that in my post. If a needy man is to have the money you have earned, then you must be deprived of it. You can deprive yourself of it, and that is compassionate of you. However, if it is taken from you at the point of a gun, that is injustice. Only you can voluntarily surrender your rights without injustice
But then, I accept some presuppositions that you reject—namely that there is such a thing as private property rights, a right to life, and a right to act according to one's own convictions.
But I would say that personal property, conservation of life, and freedom of choice are frequently right paradigms. Not in every situation or in every respect, though.
Perhaps you would not disagree? I suppose it comes down to mental posture. A person who prefers the notion of "rights" would like to enshrine these paradigms, and acknowledge caveats. I prefer not to need caveats. And there is a difference in psychological gravitation: "rights" have a strong gravitational force leading to conformity - one that often defies reason - and that can be a pitfall.
I know you don't believe in private property rights, because you advocate socialism, which grants some individuals the right to confiscate the honest earnings of others, for redistribution contrary to the will of the owners. I believe in private property because both Judaism and Christianity, which teach that it is a sin to steal from another, assume that a given piece of property is owned by the one stolen from, and not by the one doing the stealing.
Your line of complaint can be levied not only at socialism, but also the Constitution of the United States, which empowers Congress to levy taxes to provide for the general welfare (Article 1, Section 8). Previously, you considered not believing in the Constitution to be some sort of demerit against potential refugees.
Of course, as you know, neither Judaism nor Christianity have a fundamental objection to taxes. Neither equates taxation with theft, and neither asserts that welfare is an illegitimate application of government funds.
And your argument, as stated, is tendentious. When the State is comprised of elected officials, then it is not simply a matter of individuals confiscating, etc., but rather the chosen agents of the national community, performing the role of community management. Persons who are unwilling to accept this management have the option to seek a different community that is more in line with their preferences.
I believe that our economic system functions in ways that are grossly unjust. As such, I find an appeal to "honest earnings" to be preposterous. People are routinely rewarded at rates that do not bear a reasonable (or right) correspondence to what they are putting into the system - some are rewarded to absurd excess, and others are tragically shorted. Because the economic system is so poor in this respect, it becomes necessary for community management to intervene and compensate.
The parables are slippery, and one must be cautious about arguing from them. (I imagine you do not need me to explain that to you!)I know you do not feel bound to follow the teachings of Jesus, but I do, and His words also confirm my belief in private property. Jesus put a statement in the mouth of an employer, which is presented as if it is irrefutably axiomatic: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things?" (Matt.20:15).
Even the apostles, who encouraged a communal spirit in the early church, affirmed that property is privately owned, until it is voluntarily given: "While [your land] remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?" (Acts 5:4).
The employer's remarks may have more to do with God's prerogative than humans'. After all, in another parable servants are called to account for their handling of a master's resources. Are humans answerable for how they use the property in their hands, or not?
The apostles' remarks may not telegraph universal property rights, but rather the shape of the immediate case. And the apostles, like most biblical figures, cannot be assumed to be word-perfect at all times (or for all times).
People will disagree about "rights" as surely as they will disagree about what is right. But a community benefits from the imposition of certain policies that establish common behavior and common endeavors. This is especially germane when it comes to ambiguous issues, where consensus is unlikely to be reached without arbitration.As for the right of a man to follow his own convictions (Romans 14:5), this right extends only so far as his living by his convictions does not allow him to trample the rights of another man. You identify "rights," simplistically, as what is "right." Such a definition would permit any State, charged with upholding "rights" to impose any arbitrary standard of right and wrong, and enforce that standard by force of law.
Not all will agree about what is "right" in certain cases. Is it right for gay people to redefine the historic definition of marriage? Is it right to kill inconvenient human babies in the womb? Is it right to stifle the free expression of opinions in the public square which other persons may find offensive? Is it right to economically punish the rich for having used their talents and opportunities more successfully than others have done with theirs? Can the State simply make a call on such ambiguous issues, over the protests of more than half of the citizens, who feel that human rights are thereby being trampled?
I am convinced that it is "right" for all men to follow Jesus. My Muslim friend thinks it is right for all men to follow Mohammed. If any government, in pursuit of establishing the "right" thing, should mandate that all men follow Jesus, or that all men follow Mohammed, this would be tyranny. It violates the right of every man to follow his own convictions, so long as his doing so infringes on the rights of no one else.
In a representative democracy, the State is a tool of the national community to arbitrate and impose various policies.
It is beneficial, and right, to afford constituents of a community significant opportunity to adhere to their own sense of right and wrong. But it is impractical and unhealthy for a community to refrain from imposing any policies upon constituents who happen to find them objectionable. To do so would place the life of the community in the hands of countless petty tyrants, unelected and unaccountable.
Individuals should not presume to be the court of arbitration, when they are part of a community and their decisions routinely affect other stakeholders besides themselves. Living in community, one's choices and behavior are no longer only one's own prerogative.
Redistribution of wealth is not equivalent to punishing the rich, and it is histrionic to frame the issue in such terms. Virtually nobody has punitive motives for redistributing wealth.
I will note that in the Hebrew bible, constituents of the Israelite community were not afforded the privilege of worshipping other gods. If Israelite judges imposed this on an individual who thought it right to worship some other deity, was this tyranny?
I think you are liable to eisegesis here. "Rights" do not emerge as a philosophical concept until more than a thousand years after the bible was written. Ancient texts may display a sense of justice, a sense of human dignity, and a sense of right and wrong, but they do not pin these sensibilities to a "rights" paradigm."Justice" is the upholding of genuine "rights" (because "injustice" is the violations of a man's legitimate rights); and every government is commissioned by God to enforce justice. A man's "right" is that which is rightfully "owed" to him. Because a man has a right to his property, I owe it to my neighbor to respect his claim to that which he has earned or honestly obtained. Because a man has a right to his life, I owe it to my neighbor not to kill him. Because a man has the right to the reputation he has earned by his choices and conduct, I owe it to him not to slander him. These are the human rights that inform the commandments, "Do not steal," "Do not murder," "Do not bear false witness against your brother." This is where I get my idea of rights—from the Bible that your religion's predecessors produced.
If one wishes to adopt a paradigm for interpreting the bible that is contextually appropriate, I think my appeal to what is right can muster the stronger case, coupled with a sense of fairness (an element that, for what it's worth, might not receive so prominent a place in my personal philosophy).
To my mind, "rights" are a dogmatic invention. Like many human inventions in the psychological realm, "rights" can be powerful, inspirational, satisfying, compelling to many human minds. But such things do not demonstrate that a dogma is true.When rights are properly understood, it follows that no man has a right to violate another man's right: ...
Neither the State not the property holder have any "rights" = no "right" to seize and no "right" to retain.A government that upholds the rights of all citizens needn't (and mustn't) violate the rights of anyone in doing so. King Ahab learned this in the affair with Naboth's vineyard: The State has no more right to confiscate private property, which is not owed to it, than has anyone else.
Again, your reading is eisegetical. There are many elements of misconduct in the episode, and one has no need of a "rights" paradigm to make sense of how certain elements were not right.
"Rights" are an invention of human philosophy, naturally arbitrary.By contrast, a government that interprets one man's rights in such a way as to violate another man's rights (like socialism and communism do) has created a definition of "rights" (and, therefore, of "justice") that is arbitrary and divorced from divine revelation.
If you can manage the apparent difficulties with unity and diversity when it comes to the Trinity and the nature of Christ, then doing the same for the virtues should be no harder task, conceptually.You have intermixed the concepts of "justice" and "mercy" in such a manner as to remove any essential difference between the two concepts. Both the Old and the New Testaments list them as separate virtues (Micah 6:8; Matt.23:23).
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Thank you again, Steve, for your time and thoughtfulness.