Huckabee Ignores the "Law"?

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has been looking pretty good to me as a presidential candidate. Seemed pretty conservative and not afraid to articulate his values.

Then I read this story on "Second Commandment Republicans" from Time and now I wonder if Huckabee really gets it, after all.

There are two candidates with strong religious credentials, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and both spend far more time talking about good works than about sin, although each has the requisite positions on abortion and gay marriage. Indeed, it was Huckabee who reminded me of Chesterton's lament. "I'm a 'grace' Christian," Huckabee told me over lunch recently, "not a 'law' Christian. The Second Commandment--do unto others--is the basic tenet of my faith. And so I believe that life begins at conception, but I don't believe it ends at birth. I believe we have a responsibility to feed the hungry, to provide a good education, a safe neighborhood, health care ... That's why I talk so much about the need for music and art programs in our schools. I know some conservatives think it's foolish, but I just believe it's necessary to build whole, creative individuals."

I don't disagree with anything Huckabee says here...in the proper context. Do to others as you would have them do to you is obviously the right way to act; Jesus said it, after all.

Where Huckabee--and many others--seems to go wrong is that he takes a personal admonition and turns it into a government imperative...which it was never meant to be. In fact, if people are following Christ's commandment in this regard, there wouldn't even be an opportunity for government to try and do it.

The Bible makes it clear that charity should be personal, not from some dispassionate, unaccountable government trough. This personal approach allow for both blessings and accountability.

From an op/ed I wrote about a year and a half ago, some biblical references that point to the personal and accountable nature of charity:

- If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold. (Leviticus 25:25)

- Do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit (Exodus 23:3)

- Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly. (Leviticus 19:15)

- If a man will not work, he shall not eat. (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

- These should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family (1 Timothy 5:4)

- As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list…they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house (1 Timothy 5:13)

- If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need. (1 Timothy 5:16)

Not once will you find Jesus or any of his apostles pointing people toward government to have their needs met, or stumping for government to meet those needs, or, in Huckabee's words, saying that government programs are "necessary to build whole, creative individuals." Personal relationships and the "indispensable supports" of "religion and morality" are what builds whole, creative individuals.

This wisdom also guided the founders of the United States as they set up our system of limited, based on freedom and personal responsibility:

- A wise and frugal government...shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. – Thomas Jefferson

- Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. - Thomas Jefferson

- With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. – James Madison

- I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. – James Madison

- (And if he still hasn’t made himself clear…) Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. – James Madison

- We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. — Congressman Davy Crockett

Grace is of paramount importance to the Christian; I know because I'm the recipient of a boat-load of grace. But if we embrace grace to the point of neglecting the law, then we deny one of the two central attributes of God: He is love, but He is also holy.

God's holiness means He cannot embrace or even overlook unholiness, or sin. Anything that operates contrary to His holy and righteous nature is anathema to him.

This is why God sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for us. If He had only been the God of love and grace some claim He is, there would have been no need for Jesus' sacrifice; God could have just wiped our slates clean and declared the debt for our sins "paid in full."

But God declared that the penalty for our sins deserves death, and with a host of sins already to our account, we couldn't pay for them. That's why the sinless Jesus died for us: he had none of his own sins to pay for. He died on the cross to satisfy this justness God requires.

So when someone chats up grace and minimizes righteousness, I have serious concerns that they truly understand the Gospel. And in Huckabee's case, I have serious doubts that he understands the true nature of Christian charity, both from a biblical and a historically American perspective.