It's not about the percentage (that would make me a legalistic pharisee)–but it is meant to be a sacrifice (Paul backs me up on that one, and Jesus reminds me to give out of poverty, not abundance).

John Wesley said it well: Earn Much, Save Much, Give Much…

Sider's point is not that poverty should be the baseline, but that it is a de facto baseline for many in the world. His point isn't that we should make less than we do, but that we should do more for others with what we make.

Leave the government out of this for a moment. (I know your original post did concern the government) This whole conversation is way too Left vs Right. People commit to an ideology, me included, and then read the Bible into it or visa versa. The question is, in light of the Bible, what should Christians do today, particulary Western Christians?

Your right, live generously, but how generously?

Paul uses the word equality. The example of Jesus is to give everything away. The Bible says if you see someone in need and say “God Bless” and do nothing, etc… What should we do with these passages? You say be generous. Is the Church prepared for the type of generosity the Bible seems to command?

I'm not. I'm in the same boat you are, having enough, and not much more. On this hating the rich thing. We conservatives have no problem calling sin sin when we have a conviction. What I'm wrestling with is, in light of the overwhelming poverty in this world, at what point does possessing X number of dollars become sin? (Good luck inserting a number in there )

Never mind poverty in this country, the causes of which are debatable. Consider the extreme suffering of people in the third world, some of whom are Christians. If I know that the wife of a pastor lives in extreme poverty because her husband has been locked up because of his faith, and that $25 bucks a month will make a difference, do you think I could scrounge up $25 in loose change, “value” meals and lattes? You would think so, but no, not really.

And concerning the very rich… (what ever that is)

Look, no one likes a hypocrit, (i.e. me) but the story of the “rich young ruler” comes to mind. So does the one about the man whose barns weren't big enough. “Your life will be demanded of you this very night.” Wow!

Hey if I were addressing a group of obviously poor people, maybe some other passages would come to mind, the ones the Right loves to sight about working and eating, not oppressing the rich, fairness and the like, but how much does that apply to people who have the time and means to read a blog.

Were rich, we need to hear the passages that confront us, not the ones that let us off the hook.

I understand seeing the parable of the manager paying everyone how he wants as a free market employer-employee relationship. I also understand how someone could read the early parts of Acts as an early experiment in socialism. Both interpretations are incorrect, however.

I am a capitalist, but not laissez faire. I see too much sin in the world and in economic history to say that absolute free markets work. I see too much sin in corrupt central governments to say that socialism actually has ever achieved any of its goals.

EE, a free market society has many biblical properties. It's where the “ox is not muzzled while he's treading out the grain” (enjoying the fruit of his own labor) where “the worker is worth his wages,” where private property exists and is respected (as in the 10 commandments), and where able-bodied people are responsible to work to support themselves (“if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either”). It's also the most generous system. People in free market economies give far more to help the poor than people in other systems. In addition, it's based on the innovation of people who are able to create ideas and wealth because they're made in the image of God and are inputting ideas into a system rather than the system being closed and determined completely by natural cause and effect.

Do people twist these things? Of course. Welcome to sin. Does this system reflect biblical principles more than other systems–particularly those on the left that are based on a naturalistic worldview that discusses the motivations for everything only in terms of money and power? Yes, I think it does. As people in this system, are we responsible to help the poor in this system? Yes. And we're also responsible to do the hard work to figure out which ways of helping will actually do the most good.

As for “nothing biblical about capitialism,” can you prove that socialism is? Can you prove from Scripture that the civil government can use coercion and the power of the sword to force the well-to-dos to give to the poor? Because that is what socialism is: the use of civil government to force the redistribution of wealth.

Scripture does not support socialism as an economic system. In the absence of that economic system, what economic system are you left with? If not capitalism, then what?

Those who say that capitalism isn't biblical usually cite misuses/abuses of it, but that doesn't nullify the validity of capitalism as being a economic system. It just shows the evil of men, not capitalism. The misuse/abuse of a good thing does not make the good thing a bad thing.

What we have today in our goverment looks like capitalism on the outside, but on the inside, you have socialism and mercantilism in the mix. Add to that an unbridled central bank robbing the wealth of every citizen through monetary inflation, our economic system is hardly the capitalism that is found in the Bible.

What concerns me is that people are equating “helping the poor” with the redistribution of wealth by the government. They then judge our level of compassion in this country by our level of redistribution. This is confusing concern for the poor with belief in their remedy. The two are not the same. Here's a perfect illustration of how this plays out. After the tsunami, our government gave less than some other governments. Everyone cried out, “Look how uncompassionate America is!” But when you combined the government's givings with private donations, America was far and away more generous than any other nation. We are corporately, as a country, very compassionate–and not by force!

As I've said, people become more generous and more caring for the poor the less redistribution of wealth is done by the government. I'm very interested in reading that book I mentioned (I haven't had a chance yet)–and part of the reason I'm so intrigued by it is the author's statement about how important it is that we cultivate a culture of giving and compassion. He thinks his book is important because if we're not careful, we'll create a society that is uncompassionate–and all because we're trying to be compassionate! He was very surprised by the results he found from his studies because it didn't show what the person on the street expects–it didn’t show that the more a government redistributes wealth, the more the citizens care about the poor. (This is the assumption in your idea that what I’m saying is dangerous.) What he found is that the exact opposite is true–that the redistribution of wealth is what’s dangerous to the compassionate character of a country. He found that rather than those who are against redistribution using this as an excuse not to follow the teachings of Scripture to help the poor, people were instead using the government’s redistribution of wealth (or even their desire for the government’s redistribution of wealth–even if the government was not currently doing so) as an excuse not to help the poor themselves. Can you see the danger of this for everybody?

Never, never did I say you shouldn’t be overly generous with time and money, and there are many, many exhortations that Christian employers should live by as they manage their workers. We should be concerned about the poor no matter how much money we have–much or little. That’s how we should be as Christians! That’s how we should encourage others to be! But I just don’t hate the wealthy. I just don’t. We’re not told in the Bible to automatically hate the wealthy, and we’re not told to take their money or to envy what they have. We’re also told the government should not favor the poor or the rich, but instead it should be just. God blessed people with wealth many times in the Bible. There were wealthy people who followed Jesus and supported Him. They gave more than the others, but they still had more than the others. God did not hate that those people had more than the others.

And trust me, I have no horse in this race. I’m not wealthy and trying to defend what I have. If there were a redistribution of wealth nothing would be taken from me personally, believe me! Nor am I saying this out of guilt for a lack of giving on my part. I try to make it part of my life to help people I know personally and people around the world. Please consider reading that book or listening to the interview. There’s a steady drumbeat of “helping the poor=government redistributing wealth” and “the wealthy are bad people (unless they believe the government should redistribute wealth)”–but I think there’s good reason to question that, particularly since these ideas began based on a naturalistic worldview that knew nothing of the wisdom of God.