Communism and Christianity are not economic systems.
Actually, communism IS an economic system, a command economy, as the government owns the means of production and services offered. It IS arguable that Christianity IS an economic system. At the minimum, a Believer should be tithing to his or her church. Coincidentally, yesterday, I heard Chuck Swindoll state, as other Preachers have, that if all Christians tithed, rather than the average 3-4%, poverty would cease to exist WORLDWIDE.Swindoll quoted an old theologian who said, “Give until it hurts, then give until it feels good!” Remember the ‘widow’s mite’ in Luke 21:1-3.
God provides, not for our comfort and wealth, our Cadillacs, i-phones and mansions, but for us to bless others as He provides and blesses us. Communism is overwhelmingly wrong, primarily because it does not recognize God and broken man directs the economy. All the other failings and latent evil stem from this.
Pure capitalism fails in God’s economy because wealth, for wealth’s sake, puts God to the side and the focus becomes “ME”! God provides for us, so we can live and more importantly, we can copy His lead and bless others and spread the Gospel by action, rather than mere words. Does this preclude being a wealthy Christian? No, but it takes a special individual to continually put God first, depending for everything on Him, rather than himself and his wealth. Jesus spoke of serving two masters.
IF you happen to fall for the ‘prosperity gospel’ that seems so popular especially in the US, I have two questions. The Apostle Paul was arguably the greatest evangelist who ever lived, so how does the ‘prosperity gospel’ line up with his having spent the last 3 years of his life in a Roman prison before being executed? If the ‘prosperity gospel’ were a correct interpretation of the NT, why was Paul not a Roman Senator or perhaps, even Emperor?
In such a context, both communism AND Christianity may be viewed as economic systems; the first, an example of one of man’s failed systems and the other, God’s perfect system.
Communism pretends to be an economic system and in many ways it is. It’s a moral system, like Islam, that imposes that morality on the people. It’s unnatural and thus leads to failure expressed as poverty with a fabulously wealthy class of political/religious (but I repeat myself) elite at the top. They’re wealthy relative to the poverty of the rest of the community.
Christianity, reflecting God’s creation, is a moral system and goes perfectly with capitalism/the free market.