As various Republican politicians, including the American president, increasingly use terms like socialism or communism to describe the views of their Democratic counterparts, I wonder whether any of them have really read the Bible, the book whose teachings many of them profess to obey.
     Consider the second chapter of Acts.  The final verses of this chapter recount the lives of the earliest believers, those who came to faith in the weeks immediately following Jesus' ascension.  Moved and amazed by numerous eyewitnesses accounts of the resurrected Jesus, they proceeded to live in a way that, to our twenty-first century eyes, wholeheartedly rejected Adam Smith's thesis, a thesis that is the foundation of modern capitalism, that everyone who enters the marketplace is to seek his "own self-interest," never that of others.
     As the text puts it, these believers, "Had all things in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.  Day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart" (Acts 2:44-46).
     Some commentators have called this passage a picture of "Christian communism."  Perhaps.  My larger point is that although neither socialism and communism are perfect, capitalism is definitively not, either.  None fully represent a totally biblical view of economics.  To claim otherwise is the mockery of which Proverbs constantly decries.
     Christianity isn't about getting for oneself.  It's not NIMBY (not in my backyard).  It's not about hoarding for one's own pleasures.  And it's not about insisting that capitalism has been ordained by God.
     Christianity is about giving; selfless, sacrificial giving:  to everyone.