Socialism

Many now see Socialism as the answer to all the ills of the United States—enhanced or outright fabricated—is Socialsim. The sales pitch is that if you're sensitive or smart, you should be a Socialist. If you're still not convinced and continue to resist or bring up Socialism's universally abysmal economic results and hideously oppressive human rights record, odds are good you'll be “cancelled.” The first step to what some American Socialist advocates have already started talking about--”reeducation”, i.e. the Gulags.
According to Investopedia on Socialism: “in a socialist economy, the government owns and controls the means of production, and public officials regulate trade, the flow of capital, and other resources.” Anybody with their eyes open for the last 30 years (60 is arguable) has to admit that the U.S. has slithered in that direction despite the consistently abysmal and oppressive record in history.
But what of the Christian's response?
According to an article in the Communist Party of the USA website, “Communism and Christianity have a long history.  Throughout his ministry, Jesus spread the revolutionary message that the needs of the poor and the marginalized are at the center of the kingdom of God. This is so sadly misinformed that I'll probably have to deal with it later.
At the same time, however, ruling classes have crafted a Christianity to suit their own ends: a brutal doctrine that salvation lies in submission, and that the emperor, the slaveholder, the boss, and the husband are God’s representatives on earth.” Submission to God is “brutal”? What a simple-minded reading of Scripture! What a tragic and closed-minded idea of who God is! If I want brutality, turn to how the Soviets dealt with dissidents or Christians, or Communist China's organ harvesting of “resistant” populations.
It's no surprise that Lenin, founder of Russia's Soviet Union saw socialism as incompatible with religious belief. In 1905 he said: “Everyone must be absolutely free to… be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule.” He declared: “Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.” Sounding like a 21st-century secular progressive in America, Lenin insisted that “religion must be declared a private affair.” In 1909, In 1909, he said: “The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is ...a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion.” Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a sermon in 1953
“There are at least two reasons why I as a Christian Minister feel obligated to talk to you about Communism....The first has to do wth the wide spread influence of Communism. It is believed in by more than 200,000,000 people covering one fifth of the earth's surface....A second reason why the Christian minister should speak about it is that Communism is the only serious rival to Christianity.
Let us begin by stating that communism and Christianity are at the bottom incompatible. One cannot be a true Christian and a true Communist simultaneously. How then is Communism irreconcilable with Christianity.”
In the 1st place it leaves out God and Christ. It is avowedly secularistic and materialistic. It regards religion psychologically as mere wishful thinking, intellectually as the product of fear and ignorance, and historically as serving the ends of exploiters
In the 2nd place the methods of communism are diametrically opposed to Christianity. Since for the Communist there is no Divine government, no absolute moral order, there are no fixed, immutable principles. Force, violence, murder, and lying are all justifiable means to the millennial end. Said Lenin, 'we must be ready to employ tricking, deceit, and lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth.'
In the 3rd place, the end of communism is the state.” God need not apply! Obviously, more on this is needed. There are many points of contention that a Christian should understand, and I'll give an unsystematic, apolitical but biblical perspective of some of them next month. Pastor Geoff                                                                                                                      But Peter and the other apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men.      Acts 5: 29                                                                                                                                      And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.         Romans 12:2