By Donna Volmerding
“For the poor you have with you always, but you do not
always have Me.” Jesus Christ
In a September 30 Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.) letter
to the editor, Pastor Rick Pettys wrote that “… if we are authentic Christians,
we are always on the side of the poor, the marginalized, the least, the last
and the lost.”
Authentic Christians do not dispute the fact that they are
to be caring servants, but discussions about how best to care for the poor is
when the water gets muddy.
Today in America, there are 47 million people on food
stamps. I am certain that many of them do not want to be on public assistance;
they want a job. There are some, however, who feel entitled to take from the
public trough.
In his book “How Should Christians Vote?,” the Rev. Dr. Tony
Evans, founder and president of The Urban Alternative and senior pastor of Oak
Cliff Bible Fellowship, Dallas, Texas, writes: “Government assistance for
able-bodied citizens should be temporary and not designed to produce long-term
dependency and an entitlement mentality. There should be accountability tied to
the assistance so that the person receiving the assistance has to perform some
sort of work or volunteerism that is connected to what they receive.”
It is not biblical that Christians and/or the government are
to provide an unending supply of food, goods, money, etc., for those who refuse
to help themselves, for those who are takers only.
“If a man does not work, you do not offer him a welfare
check to pay him for his irresponsibility. You don’t look to the government to
pay for laziness while taxing others to cover the bill,” Evans says.
Charity is personal giving from the heart. It is an act of
love to God and one’s fellow man. It is enlightening, enriching and elevating
for the one receiving the gift as well as the one who gives it. However, when a
bloated, powerful government usurps money from those who work to dole out to
those who do not, it is not philanthropy; it is theft.
Evans paraphrases St. Paul in Romans 13: “The one
overarching job of civil government … can be defined as … ‘under God, the
government is to promote the conditions for the well-being of the citizenry for
good, while protecting the citizenry against the proliferation of evil.’”
Government should “create an environment for compassion to
flourish,” Evans says. Otherwise, “the state becomes an all-encompassing
promoter of federal economic dependency (that leads) to illegitimate and
irresponsible personal and corporate welfare.”
Yet limited government does not mean a government that lacks
compassion. Instead, “civil government should provide a safety net specifically
and intentionally designed to produce self-sufficiency and not long-term
dependency,” Evans says.
Unfortunately, the welfare state in America is a mile wide
and an inch deep. Those who are truly disabled, mentally or physically, and
cannot provide for themselves must have a long-term safety net. Yet when
able-bodied people are not providing for themselves or their families, they
take precious public funds away from the truly needy. This is a monstrous
scandal and fraud perpetrated on taxpayers through deception. Supporting
bureaucratic waste that squanders billions of dollars — our hard-earned money —
has nothing to do with kindness, caring or compassion; it has everything to do
with the federal government amassing enormous sums of money, and power and
control.
Authentic Christians must understand that giving from the
heart is a personal act. It is rendering unto God what is God’s. Rendering unto
Caesar is not charity; it’s called taxes.
Blog: ptft.blogspot.com.
