The problem with government systems is, of course, the fact that the people who run them are always inevitably selfish.
The reason governing authorities--"rulers," if you like that term--are selfish is this:
Every person is selfish.
Every single person is selfish. I am selfish. You are selfish. The birthday boy is selfish, and the girl who danced the lead in the Nutcracker, and the man who booked the last campsite available at the campground, and the woman who pulled into the parking spot I was hoping to get at Target. We are all born hard-wired to look out for #1, and #1, in each of our perspectives, is the almighty "I." We even capitalize it in English; that's how normal selfishness is.
Normal, however, does not necessarily mean good, or right, or fair. It is normal to pass gas after you eat legumes cooked with onions, but that doesn't mean it is desirable. Our selfishness is normal and natural, but it is not helpful or good. Still, it is a state of being. Most people are fairly slow to share with others, unless they trust that by sharing, they will earn the right to expect someone to share with them. This is why people often work to befriend those they believe will benefit them. People are selfish. They trade favors for favors, gifts for gifts, and sometimes favors and gifts for the opportunity to leverage a popular person's reputation for their betterment.
Normal people give to get back, and they do not give if they do not think they will get anything back. Kind people will give without expectation of a return on investment. However, even then, they generally make sure that their needs are met first. Kind people will share their extra. They do not give away what they perceive they need, only what they can do without. Very few people give sacrificially. Very, very few people are more concerned with caring for others than they are with caring for themselves, regularly giving up what they need so that another's need can be met. Such behavior doesn't even make sense to most people. This is the nature of humanity.
And, this is why government systems are all messed up.
Capitalism, conservatism, "The Right," whatever you want to call it, was set up with the concept of human selfishness at its core. Capitalism says: If you let people compete in a free market, and give them freedom to own property, and make money, and spend their money as they wish, they will naturally work hard to profit themselves, because people are by nature selfish and greedy. Now, this is quite an interesting way to set things up, because it is true. People will work, and compete, and fight and cheat to get ahead. As we have said, this is the nature of humanity. Capitalism capitalizes on the fact that people are driven to grasp for themselves, and it organizes a system whereby people can eagerly grasp away, and thus be productive, and thus build a society together. This works fairly well for awhile, because it is implemented by realists who understand some basics about human nature. However, over time, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The people who began winning the game go on to dominate the game, while those who have fallen behind lose hope and motivation, falling farther and farther behind. As the gap between the rich and the poor increases, so does hostility and polarization. Injustice breeds hate, and hate breeds violence, and then you end up somewhere similar to where the USA is right now, and ultimately in a bloody revolution.
However, Socialism and Communism are poor answers to this problem, because they are not based on reality. Socialism and Communism are based on the idea that people are naturally altruistic--kind and honest--and will be happy to share and share alike, everyone throwing all his property into one big pot to be doled out to whomever has need of it. Communism, in particular, is an insidious lie, because it takes a shared property system, but places a group of government elites--powerful leaders--at the center to collect and redistribute all of the "state" property. They become the ruling class--the "State"--and historically they have ruled as harsh dictators, keeping the best for themselves and imprisoning, sometimes even executing, anyone who dissents. Freedom is utterly lost.
Socialism is like Communism, but trusts that the people themselves will be able, democratically, to distribute the shared (never privately owned) property to one another. Of course, given the naturally selfish nature of humanity, this is a very risky idea. But even riskier is the problem of motivation. Those who would work hard in a Capitalist system, striving to amass their personal wealth, look around at the Socialist system and see that if they work hard to produce a lot, it will only be taken away from them and given to someone else. They resent that the fruit of their hard work is taken from them for the benefit of someone who does not have the work ethic or investment in training that they have. If everyone is paid the same, given the same style of government-issue apartment, the same style pants and shirts, the same soap, the same cereal, the same bed and the same chairs, why should anyone work particularly hard? In Socialism, as it ripens, everyone only wants to put in 35 hours a week working slowly at the DMV, and then go home, drink beer, and play video games. The obvious problem is if that's all anybody does, the pool of publicly owned property dwindles rapidly, and scarcity becomes a huge issue: we're back to widespread, desperate poverty.
So we're stuck, right? Because if we use personal gain to motivate people to work, with Capitalism, then the bullies win in the end, and the weaker, poorer, less fortunate people suffer. But if we take away the money the rich people have made, through taxes and whatever other means we think of, and reallocate it to people who are poorly employed or unemployed, we either drive the rich away (as in the topmost classes, who move to far away places and put their money into foreign bank accounts), or we demotivate hard workers from working hard, and both results decrease our overall wealth as a nation, thus decreasing resources and standard of living for all.
We need a system that will motivate hard work and personal achievement while simultaneously motivating the rich to help the poor. We need to demonstrate realistically that sharing wealth is a benefit to all society. It is not productive to hate rich people. It is not fair simply to commandeer their stuff. We have to appreciate them, and convince them that a beautiful world full of amply-fed, happy people--people who are doing well because resources have been shared--is a better place for them than one where they live in an ivory tower while the masses suffer in sewage outside their gates.
How can we do this?
We have to counter selfishness. We must wage war against the the grain of human nature.
The only way to do this, the only way to change natural selfishness into love for others, love for those who need but do not deserve help, is to turn to the gospel.
The gospel tells us that there is a great and mighty God who created us in His own image, so that we could love Him and be loved by Him. He did not create us as mere puppets or robots. He created us as thinking, feeling, philosophical beings with the ability to make choices. And when one has the ability to make choices, one also--necessarily--has the ability to make mistakes.
And oh, how we make mistakes. Eve believed the first lie, the lie that God was holding out on her, keeping her from something good. The only thing God was keeping from Adam and Eve was the knowledge of evil, the experience of shame, pain and suffering. They didn't know what those things were, only that they did not have them, and so they thought they wanted them. They chose to grasp for the knowledge of evil, believing the lie that it would make them better, happier. And of course, it only brought them strife, the strife we still suffer under to this day.
They, like we, needed but did not deserve help.
The Bible says, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way..." (Isaiah 53:6).
But God loves us anyway. God has compassion on us, because He made us. He knows the potential with which He infused us at creation. He knows what we can become under His grace, if we will only come back. And although we had hopelessly entangled ourselves in a deadly lie, God took on flesh and became a human, like us, to bear in His body--on His own perfect self--the penalty our sins demanded. He gave up His divine identity-- His omnipresence, His invulnerability, His glory--to obtain for us the salvation we desperately needed.
But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. ~Isaiah 53:5-6
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. ~1 Peter 2:22-25
Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. ~1 Peter 3:18
God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God. ~2 Corinthians 5:21
[He] being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man [as if that weren't enough...] He humbled Himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross! ~Philippians 2:6-8
Jesus humbled Himself to a death He did not deserve, so that we could be cleansed from our sin and clothed with His righteousness. He calls us to follow His example: We are to pour ourselves out for the good of others, as God fills us with His Spirit and the strength and the love of Christ Himself.
In God's Kingdom, everyone is valued. Everyone receives full provision. God created each one of us unique, with our own gifts and abilities. No two of us are the same, and He designed us such that when we reach our God-given potential, we will all work together with miraculous divine synergy. We will all esteem one another. Nobody will be viewed as better than anyone else. We will treasure our complementary differences and rejoice in the way God has designed us all to cooperate in perfect, stunning harmony (Romans 12:3-18, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13:13). We will each have exactly what we need, and our greatest delight will be in sharing with one another as we trust the Lord to be the Source who bountifully, generously, joyfully provides all our needs. It will actually be kind of like a functional Communism or Socialism--we will gladly surrender our resources to God, and trust that in His perfect wisdom and justice, He will be the One--the absolute only One--who is able to allocate everything fairly and for the true, supreme benefit of all. Righteousness will reign, and righteousness is the result of a powerful, others-focused love. The love of God.
Our hearts overflow with joy and thanksgiving, because we do not deserve this, but we receive it through the grace and compassion of Jesus Christ. He teaches us never to look down on others, because we are all utterly lost without the salvation of Christ, and apart from Him there is no good thing.
The lie goes on and on. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. His motivation is to deface the glory of God. He attacks from every possible angle, even through people who claim to know God, people who adopt and desecrate the very name of Christ. If the devil can't smack you down by tempting you to hate the 10 Commandments, he'll smack you down with pride, self-righteousness and selfishness, insidious sins that others see in us long before we recognize them in ourselves.
But Jesus tells us that He will reveal to us the truth, and the truth will set us free. Jesus assures us that He Himself is the way, the truth and the life. Jesus invites us to abide in Him, and promises to abide in us, through His precious Holy Spirit, forming and transforming our hearts to be gracious and humble like His. Jesus is our only hope, but what a hope! He is the unfailing hope, the faithful God, grounded in love, plenty for all, a sure anchor for our souls, the Shepherd who has vowed to rescue His beloved sheep, bind our wounds and carry us home.
When we receive and extend the love of Christ, we can change things, touching and healing one life at a time, one degree of glory to another, by the power of the Spirit.
