shutdown

"Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin." - Deut 24:14-15

"Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty." - James 5:4
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This isn't intended to be extremely political, despite the topic.  It's simply meant to be a doctrinal assertion.  In the moment it's going to come across as political, however.  While in any given situation this might target one party or government leader or another, there's no saying that the next situation won't involve the opposite party.

My assertion is simply that shutting down the government in the way it has been done recently very clearly violates Scripture.  There are probably extreme situations where a government shutdown is the least sinful course, but those situations are limited.  They certainly are not at play here.

I've been in an awkward place on this issue.  I think it's important to acknowledge in the church that this is a sin, while it is also important not to get overtly political in a church setting.  So, I keep to myself what I see as public sin by other believers.  I feel like there's an unspoken obligation in church to make a stand in calling certain sins sin, but also a similar obligation not to take a stance on other sins because some people in the church disagree that they are sins for one reason or another.  Clearly, if they are sins then this is a problem.

In reading the passages above, I don't know how a Christian can justify taking a public position that making government employees work without pay isn't sin.  I don't know how a Christian government leader could ignore Scripture to force people to work without timely pay.

The natural defense a person might raise is that this is a different situation because it's addressing rich land owners exploiting their workers, but that's a semantic difference more than anything.  It's looking for a loophole to lawyer out of God's instruction.  These instructions/condemnations come from the fact that certain people exploit others, and this puts them at odds with God.  Shutting down the government does the same thing, so it should follow that this puts the people who cause the shutdown at odds with God.  If Scripture is true, doesn't this mean that the cries of unpaid laborers are reaching God, and that those responsible for the shutdown are ultimately under God's judgment?

That this shutdown and previous ones have involved individuals who claim Christianity should be seen as tarnishing our faith.  To counter this more church leaders should be speaking about this situation in terms of its sinfulness.  While I understand the motivation of doing something like shutting down the government as a negotiation tactic, believers should have a high standard for people who claim to represent them as Christians in the public sphere.  For one, those representatives should abide by the Scripture they say they proclaim.