Render unto God and care for the poor

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.

Never worked? The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world

This article was published in the April 19, 2012, issue of The News-Sentinel
By Donna Volmerding
“(She) never worked a day in her life.” Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen about Ann Romney, wife of presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney This remark by Ms. Rosen has sparked a firestorm of controversy; it certainly touched a nerve with me. In the ‘70s, when I gave birth to my first child and became a stay-at-home mom, I discovered quickly how utterly exhausting a new baby is, and I developed a profound new respect for stay-at-home moms who worked very hard.
We breast-fed, gardened, sewed, cooked, cleaned, shopped, washed our own diapers (paper diapers were too expensive), scrimped and fell into bed each night in sheer exhaustion. Never worked?
The budget went in free fall, too. I remember vividly the time when my husband and I wanted to buy a cup of coffee at a fast-food restaurant, and we didn’t have enough money, even combining our change.
I envied women with nice clothes who took great vacations. I wore sweats and stained shirts; my big day out was packing peanut-butter sandwiches and taking the kids to the park. Never worked?
Many of my college-graduate “sisters” took a different path. Although many became mothers, too, several felt the cultural pressure of the times, as well as the economy, and headed to the office or the classroom.
The “working” moms I knew also worked very hard, and I respected their choice, and they respected mine. Yet, the siren song of the women’s movement, and its smug arrogance, was condescending and insulting. The left insinuated that (educated) women who stayed at home were wasting their talents, selling out the sisterhood by depending on a man to support them. It was often said that we “never worked.”
Besides, everyone knew that mothers’ minds turned to mush. How could they not? What kind of intellectual stimulation is it to wipe sticky faces and clean dirty bottoms?
When my children were in grade school, and I headed to the office, I was amazed when, on my first day, another woman brought coffee to me! I also realized that staying at home with small children was far more strenuous than my office job.
We stay-at-home moms endured the disdainful snobbery of NOW and others who respected no other path but their own. Our efforts, our concerns and our abilities were disparaged, often with high disgust. This was, and I think still is, the mindset of the left. This isn’t just a war against women; it’s a war against women who dare to go against their cultural dictates. Many on the left truly believe that stay-at-home moms and homemakers “never worked.”
This dispute will not end until all women (and men) understand and respect the contribution of mothers who work at home and outside of the home. Homemaker moms have as much insight into the economy, national security, good government and the culture wars as “working” moms. They have earned a place in the public forum to make their voices heard.
As the saying goes, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”

Informed voters want country back, want to remove bloated government

This article was published in the July 26, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel newspaper.
By Donna Volmerding
In his July 12 guest column, B. J. Paschal asks the question, “Will the voters be snookered again in 2012?” Perhaps, especially if voters are as misinformed as he is.
He stated that Wall Street is the cause of our economic woes. Certainly, Wall Street played a part in the financial meltdown of 2008, but the cause stems from flaky ideology and government intervention.
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act. According to Business Insider, “The CRA … evolved over the years from a relatively hands-off law focused on process into one that focused on outcomes. Regulators, beginning in the mid-nineties, began to hold banks accountable in serious ways. Banks responded … by increasing the CRA loans they made, a move that entailed relaxing their lending standards.”
In many cases, the banks were strong-armed into making loans to those who couldn’t afford them — at lower-than-market interest rates.
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-governmental lending institutions at the epicenter of the financial implosion, assured the banks that these loans would be solvent because the full support of the U.S. government was behind them.
Subprime lending was vastly expanded in the early ‘90s under President Bill Clinton, which led directly to the housing crisis. Several former Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives, including President Obama’s cronies Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, are being investigated.
According to a Reuters article by Jim Meyers dated April 1, 2011, “Top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were paid more than $35 million in the past two years while the two bailed-out mortgage finance giants were receiving $153 billion in support from taxpayers.
“Although the enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) have lost billions of dollars and continue to depend upon federal support to remain in business,” states a report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General, “their senior executives continue to receive multi-million dollar salaries.”
Even after the 2008 financial debacle, congressional liberals asked Fannie and Freddie to ease mortgage-loan standards. This is from a June 22, 2009, press release from Reuters:
“Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said.”
Who were those lawmakers who wrote the letter to the CEO’s of both companies? Representatives Barney Frank, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Anthony Weiner, now disgraced former congressman.
(For more information, read “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner.)
Yet Obama’s financial regulatory bill is a “disaster,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who sat on the Senate banking, budget and appropriations committees, and its proposed consumer protection agency would create a Fannie and Freddie “on steroids,” he said.
“The bill is a disaster because it doesn’t address the fundamental underlying causes of the economic issue. You’ll basically have a consumer protection agency which decides to … say, ‘well, everybody who’s XYZ should have a loan, even though the local community bank says XYZ shouldn’t have a loan, because if we give them a loan, we know they’re not going to pay back,’” Gregg said. “It’s going to become an agency that defines lending on social-justice purposes instead of safety and soundness purposes.”
Paschal asks “Why do we Americans ‘believe’ against our own self-interest by not blaming Wall Street for causing our financial mess?”
Perhaps it is because informed voters want to rescue (and preserve) the great country we once had and remove via ballot a despotic, bloated central government that is responsible for the 2008 financial catastrophe.
Will the voters be snookered again in 2012? Gee, I hope not.

US must not turn its back on our only real friends in the Middle East

This article was published in the Friday, June 3, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel newspaper.
By Donna Volmerding
On June 4, 2008, Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and said, “Any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state with secure, recognized, defensible borders, and Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
Obama said he spoke “from his heart and as a true friend of Israel.” Then in May 2011, in a dramatic about-face, he said that Israel must give up the land it has owned and occupied, and return to pre-1967 levels, which would necessarily include the division of Jerusalem. (The six-day war in 1967 was not started by Israel, but it was finished by Israel.)
Obama reneged on a promise “as a true friend of Israel,” and he cut that friendship off at the knees. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, termed Obama’s decree “indefensible” and said “that asking Israel to negotiate with Hamas is like asking the United States to negotiate with al-Qaida.”
Recently, wrote Jordan Sekulow, director of policy and international operation for American Center for Law and Justice, “Fatah, the U.S.-backed Palestinian National Liberation Movement, signed an agreement to form a unity government with Hamas, a U.S.-listed foreign terror organization. ... Hamas’ own foreign minister has stated that Hamas ‘believe(s) that negotiations with the Israeli enemy are in vain.’
“The Hamas charter calls for Islam to ‘abolish’ Israel and for Muslims to ‘fight the Jews and kill them.’ It further proclaims, ‘There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except jihad.’”
Israel is a country that is about 8,000 square miles with a population of about 7.5 million. It is surrounded by Arab countries that will not even acknowledge its right to exist.
Netanyahu said, “If Arab nations would lay down their arms, there would be peace. If Israel would lay down its arms, there would be no Israel.”
Yet Arab Palestinians, Arab countries and President Obama want little Israel to give up its land. Why? Why can’t Arab nations give a portion of the millions of acres of land they own to help their brother Palestinians?
The Middle East is on fire, with great unrest, revolutions and economic turmoil in Arab countries. Palestinian Arabs have now united with a terror organization, and Muslim leaders are threatening the total annihilation of Israel.
Arab nations have so much land, so much wealth, so much oil, yet they want to deny little Israel the land it won in a war they started.
We cannot turn our backs on our only real friends in the Middle East, the Jewish people, the state of Israel and the only stable, democratic government in the region.

Arguments for slavery mirror those on abortion

By Donna Volmerding
This is a reprint of an article first published in the August 1989 issue of The Fort Wayne Lutheran.
One of the most heated arguments in our country stems from the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade, an issue that has since divided our country into warring factions. Since the right to an abortion was made legal in 1973, I have felt this issue to be a parallel one to that of slavery. Granted, the biggest difference is the fact that one enslaves human life, the other is its ultimate destruction. But in so many other ways, I find several similarities.
Particularly in the 1850s, slavery was an issue so hot it was already threatening to divide the country into open warfare. These arguments to defend slavery mirror those used today to defend abortion:
• You have no right to impose your moral beliefs on me. If you think slavery is wrong, don’t own any slaves, but don’t tell me what to do.
• Slavery rights are simply a matter of freedom of choice. I have the right to choose slavery, and you have the right not to.
• Are you willing to take care of thousands of freed slaves who have no job skills, education or means of making a living?
• Do you want to destroy the South and an entire way of life? Do you want to see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families thrown off their property because they can’t make it without the help of slaves?
• Slaves aren’t really people; they’re just property. (Unfortunately, the Supreme Court fanned the flames to this belief with the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declaring that no black — free or slave — could claim United States citizenship. The decision also stated that Congress could not prohibit slavery in United States territories.)
• It’s my property, and I have a right to do with my own property what I see fit.
Just as we have today concerning abortion, there were many violent outbursts and conflicts between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Because the country was divided almost equally, there seemed to be no chance for compromise; either one believed that slavery should be allowed to exist, or one believed it was morally reprehensible and should not exist in any state of the Union.
Abortion is another “all or none” decision. Those who feel abortion to be morally wrong cannot, in good conscience, say it is all right for someone to take the life of an unborn child growing in another’s body. Nor could an anti-slavery person say it was all right for someone else to own slaves as long as he or she personally did not.
While the lines of conflict are not so clearly drawn as they were during the Civil War, we have a modern day “civil war” brewing as federal and state legislatures hash out this issue and other life issues, such as embryonic stem-cell research, cloning, etc.
Slavery, abortion and other life questions are moral issues with moral consequences, not mere matters of private convenience. I think we all need to quietly sort out on our own, away from the screeching crowds, how we feel about such explosive issues. More importantly, we need to ask our God what He would have us do. We have to sift through so much diatribe to ask ourselves the same question that many devout Christian people 170 years ago asked themselves about slavery: “What is morally correct? And how would God want us to respond?”

A postscript on Krauthammer

(This letter was published in the Feb. 3, 2011, issue of The News-Sentinel.)
By Donna Volmerding
I love reading columnist Charles Krauthammer and watching his commentary on television. He wrote an excellent column on the “flimflammery” of Obamacare in the January 24th News-Sentinel.
When I read the original article published in another paper, however, it ended with a brilliant statement that was edited out in the News-Sentinel column. It is imperative that your reading audience be made aware of this essential analysis.
Krauthammer wrote: “ ... amending an insanely complicated, contradictory, incoherent and arbitrary 2,000-page bill that will generate tens of thousands of pages of regulations is a complete non-starter. Everything begins with repeal.”
“Everything begins with repeal.” To that I add a resounding “Amen"!

Election may be most important in my lifetime

This letter was published in the Nov. 1, 2010, issue of The News-Sentinel

By Donna Volmerding
We have watched as our country voted in the most leftwing Congress and the most leftwing president in history. We are appalled by out-of-control spending, unsustainable debt and a massive government usurpation of our rights and our God-given liberties guaranteed to "we the people" in the Constitution. We are witnessing monstrous corruption, colossal voter fraud and an elitist class that refuses to listen to the concerns of its voters. We are disgusted by the government takeover of private businesses, banks and insurance companies. We are outraged with Obamacare and government-run healthcare, with a financial reform law that doesn't even address the original problem(s) (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and with the arrogance that our leaders display toward us.
In my lifetime, this election may be the most important one in which we have ever participated. If you don't know the issues, you have no excuse for your ignorance. For those who understand the tenuous place our constitutional republic is in, I implore you, please vote. Don't sit on the sidelines. The future of our children and grandchildren depends on what we do now. God will hold us accountable for what we do and for what we don't do.