The Easter Holiday has provided the world’s media a field day of religious zealotry. My personal favorite this year is a story from Salon posted April 20th, 2014.
“So should Congress raise the minimum wage to celebrate Easter?
I think that would a perfect way of celebrating what Jesus actually stood for. This is a man who was not about income equality; this is a man who was about the reversal of the social order.”
The particulars of the individuals conversing is of no consequence. It is the nature of the conversation that reveals the religious the zealotry.
Since the Fall of Adam and Eve, man has been trying to sew the fig leaves of “good works” to please God; always failing to do so.
Easter is about one thing and one thing alone. The resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was dead, buried and in the tomb.
Three days later God raised Him from the dead. The proper way for any human, or congress for that matter, to celebrate the Resurrection is to fall on our individual faces and thank Him for His goodness to us.
However, the Zealots relive their guilt by sewing fig leaves to solve a non-existing problem (income inequality). Redistributing income through minimum wage laws won’t make anybody “moral”. Good try, won’t work. Guilt is assuaged by faith in the risen Christ. Income inequality is solved by the individuals improving their labor skills. Jesus was not “about the reversal of the social order”. He was about the redemption of sinful mankind.
The Lord’s teaching on labor relations was quite clear. Employer’s and employees enter an agreement of exchange. It is nobody’s business except for the employer, the employee and the Lord Himself.