In order to offer someone a financial reward without him working for it, the government must first ensure that somebody else works for a financial reward without getting it. There is no other way.
This reality is obscured by the dynamics of social justification. In every corporate body, there are the justified and the unjustified. There are the saints and the sinners. There are those who get a free pass and those whose every move is scrutinized. There are always those who are guilty until proven innocent, and those who are innocent until no one is allowed to ever prove them guilty. Tea Party activists have been demonstrating all over the country, their ranks filled out with little old ladies who pick up the litter after themselves, and the pundits narrow their gaze suspiciously, and breathe heavily into their microphones about the incipient violence and racism. Then, a few weeks later, Arizona passes its immigration law, and the protestors start heaving rocks at the cops, and the street turmoil is serenely ignored. This is a double standard, certainly, but the reason such a flagrant double standard can even work is that this paradigm of social justification is in play. The justified group is justified, don’t you get it?
Think of this another way. Take the treatment given to recipients of federal largesse as compared with the treatment given to those who are forced to donate to the coffers that make this federal largesse possible. Who is assumed to be innocent? And who is assumed to be skulking around with evil motives? Who is helped with open palm and generous hearts, and who is viewed as a dangerous and self-interested customer? Right. Who gets audited the more, tax-payers or stimulus recipients? Right again.
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It will do no good for conservatives to simply complain about the treatment they get — that would be like a Hindu complaining about how Reformed theology does not recognize that they are recipients of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ. The liberal, progressive, secular worldview cannot bestow justified status on the conservative Christian. It cannot happen. It is not going to happen. Nobody can make it happen.
The only solution to this dilemma is to replace the center. Christians must learn how to assume the center, and there will be more on this later.