Poking at Anthills

Living here in Texas you get to learn about a wonderful little creature called the fire ant. For those of you that live in the north and have never had the pleasure of meeting one of these creatures consider yourselves blessed. These ants have a nasty temper and will attack in mass with only the slightest of provocation, and leave the nastiest of welts after you have been bitten repeatedly. They also have readily recognizable mounds. As a child I liked to stir up these ants from time to time. You had to be careful and use a long stick. From the point that you stuck the stick in onward you had them in an angry frenzy. It was quite fun at least from the perspective of a young boy. It was not so much fun when I got bit, or when I picked the wrong kind of anthill and the ants in it would scurry but not to the point of the fire ants, or if the ants had moved to a new mound.

Why do I bring this up? Because I have been trying to poke the stick at the proverbial anthill just to see if I could get a reaction from a particular “fire ant” atheist and his friends over at Vox’s. You see this person made the claim that a person cannot be a libertarian and a Christian because Christianity is a might = right system and that the self-ownership platform is contrary to the so-called Christian belief that we are either owned by G_d or by Satan.

First off his claim of might = right is not true to Christian teachings. Although we believe that G_d created the universe, has ordered everything in its place, has set the rules, and has the power to enforce those rules; we also know that he created free will, which allows us to refuse to follow those rules. If we choose to go our own way then we will suffer the consequences of our actions because we in our imperfection cannot coexist with G_d in His perfection. But a way has been provided for us that we do not have to be destroyed but that we can coexist with our creator through the perfect sacrifice of His Son.

It is also a misconception that G_d “owns” us. This is also due to free will; if G_d owned us then we would be little automations that did whatever He pleased. Free will allowed for us to show our love for our Creator but also allowed for us to reject Him. The place where “ownership” comes in is where the person who has freely surrendered his life to Yeshua now realizes that his life has been bought with the blood shed for him. That means he has freely given control of his life to G_d and accepts the price paid for it.

Nowhere does this contradict libertarian views. What it does do is challenge the atheistic viewpoint of those who would deny that G_d does exist. Using the very definition that the poster at Vox’s used I will show that a Christian can be a libertarian.

“Libertarianism is a modern political philosophy [1] that strongly advocates the maximization of individual rights, private property rights, and free market capitalism... Libertarians see themselves as consistent supporters of maximum freedom and minimum state intervention in all human activities (where "freedom" is defined as negative liberty)... Libertarians hold that no one should be restrained by initiatory coercion... Libertarians believe that individuals should have the liberty to make their own moral choices as long as they do not use coercion to prevent others from having that same liberty.” (emphasis mine)
From Wikipedia.

As a Christian believing in free will I do not think that a Christian can force another person to live by the moral code set forth by G_d in the Bible, but we do have an obligation to warn people of the consequences of their actions if they do not heed what the Creator has said. This fits right into libertarian views. I could go on more but this post is already long so I will finish for now, but if someone wishes for me to expound further let me know.

BTW the poster in question never answered any of my questions and was eventually banned from Vox’s site due to breaking one of Vox’s very few rules. So I left from this anthill a little frustrated because I was not the only one to ask the same basic question just to be ignored. For those who are curious here is my question:

What I wonder is if you are truly libertarian then why do you care what some other person who claims to be a libertarian thinks? Is not one of the basic tenants of libertarianism about each person living as he sees fit? So if you choose atheism and I choose to live my life following Jesus what does it matter to you? The only difference here would be that I am concerned for your immortal soul and you don’t care because we are all going to end up as worm food.