{Note to the perplexed: Earl gave the following "Mission Story" on the 18th of November, 1995 at Chapel Haven Seventh-day Adventist Church in Northglenn, CO. SDA's take up a special offering each quarter called the "13th Sabbath" offering. This offering usually goes to foreign missions but fourth quarter 1995, the North American missions were the offering's beneficiaries.}

Persuasive Missions

Our mission story this week comes from Boston, a city where a woman named Rita Vital directs a van ministry. Rita and some volunteers who help her drive a van around Boston where people can get their blood pressure tested, hear good news about nutrition and health, and learn how God cares about every minute of their lives.

Many of the people of Boston don't care if God cares about them, because they're convinced that it's their government and its politicians who really care about them. And that's enough. The government educates their children, provides buses and trains for them to commute in, provides them water and sewer service, gives them checks when they are sick or old or poor. It seems to these Bostonians that everything good comes from government, so who needs God? Or for that matter, who needs a church?

Many Bostonians see churches as just those old outdated places where ancient people gather to debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They'll tell you that churches are not merely irrelevant, they are a harmful waste of scarce land and resources and energy.

But Rita Vital is out there driving her van around the perilous streets of Boston, defending herself against kamikaze Boston drivers, and she's proving those government-dependent Bostonians wrong. She's out to show them that lots of what they get from government actually turns out to be harmful rather than helpful. For example, government subsidies to ranchers and farmers who produce foods like beef and cheese may raise people's cholesterol levels because the real costs of raising cattle then get papered over by the government checks sent to those farmers. This makes healthier foods like fresh apples or broccoli more expensive in comparison to animal products. This in turn makes apples and broccoli less attractive for shoppers, who then buy and eat animal foods that will clog their arteries with cholesterol and raise their blood pressure.

And in contrast to the outrageously expensive Government social services that attempt to do the same things Rita does, Rita's van ministry is totally voluntary. She accepts no government subsidy for her work. She raises the money for her ministry from voluntary offerings of people like you and me. We will put our money in the offering plate this 13th Sabbath because we believe Rita is making a good difference in people's lives. We will put our ten dollar bills in the offering plate gladly and with joy, and not because we are forced to give them because some politician believes we're not compassionate enough to voluntarily give our money to help people in unfortunate situations.

Rita uses the persuasive power of prayer and the caring acts of her van ministry to convince you and me and millions of other people around the world to support her efforts. She does not come to Chapel Haven and threaten us with jail if we don't give her the money she requires to drive her van around Boston so that she can give people the information they need to make their lives better.

But there are well-meaning people in our country who dismiss Rita's van ministry as a wasteful and useless appendage in comparison with the Great Government's beneficence in protecting the unfortunate and caring for the ignorant. They'd prefer to force you and me to give our money not to Rita's van ministry, but to Government, so that Government can take over and do the same things Rita does, without the nasty and troubling religious ideas that Rita gives out along with her blood pressure readings.

Some of these well-meaning people are even Seventh-day Adventists. Many Seventh-day Adventists continue to support and vote for politicians who believe that Government is the source of all good and the solution to all of people's problems.

Let's take an example that all of you know about. We Adventists know that one of the best ways to improve people's lives is for them to carefully and properly observe the fourth commandment. Unlike much of the rest of Christendom, Adventists prepare for the Sabbath by doing all their ordinary work in the six days before God's day of rest, the Seventh-day Sabbath. This consistent planning and preparation ahead of time makes Adventists very aware of the value of their time and very aware of the value of planning ahead for some future time.

And so, like the Jewish people, who share Adventists' respect for the original wording and meaning of the fourth commandment, Adventists have an advantage over ordinary folks in their use of time and their ability to plan. Adventists are better managers, better providers of health care services, and better businesspeople.

Because Adventists have this advantage, they want to share it with other people. But do Adventists go out and put on big political demonstrations for laws that would force everybody to observe the Biblical Seventh-day Sabbath? No, Adventists do not do this. They do not do this because, out of all the Christian denominations in these United States, Adventists uniquely understand that it is not the force of law that makes a person moral. Instead, it is the voluntary observance of the Sabbath that brings joy and happiness into people's lives. No policeman's gun stuck in the small of the back can ever do that.

Adventists even are willing to go further and say that it is immoral to use the force of government to coerce people into religious observance. No Adventist would ever be in favor of any law that would penalize people for worshipping, say, on Sunday instead of Saturday. But there are still Adventists who cannot see that it is equally immoral to use the force of government to coerce money out of the pockets of some people and then give that ill-gotten loot to other people.

For sixty years, we, the people of these United States, have lived under the apalling banner of the sentence, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." And if you translate that sentence out of the German and into English, it says, "We, the politicians, must use the force and violence of Government to take hard-earned cash from people with the ability to produce economic wealth, then turn around and give that wealth to those who are merely in need of it." Well, aren't you and I both in need of a million dollar house or a Learjet to take us to Palm Springs or the Bahamas? Needs are never completely fulfilled.

Isn't there a commandment somewhere that says, "You shall not steal?" And is this stealing any more moral just because a democratic majority of people are willing to vote to have this stealing legalized, thus forcing it on the minority? A minority who may then see their money used to fund projects they believe are evil or immoral?

Is it really moral to take taxes from everyone and give them to schools which teach children that religion is either harmful or at least irrelevant and instead teach them that all good comes from government? Doesn't this lead children educated in those coercively-financed government schools to look at both churches and God as being out-of-date and maybe even harmful?

Is it really moral to rob people of their self-respect and ability to fend for themselves by making it easier for them to get a government check in the mail every month instead of going out and bettering their lives by serving their fellow humans?

Is it really moral to use government violence and force to remove people's choices regarding what to eat or drink or put in their bodies? Are not our bodies the temple of the Holy Spirit and thus anything that would violate our choices regarding what we put in our bodies, a sin against the Holy Spirit?

But I digress. Rita Vital is doing her part to make her life and the lives of the people of Boston better. She's doing it voluntarily, and with money received from voluntary contributions from people like you and me.

If you believe, like I do, that the force and violence of government is the source of most of the problems in our country, and is almost never the source of any of its solutions, you will support Rita Vital with your voluntary offering this thirteenth Sabbath.

To learn more about Libertarians and the way they think, check out the Heartland Institute

W. Earl Allen's home page: http://www.allmax.com/wea