By Harry T. Cook

Isaiah 55: 1-5, 10-13

You and I are trapped at the circus. We cannot get out until after November 4. We are being bombarded on the left and on the right by competing visions of what our country is and ought to be, about what it should and should not do. Shall we be a nation of the free-market system and barely restrained capitalism that is basically an “every-man-for-himself” arrangement, or shall we be a nation of a tempered kind of socialism the politics and policies of which would be characterized by distributive justice in which resources are shared through a reasonable taxation of the better off for the sake of the poorer off?

When you take down all the campaign posters and tune out the political posturing of the two Presidential candidates, their parties and their surrogates, that’s really the question in the area of domestic policy. I read The Wall Street Journal six days a week, and would read it on the seventh if it came out on Sundays. And I can tell you what its editors’ answers are to that fundamental question, but, of course, you know what that answer is. Other voices and other publications give different answers that register along the spectrum from more like the Journal’s to less like the Journal’s. For the Journal, taxation is generally a bad thing unless the revenue goes to support the defense establishment in general and the war in Iraq in particular.

But never mind all that. Let’s have a reprise of the Isaiah reading to see what a biblical vision of common life is. The second of three Isaiahs holding forth at the birth of a new Israel, recently liberated from the Babylonian exile, laid out the lineaments of a vision that Churchill would have described as being the broad, sunlit uplands: Ho, to everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price . . . Eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food . . . for you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands . . . it shall be to Yahweh for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Through one lens, that looks like the welfare state. Through another, it looks like the much-hoped for kingdom of God. To one editorial writer, it would look as scary as communism; to another, like how things would be if actual justice were achieved. What interpretation do you put upon Isaiah’s vision? Is it merely an abstract one having to do with piety and so-called spiritual matters? Or is it a concrete one that is possible or even desirable to realize? What does Isaiah have to do with a nation in which separation of church and state is at least in theory an honored tradition? Some people want Genesis and its supposed vision of creation to be taught in the public schools. If they want Genesis, they have to take Isaiah, too. And, while they’re at it, Paul and Jesus, as well.

Here’s Paul: from Romans 13 v, 8: Owe no one anything, except to love one another. In so saying, Paul used the unmistakable word agape: to give all with no thought of return. Here’s Jesus: from Matthew 25 vv, 35 and 40: For when I was hungry, you gave me food, and when thirsty drink, and when a stranger welcome, and when unclothed clothing, and when sick comfort and when imprisoned company . . . In as much as you did these things for me, you did them for the least of these, my sisters and brothers. I think you can draw pretty much a straight line down from Isaiah through Jesus to Paul. But judge for yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

Related Reading: