FDR: Self-Interest is Bad Morals and Economics

Do you believe we are our brother’s keeper? That question was asked this week during a TV news discussion of the S-CHIP program that assures lower income children will get medical attention when they need it. The answer may be more crucial now than ever before in our nation’s history. How we answer as a people, how we answer as Christians, may well determine whether or not we continue toward the destiny we imagine for ourselves or go the way of nations and empires which have turned their backs on God’s values.
Many believers would like to separate their faith in God from the political/economic system in which they ground their convictions. They would like to hold in one hand a theology of markets and individual initiative that governs life on earth and in the other hand a theology of salvation that governs life after death. By stretching their arms as far apart as possible, they imagine the two theologies never touch. Unfortunately, it’s a plan requiring willful self-deception. It’s just not be possible to know God and scripture and not know that God’s is saying “yes, here on earth, right now, we are our brother’s keeper.” In the conflict between the common good and self interest, God’s word is clear.
And here’s the surprising irony about God’s position: as is so often the case, when we follow God’s will and obey the command to be our brother’s keeper, we inevitably prosper more as individuals. Just another example of how God is so much wiser than us.
There was a time, during the war years and thereafter, when America at least pretended it believed this. The country had a sense of common purpose, a sense of common possibility. President Roosevelt had inspired belief when he said, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals. Now we know that it is bad economics.” But with finger-pointing cries of “socialism,” the proponents slowly turned crass self-interest into a virtue. And the church, for whatever reasons--financial, fear of confrontation, a false understanding of what it means to be born again--has been unwilling to stand tall and say, “No, God intends us to be our brother’s keeper, and by the way, FDR was right, heedless self interest is bad morals--and bad economics.”
Some might leave the church over such a show of courage, but, who knows, others might see the church flexing its muscle and say, “now that’s what I’m looking for!” Someone has to lead before it’s too late. If not God’s people, then who? If not now, when? If we are now a nation that won’t even guarantee our needy children medical care, we’re saying as clear as can be, “No, we are not our brother’s keeper.”