There was a man in the first church of which I was pastor who liked to cite the proverb, ‘The Lord helps those who help themselves’. This was in the sparsely populated part of the state of Colorado known as the ‘Western Slope’, in a small town in which its every inhabitant defined the term ‘rugged American individualism’. I hadn’t been there very long, and was trying to adjust to the great distances we had to travel to find basic amenities, when I met an ancient cowboy during a hospital visit who told me he thought it was time to be moving on. ‘Its getting too crowded around here’, he said. Freedom, for him, was large open spaces between him and other people. That’s the West.

And, that proverb epitomises the creed of the West. Most who cite it undoubtedly think it can be found in the Bible. (Which, in case you are wondering, it cannot.)

Westerners also know that socialism is bad. It is difficult to find a dirtier word in the vocabulary than ‘socialism’, other than ‘communism’. But, since they both stand for the same thing, they are about equally egregiously nasty (sorry, I just like the word and have to find ways to use it). Whenever my wife and I mention how glad we are for the National Health Service in Britain, even with its difficulties, the response is, ‘But socialised medicine is…’, and they go into the horror stories of waiting lines that they are fed by the American media and politicians. A relative of ours has no health insurance for his family, because it would take over half his salary, and he would still have to pay $1000 deductible. But, he was horrified at the thought of ‘socialised medicine’. So, his family lives in fear of a medical emergency, whereas when our daughter needed an important heart procedure we had no worries. These two stories came to mind this week as the banking system collapsed. In the first place, finance bankers who lived the Western creed, ‘The Lord helps those…’ have learned where self-interest ultimately leads. In the second instance, none other than the cowboy boot wearing Republican President of the United States ‘nationalised’ several banks and an insurance company. Over here that is known as ‘socialism’! But, this is socialism with a capitalist twist—in this case ‘the people’ join their resources to help the ‘poor’ bankers who so recklessly threw their good money after bad money.

It is not difficult to condemn the excesses of Wall Street as greed. The world’s financial system is based on self-interest (also known as the free market), where the object is to make as much money as possible for oneself. Self-interest can lead fairly easily to greed. It should not be surprising that, in an environment that rewards people for making more money, people will do anything for such reward! How can people be faulted for doing what they are trained to do, and do it well? The housing crisis brings to mind the words of the prophet Isaiah, ‘Woe to you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you…!’ (Isa 5:8). The problem of unrestrained market forces is not a new one! And neither is the condemnation! Nor, the solution.
Theologically, ‘self-interest’ is the basic definition of ‘sin’. Those who live for themselves cause harm to other people (when I win, you lose), and ultimately to themselves. Is it not odd that the world’s financial system is based on such a premise? And that Christians will vote to sustain its abuses?

Now that America has embraced socialism of the financial community, it might be useful for Americans to ask why an arch-free marketer would use socialist tactics. Might it be because a world of ‘rugged individualists’ renders community concern helpless? When the ‘God helps those who help themselves’ mentality reigns, the rich get richer, and the non-rich become poor. On the other hand, the prominent prophetic call to assure justice for the ‘widow and orphan’, and ‘the poor in the land’, calls for communities to take care of the casualties of the system.

Socialism arose as a political movement in response to the unbridled capitalism of the Industrial Revolution, where a few became obscenely wealthy at the expense of the workers who created the wealth by their labour. As a result of the communist threat to Western democracies, the whole of western Europe adopted some form of socialism, undercutting the seed-bed of revolution. The USA, alone, has remained reactionary, offering only pale copies of European social insurance; i.e., Medicare/Medicaid, which takes only the worst aspects of socialised medicine.

If it were possible to set aside the freighted political terminology these concepts raise, and to lay aside the un-Christian notion that God helps only those who are self-sufficient (what, after all, is the meaning of grace than God’s assistance to the helpless?), and to listen to the words of Jesus in his last message to his disciples, we might see a way out of an economics based on greed.
On the last day, Jesus says, the King will come and say to his own, ‘I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ His people will ask when they did this, and the King will answer, ‘As often as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’

Might Jesus add, today, ‘I lost my home, and you gave me shelter.’?

Sadly, the new American socialism is not this sort of care for the ‘least of these’. In this version, the ‘least’ are giving aid to the ‘greatest’. Naomi Klein asked a question this week which seems to me to point in the direction of Jesus’ judgement day question (why does it take a 'liberal' to ask such questions?). She asks, ‘If the state can intervene to save corporations that took reckless risks in the housing markets, why can’t it intervene to prevent millions of Americans from imminent foreclosures?’

Indeed. Why not?