The United States is a communal society. Not Communist, communal. By that I mean we citizens give our money to the government so that it may be distributed to our neighbors. OK, give is not the right word. The government takes it. But they don’t take it all…yet. They’re taking more each year, though. And every election, politicians on the Left line up to pander to those on the receiving end of the generosity of their neighbors.

Watching the first debate of Democratic candidates, I waited for the inevitable call for tax increases on “the rich” and John Edwards, who just built himself a house the size of a Wal Mart, did not disappoint. You know the rich. They’re those evil people who pay all the taxes. They’re the productive ones paying for a lot of kids’ free lunches at school and college educations and they’re paying for the war and everything else. Many of them employ people and are philanthropists and they all contribute positive things to society… OK, except for the lawyers.

The wealthy in this country are portrayed in each election cycle, as the bad guys. The assumption is that anyone who has been successful in this country must have stepped on some little guy to get where he or she is. The wealthy must have surely done something immoral and unethical, even if it was legal, in order to achieve their station in life. It was Dick Gephardt who insulted every self-made millionaire when he called the wealthy “winners in life’s lottery.” There is a segment of the Christian community, politically active Liberals, who are devoted to driving a wedge between Christianity and political Conservatism. They see the “Religious Right” as the enemy. They are led by men such as Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo among others. They pervert terms like ‘justice’ in order to rationalize their Socialist agenda to the Christian community. They engage in the same kind of class warfare as Left Wing politicians.

There is a word straight out of the Bible for this kind of judgementalism and emotional manipulation and for the mindset that produces the punitive form of taxation employed in this country. That word is COVETOUSNESS. It is found in the Ten Commandments. In fact, it is exactly what the tenth commandment prohibits. Covetousness is not the same thing as greed. Greed is when you irrationally want something you don’t need. Covetousness is when you want something simply because it bugs you that someone else has it. The tenth commandment refers to coveting, not just any house, wife, servant or ox, but specifically those that belong to your neighbor. It is part of human nature and it is a sin. It may be the least recognized sin in our world because we are so good, in our own minds, at rationalizing it away. We have all seen a child, perhaps three years old, already playing with a perfectly good toy, grab a toy out of a sibling’s hands just because the child doesn’t want the sibling to have it. It is a natural inclination from birth. It’s part of our sinful nature.

That is why the first two behavioral lessons parents teach their children are, on one hand, to share with others, and on the other hand, to leave other people’s things alone. The only difference between children and adults is about a foot and a half. Those of us who are committed to Jesus Christ struggle against what we know to be sin our entire lives. Left wing politicians and religious leaders seek to exploit our lowest common denominators by appealing to our base desires and jealousies. They use sweeping generalizations to create straw men for us to despise. They appeal to the inner child in all of us. The problem is that our inner children, according to the Bible, and, if we are honest, according to our own self-examination, are whiney selfish brats.

Charity and mercy are not the same as justice either in the Bible or in the dictionary. Christians are instructed to pursue all three but they are not the same thing. Neither are they the means to an end but, rather, the product of our new relationship with Christ.

When Wallis and Campolo, et. al. define justice as taking from the rich to give to the poor, and when they define injustice as allowing “The Rich,” whoever they are, to keep some of their hard earned money, they are not only engaging in covetousness themselves, they are encouraging it in others. Surely, to lead others into a sin against which we all should struggle is a special sin in itself.