Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Jesus as Budget Director?
Jesus as Budget Director?
Jul 1, 2025 7:14 AM

My first reaction to “What Would Jesus Cut?” is that it tends to reduce Christ to a distributor of material goods through government programs. Jesus is not a budget overseer or a dispenser of government largesse. Sojourners founder Jim Wallis has already countered this accusation with his own post saying, “We haven’t been trying to get Jesus to be the head of any mittee, or think that he would ever want that job!”

But still, to use Christ as an example of a legislator writing budgetary law is facile when we recognize Christ as the fulfillment of the law (Romans 10:4). It reduces and trivializes Christ at a time when there is already too much theological confusion about the person, nature, and mission of Christ in this country. And while Christ certainly relates and guides us on the day to day questions as we work to uplift the social witness, this practice reduces the Word of Life to moralism when done in a frivolous manner.

As for how we help the poor, as we manded to do as Christians, we shouldn’t confuse the Kingdom of Christ with the power and agenda of the state. Evangelicalism, and proclamation of the person of Christ should not be reduced to baptizing and sanctifying the budget.

In October 2009, I wrote “America’s Uncontrolled Debt and Spending is the Real ‘Waterloo,’” agreeing with Jim Wallis that budgets are moral documents, but focusing rather on the immorality of chaining a nightmare of debt to future Americans. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, waxes eloquent on budget morality, too. He offered this sound byte in an address just last week to the National Religious Broadcasters Association in Nashville:

It is immoral to bind our children to as leeching and destructive a force as debt. It is immoral to rob our children’s future and make them beholden to China. No society is worthy that treats its children so shabbily.

I also agree with Jordan Ballor here and here in his aptly written remarks about the similar “A Call for Intergenerational Justice: A Christian Proposal on the American Debt Crisis.”

Wallis, who is a signer of “A Call for Intergenerational Justice” has a very disappointing record when es to fiscal responsibility. He is on record of already opposing social security reform, welfare reform in the 1990s, slowing the rate of growth of government spending in the 90s, and even checking the rate of growth for SCHIP, as my mentary points out.

I wore “What Would Jesus Do” apparel for a short time during the fad, and obviously it is good to ask WWJD. But I stopped wearing it when I realized that I already knew what Christ would do, and I should be asking myself deeper questions about what I am really doing to magnify my relationship with Christ and my witness to others.

I think that is what bothers me with “What Would Jesus Cut?” It’s a reduction of the witness of Christ, with no greater context of his redemptive mission. This is a flaw of some, but not all, on both the religious right and religious left. There is a danger in over-politicizing the name of Jesus in the public square, especially when the Church in America is crying out for sound Biblical doctrine. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and to continually reinsert him into the budget debate, which are clearly prudential arguments, shrinks his real power and authority.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” Is a Work of Bitter Greatness
Approaching the end of a great career, the Oscar, Tony, and Olivier Award–winning playwright has produced one of his finest works: both surprising and ferocious. Read More… Tom Stoppard’s new play, Leopoldstadt, is a triumph of the playwriting art. It’s also a triumph of marketing. That’s because its advertising and publicity campaign has sold the public on the idea that it’s a multigenerational saga. It is that, but only secondarily. To a much greater degree, it’s a ferociously angry Holocaust...
Who Decides What Books Your Child Should Read?
The fight over “book banning” and who has the final word in a child’s education has taken some nasty turns of late. Everyone needs to take a step back and put the debate into monsense context. Read More… At its best, a democratic polity ought to deal well plexity, posed of clashing ideas and principles as well as the interests of multiple actors and stakeholders. Such a polity will seek proximate solutions that require constant fine-tuning. It will recognize trade-offs...
Better Economics for a Better, Not Perfect, World
We are men, not gods, and so utopia will always remain a dream, disappointing historians and economists of all stripes. But that is no reason to despair. Read More… As far as centuries go, the 20th was remarkable for many things, not least among which were wars fought on a scale unprecedented for their destructiveness, as well as convulsive debates about economics and economic policy. In the case of the latter, the 20th century witnessed economics emerging from being a...
Lives of the Saint: C.S. Lewis on Stage and Screen
Why has the life of this Oxford don, Christian apologist, and storyteller proved so seductive to filmmakers and playwrights? Perhaps because his life was a great story itself. Read More… Sometimes it seems as though the only things that exercise modern souls are sex, scandal, and sin, but all around us, every day, there are indications that a not-insignificant portion of the population seeks something more. These strivers and seekers are not looking for men whose flaws make them relatable...
Avalon Is Thanksgiving for America
Director Barry Levinson is one of the great American cinematic storytellers. And one of the stories he loves to tell is about making it in the New World, with lessons about the price of success for immigrants and their descendants alike. Read More… Barry Levinson was one of the most successful directors in America around 1990, when he made Avalon, an immigrant Thanksgiving movie trying to sum up the transformation of the American family in the 20th century. He won...
Freeing the Market from Unfree Minds
A new book explores the long evolution of the free market economy, arguing it is more myth than fact. The problem is: The author is no economist, and so his facts are more myth than reality. Read More… Free Market: The History of an Idea by Jacob Soll, a professor of history, philosophy, and accounting, attempts to trace the philosophical and theoretical evolution of the free market over 2,000 years. But a century-by-century account would prove tedious if for no...
Jimmy Lai Pushes to Halt National Security Trial
As the democracy activist is denied a jury trial, his defense team pushes for justice. Read More… Mere days after bringing a veteran British litigator on his legal team, jailed Hong Kong entrepreneur Jimmy Lai is moving to halt the trial proceedings entirely. In a pretrial interview, the 74-year-old Lai came before three National Security judges to review the charges brought against him. Lai’s trial, slated to begin in early December, is to be heard by a panel of judges...
The Collapse of a Cryptocurrency Guru
How could a much-celebrated billionaire be reduced to virtually nothing in a matter of days? When your reality is all in your head. Read More… At the beginning of the year, I wrote a piece for Acton on Elizabeth Holmes, the con artist behind Theranos, the fake tech startup promising a revolution in blood tests and, thus, the beginning of a solution to the problem of healthcare costs. Come the year’s end, we have, apparently, another con man vaguely associated...
Jimmy Lai Gets Veteran U.K. Human Rights Lawyer
The imprisoned activist and entrepreneur faces life in prison as part of Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong. Read More… Although 74-year-old media mogul and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai faces life in prison under Beijing’s harsh National Security Law (NSL), he now has a new ally in his corner: veteran human rights lawyer Timothy Owen. Lai, already serving time for convictions related to the NSL, still faces a December trial that could leave him spending the rest of his life behind...
The Catholic Church vs. Critical Race Theory
A new book by philosopher Edward Feser takes on the popularizers of CRT and demonstrates the theory’s incoherence and patibility with church teaching, even as racism remains an evil to batted. Read More… Two and half years ago, the police killing of George Floyd sparked rioting and heightened racial tensions across the United States, and many Americans began to hear the phrase “critical race theory” for the first time. Critical race theory (or CRT) has been around since at least...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved