A Herculean Task; F. E. Mahaffy

Yet the philosophy behind such a statement is hostile to the Chris ... tian ethic. If generally applied, it would destroy Christianity and re duce the world to abject poverty. A more careful scrutiny of·. this cliche will reveal that it would destroy the very welfare it aims to promote. Yet to challenge such a pious-sounding statement immeThe Rev. Mr. Mahaffy served for twenty three years as a missionary of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia and is pre sently serving as a home mission pastor north of Chicago. dia telyca tegorizes the challenger as· lacking in Christian love. One writer described those who oppose the coercive redistribution of the Welfare State as a "bunch of cold hearted rascals." Nevertheless, I emphatically deny that I am responsible for the welfare of all men. Nor is the min ister who made this assertion. Nor is anyone. Such a task is impossi ble of fulfillment. A scrutiny of the meaning of this all-too-popular cliche is very much in order.

Had my friend said, "I have a responsibility for the welfare of all men," I might have considered him irrational and utterly unreal istic. Had he sought to fulfill this responsibility as an individual, he might amuse himself in the effort, with. few adverse effects except on himself and his family. 11 12 THE FREEMAN January But when he said "we," he was seeking to rest this herculean task on my shoulder and implying that, were I a devout Christian, I would naturally assume my· responsi bility. If all men are our responsi bility, the task obviously must be a collective one with the ~ve broad ened to include all in our society acting through their representa tives in the state. This can not be accomplished apart from legal co ercion. The author of a recent book clearly indicates this when he writes: But when people will not give volun tarily, is it wrong to make sure that they at least produce the external fruits of Christian love, even if this means legal enforcement? Is the freedom of people to give or not to give more important than the des perate needs of other human be ings? ...

The Christian himself must remain uncommitted to any human system, holding himself free to move where God leads him at a given time and under a given set of conditions. . . . The free enterprise system is best suited for an individualistic society where high value is placed on ma terial gains; the socialistic system is best suited for a large, strongly interacting society where it is essen tial to retain some human values.! 1 Richard H. Bube, The Human Quest (Waco, Texas: Word Book Publishers. 1971) pp. 223-4, 236. This popular cliche seeks to fix responsibility for universal wel fare. Responsibility, however, in volves a higher authority to whom we must give an account. A child is responsible to his parents. Par ents are not responsible to their children, but responsible to God for the care of their children. We have a respo~sibility to those in authority over us to obey the laws and not to interfere with the free dom of our neighbor. We do not have a responsibility to other peo ple as such. If we did, they would have a just claim to our wealth, our care, or for whatever our re sponsibility involved. This is a popular concept but not a Chris tian one. For the Christian, charity and help must spring from love to God and must be voluntary in na ture to be true charity.

Armed Hitchhikers Sometime after I received the above-mentioned letter, I was on the way to preach in a distant African village when stopped by fifteen armed villagers who wanted a ride. When I declined because of lack of room and began to drive on, a gun was leveled at my head. Though my righteous indignation (a clerical expression for anger) was aroused, my respect for the power of the rifle impelled me to stop, to compromise my former re fusal, and to "voluntarily" offer 1973 A HERCULEAN TASK 13 rides to two of the villagers. When ten of them squeezed into my Volkswagon Combi along with my other passengers, I refused to grant that I had a responsibility for the welfare (transportation to the next village in this case) of all ten. Keeping my eye on the many rifles to make sure none threatened me from behind, I was prepared to resist this claim upon my property. I won a partial moral victory when, after a protracted discussion, all but two of them backed 0 ut. (The added adrenalin put some extra punch into my ser mon that .morning.) Shortly thereafter a boy from a neighboring village came to our house with a few eggs to sell. He looked ill. Upon inquiry we learned tha t the family of ten children with their parents were on their last bag of grain,. reduced to one scant meal of coarse bread per day.

We purchased a sack of grain and took it to the family as a gift to help tide them over until harvest. But we did not have a responsi bility to the hungry family, nor did they have any claim on our charity. Our responsibility we deemed only as one to God to help the neighbor we meet in his need. This, while a much-needed Chris tian activity, is something far re moved from the· concept of a uni versal responsibility for all men. My friend failed to define what . he meant by the welfare of all. Just how well is each to fare? A good daily wage for common labor in the area in which we worked was about forty cents. Should our effort at assuming responsibility for all begin with increasing the increment of those in our employ or in giving aid to. the vast ma jority who lived on far less in come? It is easy to state -a pious cliche; it is quite another thing to put it into practice. Even if all the wealth of the world were evenly divided, I am told, each individual would receive something like $50 the outer limit of fulfilling this re sponsibility to all. The attempt to fulfill this "responsibility" for universal welfare would necessi tate complete collectivization. But as numerous economists have dem onstrated, the result of collectivi zation is always an increase in general poverty, never an increase in the welfare of all.:!

Love Thy Neighbor None of us is responsible for the welfare of all men. This demand is not only impossible to meet but also would destroy the very wel fare it proposes to promote. We do, however, have a respon sibility to our Creator which in2 See Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism, F. Hayek, Road to Serfdom, and H. Hazlitt, .Economics in One Lesson for examples.

14 THE FREEMAN January eludes a proper relationship with our fellow man. This, first of all, involves a refusal to interfere with his freedom. The Apostle Paul summarized this obligation clearly: Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13: 10. We are responsible for obedi ence to the commands of God which forbid murder and all coer cion, theft whether ,individually or the "legal plunder" of the collec tive, dishonesty in our dealings with him, and even coveting that which belongs to him. It involves also the positive demand of volun tarily lending a. helping hand to the neighbor we meet in special need. One of the most effective ways of helping is to show him by example and precept that in this world the only way to improve ment in welfare is by assuming our responsibility before God in refraining from coercive activity except to restrain violence, in us ing and improving our God-given minds and; abilities, and by peace ful exchange of the fruit of our labor with others. Accepting a re sponsibility for the welfare of all men is a task that even a Hercules could not perform. Let us rather accept the limited· responsibility which God has given to us and not seek to lay upon our· own .. and the shoulders of others an unbear able burden. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY To Help a Neighbor WHAT POSSIBLE MOTIVE can a man have for wanting to put the responsibility of social welfare on the willing shoulders of the bureaucrats in Washington? How much is needed? Who can say where poverty stops and plenty begins? Where can government get what it gives but from the people? How can it take it but by the use of force? How can it avoid taking more and giving less?

We do not escape the problems of our needy neighbors by putting these problems at the door of the legislators in Washington. We only compound what must eventually return to us for solution. GLENN PEARSON RAY L. COLVARD w~nM~n~$~ IEcdlM<c~itli~ffu It was found that all his property ... was represented by valueless shares in bubble companies. Thackeray: Vanity Fair WE CAN CREATE an entertaining kind of excitement in the class room talking about the great gov ernment-financed swindles of his tory: the Mississippi Bubble of Louis XIV and the South Seas Company of George 1. We hold students' interest as we tell about the larcenous grabbing of rail road subsidies by California's Big Four. We can join with students to denounce the government part nerships which puffed up a utili ties balloon for Samuel Insull and financed the invisible storage tanks of Billie Sol Estes. "The art of government," Voltaire said, "consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citi zens to give to the other." We sup port that, insofar as it does not touch our own enterprise.