It was heartening to see the farmers’ protest taking place in London on November 19th about inheritance tax and the withdrawal of relief for farms valued above £1 million.
I would like to approach this question from a distinctly Christian angle, because there is no area of the life on which the Bible, the word of God, does not throw light. This is not involvement in party politics, but rather an endeavour to shine the light of Scripture into one of the key issues of the day.
As a Bible-believing Christian minister I would in fact argue that the imposition of inheritance tax on anybody, no matter how valuable or modest their possessions, is unjust and is nothing but State-sponsored theft.
The State has no right whatsoever to interfere with legitimately held personal property. A farmer who has paid his dues via national insurance contributions and income or corporation tax owes no further debt to the State in the sight of God. It is only the atheistic creed of Marxism which demands that the State should impinge upon the individual’s property rights and upon his personal family decisions about how he should use his own property.
The Bible nowhere condemns the possession of valuable assets, be it land or in some other manner. It does of course condemn putting all one’s hopes in them, and living for the acquisition of yet greater assets. What is really important in God’s sight is the manner of stewardship of our possessions. Job, for example, was a wealthy landowner, but the Lord never deemed that to be his sin. Indeed, as Job humbled himself before His Maker, the Lord greatly increased his agricultural possessions :
“The LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before … So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses” (Job 42:10–12).
Yes, we all have to pay taxes to support some necessary essential services which it is legitimate for the State to provide, such as the nation’s defence and looking after those in society in genuine need. Indeed, our Lord Himself endorsed the necessity of paying reasonable taxes to the government of the day, when He declared, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21). However, those who govern also have their own responsibilities before God. For example, we read in 2 Samuel 23, “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (verse 3). To encroach upon an individual’s lawful property rights is quite simply not just or righteous behaviour.
The eighth of the Ten Commandments prohibits stealing. This is a plain endorsement of the sanctity of personal property. The 10th commandment is also devoted to the need to respect what others own and not desire it for oneself.
In the account of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21 a wicked king seeks to obtain the desirable property of one of his subjects. Yes, he initially offers to pay for it, but Naboth refuses on the grounds that it was his family inheritance, and therefore inalienable. So he tells the king, “The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee” (1 Kings 21:3). Naboth’s refusal eventually led to his death at the hands of the wicked king Ahab and his wife, Jezebel.
Naboth upheld before the Lord his family’s inheritance rights, and Ahab and Jezebel were severely judged for ignoring these rights and for their vindictive treatment of him. The issue of his property needing to remain within his family was one of fundamental principle, and had nothing to do with the value of the property. This Biblical narrative, which of course relates a real historical event, has a direct bearing on the Government’s proposal to remove inheritance tax exemption from farmers. The possession of property, legitimately obtained, even if it is very valuable, is not a sin, and does not create any obligation to the State.
The principle of the inalienable status of property ownership is clearly set forth in the Old Testament civil law declaring, “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance” (Deuteronomy 19:14). Territorial rights and boundaries on a national, tribal and individual family level had to be respected. This was the Lord’s own specific decree. (This of course also has enormous significance regarding the failure of this and previous governments to control our national borders properly, and thus ignoring God’s own ordinance of national boundaries).
And who might the farmers’ land be sold to if the inheritance tax is imposed? According to Nigel Farage speaking on Sky News Australia it could well be foreign corporations who pay little UK tax. Others buyers could well be those wanting to use productive agricultural land for wind farms or solar panel installations, neither of which will provide us with any food.
A major Old Testament institution was that of the year of jubilee which laid down that a family possession of land could not be permanently forfeited, even if because of dire financial circumstances it had to be temporarily sold. The sale remained legitimate only until the year of jubilee, which occurred every fifty years. We are accordingly told in Leviticus 25, “In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession” (verse 13). The new owners had to be compensated, when the land was returned to the original owner in the jubilee year, but the principle of the estate remaining within the family had at all costs to be maintained.
In direct opposition to this Biblical principle, the Government’s inheritance tax proposals threaten the ability of farmers to keep their own personal property within their own families, where it may well have been for many generations.
Our farmland is our nation’s heritage. It is a precious God-given resource, and we are truly blessed in this country by so much of our land being fertile and productive. Nothing is more important than the production of food. How many of our soldiers who died in past conflicts would have had a picture in their minds of a green pastoral landscape as being an essential part of what they were fighting to defend? I suspect very many.
The wonder and beauty of our countryside are part of what we are as British people, and our delightful landscapes are very much fashioned by our commitment to the importance of farming.
Think of some of Edward Elgar’s most moving music. Much of this would would have been inspired by the glories of God’s creation which he surveyed as he walked the Malvern Hills, seeing the Cotswolds to the southeast, the Shropshire Hills to the north west, and the grand, lush scenery of Wales to the west and south west.
A fertile and productive countryside is one of God’s blessings to a people who honour Him. How desperately we need in this nation those who fear God in high places. How above all else we need as a people to return to the one true faith of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We shall then experience the truth of the following words,
“If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God … blessed shalt thou be in the field, blessed shall be … the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep … Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest out” (Deuteronomy 28:1-6).
Pastor Peter Simpson
PENN FREE METHODIST CHURCH