I'll certainly dismiss it out of hand, because it's hogwash.
My church is well and deeply engaged in assisting the poor. The money I provide to the poor through my church is better and more efficiently targeted to meet real need than any money extorted by government through taxes and paid by some bureaucrat to subsidize the sociopolitical "victim" group du jour.
The entire essay is bunk, authored by someone who is already convinced that the left's peculiar spin on Christianity is holier and superior.
And just how does the left get away with throwing down monuments to the Ten Commandments as violating the separation of church and state, while sniffing and insisting that it's peculiar and insipid brand of wasteful and destructive Christianity be imposed on the rest of us through the tax system and bloated government?
The "Christian Left" rarely if ever talks about Christ. They're more interested in supporting mass murderers like Castro and bashing Bush. That's their "religion".
While I agree with you in general, I think it is wrong to base the argument to Christians on this issue on efficiency. Christ's message was about our personal conduct. I am to help the poor--and I do.
There is no way to distort Christ's message to be that the government tax collectors should collect money from some people at gunpoint and give it to others, including the poor. So while Christ speaks to my personal moral decisions, he does not advocate socialism, directly or indirectly. Had He an institutional agenda, he could easily have excoriated Rome or the Pharisees and Saducees for not collecting taxes to help the poor. Instead, he regarded the tax collectors as people in need of forgiveness.
The 'minimum wage is a moral issue' argument is pure sleight of hand. It ignores that Christ was talking about our personal moral duties and not a form of government.
The 'religious' left makes the same mistake as Judas--wanting Christ to lead a worldly revolution.
Very well said!