......as a political ideology rather than liberalism and/or conservatism
1. Charity/Tzedekah is an individual act and freely chosen.
In the Bible, we see that the principle of tzedekah is one that God introduces and addresses as an act that is based in a generous and kind heart. One that is acting not out of coercion but of love. In Judaism (the father of christianity) tzedekah is literally performing justice and righteousness. It is a God-given individual responsibility of those called by His name. Therefore, taking money out of an individual's paycheck is coercively being charitable which is hypocritical at best. Libertarianism supports this by touting that taxation is theft. Austin Petersen wore the quote on the infamous hat, "Make Taxation Theft Again".
2. Pro-life is not just a stance on abortion.
Hear me out. Libertarians have a wide variety of views on abortion. Many are what you would consider "pro-choice" however thanks to Austin Petersen, many non-religious libertarians are becoming against legalization of the murder of pre-born humans. That's a different topic that I do not wish to dive into here; however, I wanted to get that point out of the way. Now, libertarianism at its core would be against the legalization of abortion (pre-born has rights, remember nonaggression principle), against war (it's senseless killing), and the death penalty. If we are pro-life, then libertarianism is pro-life in every sense of the term. I say this to say that this political ideology does not fall one way or the other.
3. The non-aggression principle
Many of my GOP friends feel like they can't be anything other than conservative/ theocratic. I find that libertarianism is more in line with the Bible in that, libertarianism allows freedom/liberty in matters that are moral and do not harm others. Essentially the principle in libertarianism is that "your rights end when they infringe upon another's". What does that look like practically? It looks like allowing the homosexual couple to marry and allowing religious institutions to refuse to marry homosexual couples. It looks like keeping the government out of our bedrooms. It looks like allowing you to put whatever you want to put in your body so long as you are informed about the consequences of putting specific substances in your body. And prosecuting you for any crimes you commit while under the influence. In the Bible we never see God ask or force those who were not in covenant with him to uphold His commandments. We see him saying if any foreigner wishes to join themselves to His covenant people then and only then are they bound to following his laws and decrees (Exodus 12:48). So if even in ancient Israel God didn't hold "the lost" to His standards, why do we think that in this dispensation we should? I mean, as christians we tend to think the Old Testament was much more strict in guidelines to living than it is today. Think about this. It makes sense, I swear.
There's so much more I could write but I don't want to overwhelm you if you are really thinking through this.
Until next time.
-Candee Rue
