Bryan Fischer (courtesy of the American Family Association) is pleased to inform one and all that, faced with a fire on a house that hadn’t paid its fire protection bill … Jesus would have been happy to let the house burn.
A controversy has erupted over a decision by the South Fulton, TN fire department to allow a rural home in Obion County to burn to the ground because the owner did not pay the requisite $75 annual fee to secure fire protection.
The fire department was called when Gene Cranick’s grandson accidentally set his property on fire, but made no attempt to extinguish the flames, for the simple reason that they had no legal or moral authority or responsibility to do so. When the fire endangered the property of Cranick’s neighbor, who had paid the $75 fee, the fire department swung into action and put out the fire on the neighbor’s property. Cranick’s home meanwhile, burned to the ground after his family had fled for safety.
That actually raises the interesting question of what the fire service would have done (and what Bryan thinks would have been the moral course) had a family member (other than the pets, which died) still been trapped inside.
The backstory is that, while South Fulton had a fire department several years ago, the county did not. Rural residents approached city officials and asked them to extend their fire protective services outside city limits. Fine, said the city. We will provide fire services to any rural resident who pays an annual $75 fee. You pay the $75, you just bought yourself a year’s worth of fire protection. You don’t pay the fee, that’s fine too, it’s your choice, but be aware that you are making a deliberate choice to forego fire protection.
Fine, said Mr. Cranick, I’ll take my chances. He didn’t pay the man his $75, and when his house caught fire, he was on his own, by his own choice.
There’s no question that Mr Cranick was shortsighted.
(It’s worth noting that, had the fire department responded, it likely would have violated the terms of its contract with its liability insurance carrier. The fire department almost certainly had to enter into a legally binding commitment not to operate outside its jurisdiction. So our “compassionate” Christian friends would want the fire department to break its solemn agreement and put the entire city of South Fulton in a position of virtually unlimited risk. That hardly sounds like the Christian thing to do – demand that somebody violate a solemn oath and put an entire city at needless risk at the same time.)
So … legal contracts have a greater binding force than any other commitment or commandment? That sounds terribly Christian, Bryan.
That said, yes, the fire department probably had those sorts of contractual restrictions.
The fire department did the right and Christian thing. The right thing, by the way, is also the Christian thing, because there can be no difference between the two. The right thing to do will always be the Christian thing to do, and the Christian thing to do will always be the right thing to do.
If I somehow think the right thing to do is not the Christian thing to do, then I am either confused about what is right or confused about Christianity, or both.
That’s very convenient, Bryan. Whatever you think is Christian is clearly right, and whatever you think is clearly right then you enshrine as Christian.
On the other hand, I think you are confusing the legal thing with the Christian thing. Which is something Jesus certainly didn’t do.
In this case, critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability.
Yes, Jesus would have been muscular and punched the fire out.
Notice how compassion — one of Jesus’ most noteworthy attributes — is simply dismissed here as a “weak” and “feminized” and soft.” No metaphysical girl cooties for Bryan, though — he believes in Jesus by way of Ayn Rand.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions. He who sows to the flesh, we are told, will from the flesh reap corruption. The law of sowing and reaping is a non-repealable law of nature and nature’s God.
And yet, the New Testament explicitly rejects the harshest edges of that law. Paul, for example, makes it clear that if it comes to obeying the Law, no man can be saved. It is only by Grace — by God’s weak and soft and girly compassion — that salvation can be had. Similarly, we are called by Jesus to pray to be forgiven as we forgive others.
We cannot make foolish choices and then get angry at others who will not bail us out when we get ourselves in a jam through our own folly.
No. On the other hand, we are called on, as those others, to help with that bailing out. If I see someone behaving unsafely, I can simply shrug and say, “I guess he’ll learn soon enough.” We’re called to warn, to try and safeguard, and to compassionately help if the worst occurs.
Take some idiot who travels down an unsafe, lonely highway. He doesn’t wait to caravan with others, he doesn’t carry a gun in his glove box, he doesn’t hire a body guard, or pay $75 for the police to come by to protect him if he calls OnStar.
And, of course, he gets robbed and carjacked and beaten.
Bryan, of course, would argue the fool deserves everything he got. He made the stupid decisions, he has to live with it. He didn’t pay the $75, he didn’t make the smart choice, and, just like the other folks who zoom past, too busy or frightened or disinterested or scornful to assist, a truly muscular Jesus surely wouldn’t lift a finger for him.
Fortunately, the Good Samaritan felt differently. And soft, weak, girly, compassionate Jesus seemed to think that was the right course.
The same folks who are angry with the South Fulton fire department for not bailing out Mr. Cranick are furious with the federal government for bailing out Wall Street firms, insurance companies, banks, mortgage lenders, and car companies for making terrible decisions. What’s the difference?
Some of the same folks, yes. And Fischer has a something of a point here — the issue being that in the case of those various governmental bail-outs, they were done as much for the overall health of the economy and the citizenry as a way to reward bad actors in those various firms. (Honestly, I’d probably have been more onerous in the conditions placed, not so much as punishment, as tempting as that would have been, but to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. One can be compassionate and teach a lesson in responsibility.)
Mr. Cranick made a decision – a decision to spend his $75 on something other than fire protection – and thereby was making a choice to accept the risk that goes with it. He had no moral, legal, ethical or Christian claim on the services of the fire department because of choices that he himself made.
That’s right. Nobody has a “Christian claim” on me for anything. I have a Christian responsibility to help others. That’s a point that Fischer seems to miss. It’s not an matter of someone demanding an obligation from you. It’s a matter of your having an obligation toward others.
Jesus once told a parable about 10 virgins attending a wedding feast, five of whom failed to replenish the oil in their lamps when they had the chance. The bridegroom came when they were out frantically searching for oil, and by the time they made it back to the party, the door was shut tight. The bridegroom – the Christ figure in the story – refused to open the door, saying “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matthew 25:13).
Jesus also told a parable about how a shepherd will do anything to recover a stupid sheep that’s made bad decisions, acted foolishly, and wandered off, lost. The shepherd doesn’t shrug, say, “Well, that dumb sheep deserves whatever it got.”
The critics of South Fulton thereby implicate themselves as accusers of Christ himself, making him out to be both cold and heartless. They may want to be careful about that.
Right. “Agree with my point, or Muscular Jesus will punch your face!”
I talked about this story yesterday on my “Focal Point” radio program, and defended the fire department without reservation. It’s been intriguing to watch – I haven’t received as much angry blowback over anything I’ve said on air since the program began. I’ve been told I’m evil and anti-Christian to even suggest that the fire department may be in the right and that Mr. Cranick has no one to blame but himself. (Where, I might ask, is all their Christian compassion toward me?)
I’ll assume that’s tongue in cheek, Bryan.
But it is interesting. Apparently nobody among your followers bats an eye toward your bashing of gays, or Muslims, or anyone else who twists you the wrong way. But as soon as they see you doing something that they can imagine themselves being on the wrong side of … well, it’s little wonder how they abruptly realize how easily they could find themselves with the short end of the stick.
Christian compassion, of course, prompts us to feel truly sorry for Mr. Cranick. If he were a friend of mine, I’d feel horrible for him and do what I could to help him in his time of need.
Because compassion and helping is only for friends. Just what Jesus taught.
But even were I his friend, I would not blame the fire department for the loss of his home. That’s on Mr. Cranick for making an irresponsible choice in the first place.
Even he admitted to Keith Olbermann last night that “I’ll have to suffer the consequences” of failing to pay the annual fee.
Now it’s intriguing to note that Mr. Cranick had insurance on his property, and told Olbermann that his insurance company was right on top of things, and he was going to receive in short order the full value of his insurance policy. Why? Well, because Mr. Cranick paid the premiums on the policy. If he had refused to pay the premiums, he wouldn’t be getting any help from the insurance company either, and likewise would have no one to blame but himself. So even Mr. Cranick implicitly accepts responsbility for the loss of his home, whether he realizes it or not.
Sure. Cranick made a stupid error. People have lost everything over that. Hopefully Mr Cranick will learn.
But that doesn’t mean that the fire department acted in a Christian, or moral fashion. Legal, contractual fashion, sure. But the fire department — and the city fathers — ought to have something in place to account for this. More on that in a moment.
What angry folks fail to realize is that if Mr. Cranick had been able to get away with this – if he’d been able to wait til his house started to burn, then offer $75 and immediately get help – it wouldn’t be long before everybody else stopped paying. Why bother if you can wait until the emergency hits? If you pay when you don’t need to, that just makes you a sap. Pretty soon nobody would have fire protection at all since the city can’t afford to fight fires at $75 a pop. The city would have to withdraw its offer to the county, and everybody, especially responsible folk, would be less safe.
(Essentially what Mr. Cranick wants is “guaranteed issue” for fire protection. This is the same thing that is going to destroy the health care industry, as it is already starting to do under RomneyCare in Massachusetts. If you can wait til you get sick before applying for insurance, and the insurance company has to provide it, everybody will just wait til they get sick to get insurance and pretty soon nobody will have insurance or health care, either one.)
That’s a major problem with this kind of model — either you kick people in need to the curb, or you allow free riders to take advantage of the system.
What if, however, the there was a mechanism in place where someone could call for help at the last minute (or if the fire department just happened to be there), and pay a significantly higher fee (enough to recoup the added resources plus something to disincent folks from calling at the last minute as a strategy). Maybe the county should contract with the city’s fire department for full coverage.
(Note also that this is the rationale behind a universal requirement for everyone to purchase health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Only by spreading the pool the widest and being ready to provide care for any who needs it when they need it, can the whole thing be both affordable and useful. But Bryan doesn’t like that model, nor, one suspects, the idea of fire departments providing service to all based on taxes rather than individual subscriptions.)
This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.
I’m going with mature, robust Christianity on this one.
Bryan, you have way too narrow of a vision here. You seem to feel that the only choices are between individual responsibility and being coddled. I think there’s room for both, and that siding with one vs. the other is a sketchy approach.
Further, Bryan, you miss the point that the two are not actually contradictory. Christian compassion is not a right to be claimed, but an individual responsibility for which we will be held accountable. We are called, not to demand the love of neighbors, but to love our neighbors, as one of the Greatest Commandments.
That may be hard to realize, Bryan, and you may commit the folly of neglecting that responsibility, of not, shall we say, paying your compassion “fee.” It does seem to me that you will be held accountable for that.
Hopefully you won’t face Muscular Jesus then.
(Oh, Glenn — same to you, buddy.)
