Neglecting your children is incompatible with both Christianity and libertarianism
We’ve all heard the old joke about the religious believer who steadfastly remains in his home as it slowly floods. A truck, a boat, and finally a helicopter offer to take the man to safety, but he turns down each one in turn, insisting that God will protect him.
In the modern parable’s punch line, the man enters heaven and angrily asks God why he was allowed to drown. God replies by pointing out that he sent a truck, a boat and a helicopter.
Herbert and Catherine Schaible, a Pennsylvania couple, apparently haven’t heard this joke. The pair was sentenced to prison Wednesday for allowing one of their children to die of treatable pneumonia – for the second time. “My religious beliefs are that you should pray, and not have to use medicine,” Catherine Schaible explained.
“April of 2013 wasn’t Brandon’s time to die,” replied Judge Benjamin Lerner as he sentenced the murderous parents. “You’ve killed two of your children. … Not God. Not your church. Not religious devotion. You.”
Incompatible with Christianity
Murders like those committed by the Schaibles provide a convenient caricature for opponents of religion. Yet, while the Schaibles’ actions may well have been driven by their religious views, these views were certainly not grounded in scripture.
The Bible posits life as a divine gift of incalculable wonder and calls on us to vigorously affirm it. “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” says Psalm 139:14. “Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live,” we are told in Deuteronomy 30:19.
Related: Baby Found Starved Nearly To Death By Lazy Parents | The Libertarian Republic
In particular, believers are called on to affirm the lives of their children. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward,” says Psalm 127:3.
Christian morality, moreover, is about more than not oppressing others. Christianity extolls us to be an active force in the world, and condemns us when we do not do so. In Matthew 25, Christ tells the condemned “I was hungry and you have me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink… Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
“I was dying of pneumonia, and you would not take me to the hospital,” is only a short step away.
Incompatible with Libertarianism
The libertarian economist Murray Rothbard infamously argued that “the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.” Rothbard likely would have opposed the Schaibles’ sentencing in this case.
While Rothbard was a brilliant political theorist who has made invaluable contributions to libertarian thought, his complete denial of parental obligation was a gaping hole in a largely sound design. Rothbard’s structure, while nearly seamless, is missing the transcendent cornerstone of Matthew 25.
Rothbard’s view, however, is demonstrably wrong on the presumptions of non-Christian libertarians as well as Christian ones. Broadly speaking, libertarians believe that you have some practical right not to be aggressed against. Rothbard says in this very essay that “It must therefore be illegal and a violation of the child’s rights for a parent to aggress against his person by mutilating, torturing, murdering him, etc.” Yet starving one’s own child is murder.
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I’ll illustrate this fact. Suppose I own a plane and invite you to fly in it with me; the plane ascends to thousands of feet. During the flight, however, I decide that I’d like you to leave. Reasoning that you are now an unwanted intruder, parasitic upon my resources, I push you out of the plane and to your death.
This is a case of murder. It’s clear that I’ve murdered you because you were on board the plane as a result of my conscious choice. The creation of a child is, except in cases where a woman is raped, likewise the result of a conscious choice. If I starve a child that I’ve created, I’ve committed murder as surely as surely as the plane owner who pushes his guest to his death.
The guest cannot sprout wings and fly any more than a child can provide for himself.
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