On July 20, at a church in DeSoto, Texas, Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico stood behind a pulpit and told the congregation that Jesus Christ's primary mission on earth was basically to lobby for free healthcare for people.

"If you read our scriptures, if you read the New Testament, what does Jesus spend most of his time doing?" Talarico asked. "It's not preaching, it's not teaching, it is healing. Healing the sick."

So now we're doing Bible study with the party that boos God at their national conventions. Good to know.

Talarico, an Austin Democrat running for Senate, laid out his healthcare platform at the town hall with the confidence of a man who's never once been asked a follow-up question. He wants to "finish the work of President Obama"..."because health care is a human right," Talarico declared. "It is not a privilege."

Talarico used Matthew 25 as his theological foundation, "Scripture says that's how we will be judged and how we will be saved," he told the crowd. "By healing the sick, by feeding the hungry, by welcoming the stranger, by visiting the prisoner."

It's a familiar move. Take verses about individual charity, personal compassion, and voluntary sacrifice — the kind of thing Christians have practiced for two thousand years through churches, hospitals, and missions — and pretend they're a mandate for federal bureaucracy. Jesus said heal the sick. He did not say create a 900-page appropriations bill, route it through CMS, and make sure the reimbursement rates are set by a panel of GS-14s in Bethesda.

There's a word for what Talarico is doing, and it isn't theology. It's appropriation. The same political movement that fights to remove nativity scenes from public squares, strip religious exemptions from healthcare mandates, and force nuns to fund contraception suddenly finds scripture very persuasive — but only when it can be converted into a line item.

Talarico justified the urgency by claiming Texas has the largest uninsured population in the country. "So this is an emergency across the state of Texas," he said. "Health care is truly a human right for every single person in this state."

What he didn't mention is why Texas insurance markets look the way they do — Medicaid expansion was rejected precisely because the state watched what happened in states that accepted it. Costs ballooned. Provider networks shrank. And the federal match that was supposed to cover the tab started shrinking the moment the political cameras turned off. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has fought these federal healthcare expansions for years, and not because he enjoys watching people suffer. Because the math doesn't work, and the strings attached to federal money always end up wrapped around the state's throat.

But Talarico doesn't want to talk about math. He wants to talk about Matthew.

Matthew 25 tells individuals to feed the hungry and visit the prisoner. It does not tell them to vote for the guy who promises a federal agency will do it for them.

That's the difference between charity and government. One requires your heart. The other just requires your tax return.