The religious right spends a lot of money and energy in their efforts to make rank and file Christians believe that the Bible god is against workers' rights, unions and social welfare programs. Since the Bible suffers from severe ambiguity, they are able to get away with it. This is why, for example, during the American Civil War the North used the Bible to support its cause while the South used the Bible to support its cause. A book that ambiguous is worthless and has unlimited potential for suffering and misery if it is taken seriously and acted upon.
Just as the religious right is wrong when they promote their false idea that America was founded as a Christian nation, so they are wrong when they claim the Bible god supports unrestrained capitalism.
One thing to clarify before going further is that both Communism and unrestrained capitalism are very bad for the vast majority of people. For the former we have countless examples such as the systematic starvation of over 14 million people in Ukraine by the Soviet Communist Party, the workers fighting the Communist Party of Poland through the Solidarity Movement and the slaughter of workers and students in Tiananmen Square by the Communist Party of China. For the latter we also have countless examples such as the unconscionable practice of working children in deplorable and dangerous conditions, of working adults in deplorable and dangerous conditions, of making workers work long hours with no benefits or fair compensation, etc., etc., etc. When greed is unrestrained so is the abuse of working people.
One Bible teaching which clearly demonstrates the Bible god was a Communist is found in Acts 4:32-5:11. In this far-fetched and pathetic story we are told that all the early Christians shared everything they owned with one another. All the people that owned homes and land sold them and brought the proceeds and placed them at the feet of the apostles. Sounds like a cult, doesn't it? The apostles then, allegedly, distributed the proceeds to their fellow Christians who needed them, each according to his need. This sounds like the apostles convinced these credulous early Christians that Jesus was going to come back any moment so they did not really have a long term need for earthly things like money, homes, property, etc. Even though their acts were probably based on the superstition that Jesus was coming back very soon, what they were practicing was Communism or the equal distribution of wealth.
As the story goes, one Christian couple decided to sell their home but not to give all the proceeds to the apostles. They planned on withholding some of their money for themselves. The apostle Peter asked the husband if he was holding back and the husband said no. Then the Bible god got all Joe Stalin on him and killed him. A little while latter the man's wife was asked the same thing and she also lied to Peter and the Bible god killed her, too!
The early Christian church probably made use of this story to instill fear in their followers. The Christian sects and denominations today are still milking all the fear they can out of this nonsensical story.
The fact that both unrestrained capitalism and Communism are bad for the vast majority of people in society is little noticed. People on the right are stubbornly clinging to their failed dogma while people on the left are doing the same thing. It's time for new thinking. It's time to let go of the past and create something new that actually works.
