‘Was Jesus a Socialist?’: Economist Explains Why So Many Make the Wrong Assumption By Tré Goins-Phillips for Faith Wire
Economist and author Lawrence Reed is rejecting the suggestion that Jesus was a socialist, claiming the assumption flies in the face of the ideals He championed throughout Scripture.
During an interview with conservative Christian radio host Eric Metaxas, an author in his own right, Reed said he wouldn’t ascribe socialism or capitalism to the Son of God, “because those are terms that arose some 1,800 years after His crucifixion and either one would limit Him to but a fraction of who He was and what He had to say.”
“But I do say there’s nothing in the teaching of Jesus that is compatible with the ethics or the economics of socialism,” Reed explained. “He was a defender of things like personal choice, private property, free exchange. He was interested in what’s in your heart, not how you vote. He never once advocated any of the things we associate with modern socialism.”
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The author of “Rendering Unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?” went on to explain that so many people — particularly recent college graduates — have heard repeatedly that socialism “is nothing more than wanting to help people, when, of course, you can do that under capitalism.”
Reed noted that former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev has been credited with saying, “Jesus was the first socialist, because He was the first to seek a better life for mankind.”
“Well,” the economist said, “if that’s all that [a] socialist is, then just about everybody must be one. But, of course, that’s not what it’s all about. And the case that socialism rests upon force is one that we just have to make more strongly to convince people, because they’re just utterly unaware of it, thanks to academia.”
