"The trouble isn’t the verse. The trouble is what got hung on it. Radcliffe uses one proverb about personal financial prudence to carry an argument about government policy, foreign aid, and who owes what to whom."
The title of the essay is "Your Choices Matter". That is what the essay is about - Your Choices. The example of choices happened to be about "forced wealth transfer". Other examples could have been used. This example was used as it has an extensive history that many of us have lived through. In the 1960's many people disagreed with the "war on poverty" and were very vocal about it. Yet, as time went on, what was regarded as evil became regarded as good, even necessary! How did this happen? It happened one choice at a time. People stopped thinking about the ethics and morality of these choices and stopped observing the spiritual and physical consequences. This essay is about choices.
If a people decide that it is right to transfer wealth from those who have, to those who don't have, then they have accepted as moral and ethical what we see today - we just shift the populations involved. The citizens who were once regarded as poor are now regarded as wealthy in comparison with the foreign population who have much less. The transfer of wealth continues, and the former recipients strongly object. They forget the choices they made.
The verse that was quoted, Proverbs 21:17 was preceded by a paragraph. The quote refers back to that paragraph.
Although it may appear that "someone else" will obstruct and absorb the consequences of poor life choices, the truth of matter is stated in Proverbs 21:17. This verse destroys the illusion that people have chosen. Can government policies of wealth transfer eliminate poverty or make someone rich? No! Think about the spiritual, moral, ethical choices that you make!
This is NOT a "political essay about welfare policy", it is about spiritual, moral, and ethical choices, it is about thinking.
So, what "applies to ALL Western countries"? The personal choices!
Keith, thanks for walking through your reasoning. Two things, and I want to give you both straight.
First, you're right that the verse follows the paragraph before it, not dropped in cold. That's on me, I should've caught that the first time. Good catch.
Second, I'm not soft on what you're pointing at underneath all this. What happened since the 1960s, watching what was once called wrong get relabeled compassionate, even necessary, and watching a real socialist current gain ground inside a party that used to keep it at the fringe, that's not something to wave off. I see it too.
But here's where I still land different. Proverbs 21:17 talks about one man, his own love of pleasure, his own poverty. That's personal, between him and God. True as anything Solomon wrote. Your essay reaches further, into whether government wealth transfer is moral, whether it's slavery, whether a nation owes anything to another. Real questions. Urgent ones. But Solomon isn't answering those in that verse. You've got a true verse and a true concern, they're just not the same thing, and the verse can't carry the policy case by itself. Your own reasoning does that work. Stand on it, you don't need the proverb stretched to do it for you.
Now, to Geoff's comment on your piece. He wrote: "This applies to ALL Western countries. Mankind drinks from the billabong of Satan, when only the life-giving, purified waters of Jesus can change us."
I've watched this exact move in Geoff's writing for a long time now, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. He takes something specific, your essay, one policy question, and inflates it into a sweeping verdict on all of mankind. That's not commentary on your argument, it's a binary stamped over it. His water or Satan's billabong. Nothing left in between, no room for what we just did above, weighing what's true and what overreaches side by side. That flattening, everything sorted into two bins with no space for careful thinking, is the same pattern I've documented across his Genesis series and everywhere else I've tracked his teaching. It's not a one-off. It's how he operates. Matthew 7:15-16 calls that fruit, and fruit is fruit whether it shows up in a full article or three sentences in somebody else's comment section.
Your argument didn't need his inflation, Keith. It stood on its own. When somebody can't leave a real, specific point alone without blowing it up into a cosmic verdict, that's worth naming plainly, and I just did.
Thank you for your comments on my essay.
Quote from your comments:
"The trouble isn’t the verse. The trouble is what got hung on it. Radcliffe uses one proverb about personal financial prudence to carry an argument about government policy, foreign aid, and who owes what to whom."
The title of the essay is "Your Choices Matter". That is what the essay is about - Your Choices. The example of choices happened to be about "forced wealth transfer". Other examples could have been used. This example was used as it has an extensive history that many of us have lived through. In the 1960's many people disagreed with the "war on poverty" and were very vocal about it. Yet, as time went on, what was regarded as evil became regarded as good, even necessary! How did this happen? It happened one choice at a time. People stopped thinking about the ethics and morality of these choices and stopped observing the spiritual and physical consequences. This essay is about choices.
If a people decide that it is right to transfer wealth from those who have, to those who don't have, then they have accepted as moral and ethical what we see today - we just shift the populations involved. The citizens who were once regarded as poor are now regarded as wealthy in comparison with the foreign population who have much less. The transfer of wealth continues, and the former recipients strongly object. They forget the choices they made.
The verse that was quoted, Proverbs 21:17 was preceded by a paragraph. The quote refers back to that paragraph.
Although it may appear that "someone else" will obstruct and absorb the consequences of poor life choices, the truth of matter is stated in Proverbs 21:17. This verse destroys the illusion that people have chosen. Can government policies of wealth transfer eliminate poverty or make someone rich? No! Think about the spiritual, moral, ethical choices that you make!
This is NOT a "political essay about welfare policy", it is about spiritual, moral, and ethical choices, it is about thinking.
So, what "applies to ALL Western countries"? The personal choices!
Keith, thanks for walking through your reasoning. Two things, and I want to give you both straight.
First, you're right that the verse follows the paragraph before it, not dropped in cold. That's on me, I should've caught that the first time. Good catch.
Second, I'm not soft on what you're pointing at underneath all this. What happened since the 1960s, watching what was once called wrong get relabeled compassionate, even necessary, and watching a real socialist current gain ground inside a party that used to keep it at the fringe, that's not something to wave off. I see it too.
But here's where I still land different. Proverbs 21:17 talks about one man, his own love of pleasure, his own poverty. That's personal, between him and God. True as anything Solomon wrote. Your essay reaches further, into whether government wealth transfer is moral, whether it's slavery, whether a nation owes anything to another. Real questions. Urgent ones. But Solomon isn't answering those in that verse. You've got a true verse and a true concern, they're just not the same thing, and the verse can't carry the policy case by itself. Your own reasoning does that work. Stand on it, you don't need the proverb stretched to do it for you.
Now, to Geoff's comment on your piece. He wrote: "This applies to ALL Western countries. Mankind drinks from the billabong of Satan, when only the life-giving, purified waters of Jesus can change us."
I've watched this exact move in Geoff's writing for a long time now, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. He takes something specific, your essay, one policy question, and inflates it into a sweeping verdict on all of mankind. That's not commentary on your argument, it's a binary stamped over it. His water or Satan's billabong. Nothing left in between, no room for what we just did above, weighing what's true and what overreaches side by side. That flattening, everything sorted into two bins with no space for careful thinking, is the same pattern I've documented across his Genesis series and everywhere else I've tracked his teaching. It's not a one-off. It's how he operates. Matthew 7:15-16 calls that fruit, and fruit is fruit whether it shows up in a full article or three sentences in somebody else's comment section.
Your argument didn't need his inflation, Keith. It stood on its own. When somebody can't leave a real, specific point alone without blowing it up into a cosmic verdict, that's worth naming plainly, and I just did.