Nick Gier turns Jubilee and Acts into arguments for state redistribution, but Scripture draws a sharper line between Christian charity and Caesar’s coercion.
This editorial ran in the Tuesday 25 August 2026 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
Nick Gier’s latest response to my column on coveting begins with a straw man. As a retired philosophy professor, he knows better.
I never argued that poor workers seeking better wages are coveting their employers’ wealth. I wrote the opposite: “Sometimes injustice truly exists. Fraud, theft, and broken contracts should be punished. The Bible never defends dishonesty or exploitation.”
So, when Gier asks whether desperately poor cigar workers in 19th-century New York were “coveting the riches of their exploitative employers,” the answer is no. They were being exploited and were seeking justice.
But that is not the issue.
My argument concerned Gier’s politics that looks at another person’s lawful prosperity, decides he has too much, and demands that 
government take more of it simply because someone else has less. That is the logic of redistributive politics, whether advanced by democratic socialists, social democrats, or the Democratic Socialists of America.
Greed is sinful. Exploitation is sinful. Theft is sinful. Coveting is also sinful. God can condemn the rich man who cheats his workers and the poor man who envies his neighbor at the same time.
Poverty and envy are not the same problem. Opportunity, work, charity, and economic growth can relieve poverty. They cannot cure envy, because envy turns another man’s prosperity into a grievance.
Gier reads Jubilee and Acts 2 through his statist lens, treating biblical commands to relieve hardship as warrants for state redistribution. But neither passage gives the state that authority.
Jubilee did not abolish property rights. It depended upon them. Israelite land belonged to particular tribes and families, and Jubilee restored ancestral land to those families. It was not a general confiscation of wealth from successful Israelites for redistribution to unrelated poorer Israelites.
Jubilee therefore reinforces an important principle behind the Tenth Commandment: some things belong to your neighbor and not to you.
Gier then turns to Acts 2, where Christians sold possessions and distributed the proceeds according to need.
But they gave voluntarily. The Roman government did not confiscate their property, and no magistrate compelled redistribution. Acts 5 makes that distinction explicit. Peter told Ananias that the property was his before he sold it and that the proceeds remained under his control afterward. His sin was not keeping his property or money. His sin was lying to God.
Acts records what believers did. Gier misses a simple distinction: description does not equal divine prescription.
Neither Jubilee nor Acts turns Caesar into the church’s deacon.
Gier’s Christian communalists do not help his case either. Christians may voluntarily share everything they own. Voluntary community is not compulsory redistribution.
Jesus commanded us to “render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Caesar has legitimate duties, but not every human responsibility belongs to Caesar. Scripture assigns duties of mercy and generosity to families, churches, neighbors, and individuals as well. James Madison made the same constitutional distinction in 1794: “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
Statism erases those boundaries. If something is good, government must provide it. If someone has a need, government must meet it. If someone has more, government should take it. Under its new “Millionaires’ Tax,” Washington State now taxes income over $1 million.
If Caesar becomes our universal charity, Caesar also becomes our universal collector. God commands charity. He does not command Caesar to coerce it from us.
This is not an argument that all taxation is theft. Government requires revenue for its legitimate duties. The argument is about jurisdiction and limits. That is precisely the limit Gier’s statism lacks.
The Tenth Commandment remains stubbornly clear: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house” or “anything that is your neighbor’s.”
Notice the words: “your neighbor’s.” The commandment assumes a moral distinction between mine and yours. Government cannot baptize coveting by putting it in the tax code. The Tenth Commandment does not cease to apply because we vote to reach into our neighbor’s pocket.
The Westminster catechisms, written in 1647, go further. The Tenth Commandment requires contentment with our own condition and a charitable spirit toward our neighbor and “all that is his.” The Larger Catechism says we should “further all that good which is his.” In plain English, we should rejoice in our neighbor’s prosperity and help advance it, not resent his success or demand that government cut him down to size.
That does not excuse wealthy people or government elites who exploit workers, commit fraud, or abuse power. Scripture condemns those sins. But justice does not authorize envy, and compassion does not give Caesar unlimited jurisdiction.
Scripture condemns greed without blessing envy, commands generosity without abolishing ownership, and recognizes Caesar without making Caesar lord.