Says the most Christlike way to help the poor is to increase taxes on whoever lives in the nicer zip code.
The adult Sunday School class at Redeemer Community reportedly entered “uncharted theological territory” this week after one member, identified only as Greg, explained that all of Jesus’s teaching about caring for the poor clearly points to the need for a totalizing state that forcibly redistributes wealth via crippling tax policy. Classmates say he began with the Sermon on the Mount and ended with, “Therefore, we obviously need a massive centralized apparatus with the power to confiscate your paycheck.”
According to those present, the shift happened during a discussion of passages where Jesus calls his followers to radical generosity, personal sacrifice, and concrete hospitality. Where others heard a summons to open-handed charity and costly love, Greg heard a policy platform. “When Jesus says, ‘Give to the one who begs from you,’ what he really means is ‘petition for a bureaucratic leviathan that will garnish wages and route them through at least six agencies before a dollar ever reaches a human being,’” he reportedly explained, nodding as if quoting a commentary.
Class members attempted to point out that the commands are addressed to disciples, churches, and individuals, not to faceless departments with laminated ID badges. Greg remained undeterred. “Look, the early church shared their possessions,” he said. “It’s basically Acts 2, except with more forms, compliance officers, and a 400-page tax code. Same heart.”
Sources say Greg is particularly moved by parables about the least of these, which he interprets as a divine endorsement of any program described as “comprehensive” and “fully funded,” regardless of whether it works. “If you’re not willing to hand your income to a system that loses 20% to administration and 30% to fraud, do you even believe in the Beatitudes?” he asked the room, rhetorically.
Observers note that Greg’s application consistently skips over inconvenient details like stewardship, competence, or basic math. Concerns about waste, perverse incentives, and entrenched dependency are dismissed as “coded language for not loving your neighbor enough to trust a committee.” One member’s timid suggestion that perhaps families, churches, and local communities might have some direct responsibility to help the poor was quickly labeled “rugged individualism.”
The irony, according to several quietly alarmed Reformed attendees, is that Greg’s vision of mercy appears to require the state to become the primary pastor, deacon, and head of household simultaneously. “When Jesus calls us to lay down our lives and our money, he’s talking about people obeying,” one elder said afterward. “Greg keeps hearing, ‘delegate your conscience to a distant office and let them handle compassion at scale—poorly.’”
At press time, Greg was reportedly drafting a small group study titled “Render Unto Caesar: How Christ’s Kingdom Comes Mainly Through Payroll Withholding,” in which every text on generosity concludes with an exhortation to vote for larger programs, higher brackets, and new agencies “so that experts can love your neighbor for you.”
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