42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
This is the postlude to the classic Second Chapter of Acts story of Pentecost and the sermon passage from yesterday. The key word in the passage is devoted. They just got done seeing God work miracles and saw some more done even as they worshiped. It's easier to be all-in in that setting, listening attentively to what the folks who followed Jesus had to say and helping out their brothers in Christ.
Translating that to the present is hard, since we don't have that level of devotion to our church and the Church. Trying to run a Jerusalem church in Laodicea isn't going to work well. We're going to fall short of the signs, wonders and fellowship that they had here since we're barely warmed over compared to the folks here.
Also note that this is the church sharing resources. That doesn't quite translate to a communal approach to government, since the government will likely be well short of the church's level of being attuned to the Holy Spirit.
The church's level of being attuned to the Holy Spirit must be very low given that this is a rare site now-a-days: "All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." Some body (or something, aka the government) should pick up the pieces until we, the church, get our act together. Something to think about before supporting candidates that would defund programs that help the elderly and poor without an adequate substitute.
Posted by: NKR | August 13, 2012 at 05:11 PM
Not quite true of the Romney-Ryan team for the most part, sir; Ryan has plugged to voucherize Medicare but the coverage should be roughly as good, lest there be a major revolt.
You do have a strong point in defense of a certain level of government help for the needy, given that the Church seems ill-equipped at present; that's why I'm not a libertarian or a Libertarian.
Posted by: Mark Byron | August 13, 2012 at 05:35 PM
I like the idea of shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries but the size of the shift of such a voucher program is projected to be small relative to the projected increase in costs that would result from having Medicare provided by private insurers instead of the government-run Medicare system.
CBO's projections suggest that Ryan's plan would add $30 trillion+ to the cost of providing Medicare equivalent policies over its 75-year planning period. The increases in cost come from underlying problems, such as dazzlingly high health care costs and government patent monopolies, which could raise the price of drugs by close to $250 billion+ a year above the free market price. If we fix these problems first, we might find Medicare actually works quite well (and save $). I'd like to see more public discourse around this... even a revolt. But Ryan's voucher system isn't necessarily the best way to begin this process and I'm unaware of any comparative analysis or evidence that says vouchers would increase health care quality.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/22085
Posted by: NKR | August 15, 2012 at 11:53 AM