Somewhere back in time, I had the suspicion that I was somehow misunderstanding most the bible's political implications. Since a number of professing Christians sincerely seemed to favor political "liberalism", I wondered what they might be seeing, which I was missing.

Quite a bit has been my long-term answer, given the ability some have to find each new political fad in bible verses which, to my eyes, don't say anything like that.

I'm on Sojourner's mailing list. It's been an eye-opener: people talk about the "right wing" mixing politics and religion...? This week's missive was especially pungent, with the added humorous element of being, as best I can tell, spectacularly wrong, theologically:

God Hates Inequality

... It's a political fact now that faith communities across the board, very widely, are in favor of increasing the minimum wage. Why is that? What's the theological foundation behind that? We don't just do politics; we do politics because of our faith.

I just returned from Davos, and the World Economic Forum, and even at Davos they're dealing with this issue. I was asked to address a group called, "Should we despair of our disparities?" I cited the Hebrew prophets and how they always seemed to speak up when the gaps in society grew too large. When the gulf widened and injustice deepened, the prophets rose up to thunder the judgment and justice of God. Their words reveal that God hates inequality. That's our theological foundation – God hates inequality.

What does the Bible have to say about the minimum wage?

The prophet Isaiah said: "my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain ... " (65:22-23).

James, who was the sibling of Jesus, and probably knew what his brother thought about things pretty well, said "Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord."

God hates inequality? The "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated" sheep-and-goat-separating God, the "much is required of those to whom much is given", the "I-have-set-you-apart" God hates things being unequal, different from each other? The one who makes each person different in their own way? So does he plan to make Satan his own equal sometime soon?

Do I need to mention: "He who has, will be given more. He who has not, even what he has will be taken away?" Yeah, God's really the great leveller, ain't he? No heaven, no hell -- everybody ends up somewhere in the middle. (Something like Gary, Indiana, perhaps.)

Indeed, look at even the verses above: "My chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands..." What about the un-chosen? No promise for them. Pretty unequal, I'd say.

And where is anything about a federal minimum wage here? The endless attempt to shoehorn this month's political fad into scripture is always amusing -- but also sad, given that scriptures are twisted in a way which would have made David Koresh quite proud.

Fore example, here's the verse from Isaiah 65 cited above, with selected context:

17 "Behold, I will new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind.

20 "Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth...

22 "No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands.

Here God is speaking, through Isaiah, of "new heavens and new earth" -- not the current one. But Wallace and the Sojo crew are utopians who sincerely believe we can bring about paradise here and now through the application of more government and laws.

In this time, Isaiah writes, people will live much longer, and nobody will have houses or products of their labor will be stolen from them. If verse 22 somehow tells us we need to pass minimum wage laws, then doesn't verse 20 also tell us to pass minimum age laws, preventing people from dying before they reach a certain age?

Sure, I'd love us to all live long and keep more of what we earn (sounds like low taxes to me) -- but the idea that will happen simply by passing more laws is questionable, and hardly an authentic part of these bible verses. (If anything, this is a cry against situations where one person lives off the earnings of another.)

And concerning the New Testament quote they gave, yes, James is right: when a field owner uses fraud ("Sorry Joe, I can't pay you -- you didn't work hard enough today / the money was stolen / I'll pay you after you work some more") to deny an agreed-upon wage, that's bad.

But we're not talking about employers who are withholding paychecks -- Jim Wallace just thinks workers and employers shouldn't be allowed to mutually agree to certain wages. To imply James was telling the Roman government or Jewish leaders to enact minimum wage laws in this verse is beyond absurd. (Much less increase an existing minimum wage by exactly $2.10. If that's good, why not do more? Why not increase them by $21.00 per hour? Wouldn't these same interpretations mandate the higher number? Why not? But I digress...)

What's a fair wage?

The God I encounter in the bible believes in fairness -- by which I mean applying the same laws to everyone -- but not ensuring the same outcome. For example: "I hate differening weights and measures", "do not favor a poor man in his argument" and also "do not favor a rich man." (Leviticus 19:15)

Between employers and employees there's a certain tension. The employer always wants to pay as little as possible, for as much work as possible. The employee, on the other hand, wants to collect as much as possible, for as little work as possible. Both, I'm sure, would love have someone else step in and force the other side to give something they wouldn't otherwise agree to.

Instead, they sort it out in the marketplace. If the worker thinks he's worth ten times as much an hour, he'll soon discover there are lots of people who don't agree, and will gladly do his work for less. Likewise, the employer often learns that it's really hard, yet worth it, to get ethical, hard-working laborers. And that he needs to pay more for certain jobs.

Both employer and employee have a legitimate argument. In the end the wage they can both agree to, without coercion or fraud on either side, is the fair one. (See Matthew 20, verse 13 especially.)

But Wallis favors what he believes to be the poor man's argument here, and wants to enlist the power of law to force employers to pay more. Further, he announces triumphantly (and wrongly, as far as I can see) "Faith communities across the board, very widely, are in favor of increasing the minimum wage." Yet the bible, in this very section, warns about this kind of follow-the-crowd mentality:

Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit [legal argument]. (Exodus 23:2-3)

It's as if God knew full well we'd be tempted to prevert fairness in cases where an appeal to popular opinion was involved, or when somone was poor or otherwise oppressed. But that answer to that is charity and help for the poor one -- not to apply one law to the rich and another to the poor, to aid the poor, we think, by siding against wealthy.

Last, besides being an apparent violation of this principle, minimum wage laws are also quite harmful to the very poor people Wallis believes he is helping.

But hey, when you can discover a mandate for federal minimum wage laws in the book of James or Isaiah (one entirely missed by ancient Jews and Christians, apparently), I despair of my hope that they'd seriously consider counter-arguments like these.