LOVE AND SOCIAL WELFARE

LOVE AND SOCIAL WELFARE

It seems strange, even to me, that my life circumstances have influenced such an odd out-of-step liberal-Christian mind set…especially since I live a very conservative-Christian lifestyle. Perhaps the adage is truer than I really want to admit, "A conservative young person has as very little heart while an older person who is a liberal has a very little brain."

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Weather true or not that natural trend can and I'm afraid has created a divisive blind-spot not only between young and old but between liberal and conservative as well. Now in my seventies, when confronted with someone in need, I am inclined to think, "I got mine. You go get your own."  I personally doubt that self-protective urge is the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The truth is if someone hadn’t helped me along the way I would have far less of what I call "mine" today. 

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Before I knew Christ I went through a rough patch and was forced to live in the trunk of an old Chevy Impala. I was homeless and unemployed.  I depended on government food stamps and handouts from individuals to see me through. It is no surprise that my older, wiser, and wealthier friends and family were not the source of my aid and refuge. My help came from the residents of Portland, Oregon's intercity ghetto who were under 20. That was back in the early 1970s when, for a time, whites had a curfew in the neighborhood.  There in the city’s “Albina District” whites were being randomly targeted and shot when out after-dark. Over time I was able to get a job and return to being a self-supporting tax payer. But without government assistance  I'm sure I would not be here …discussing the virtue of Christian support for secular government “social gurus” taking the tax money of workers and distribute it were they deem fit.

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That experience undoubtedly contributed to my uncharacteristic liberal Christian reading of the Bible. For example when I read Romans 13:10,

 "Love does no harm to its neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

I see efforts to shrink public assistance programs as harming my neighbor.

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I like to believe that not-for-profit organizations, like the church, would offer generously funded job training, child education, business-startup grants, basic food, housing, and health care programs if they could.  It's no criticism of the church to note that church benevolentness programs cannot provide public assistance on the scale government programs could. Here in the US we have 2.8 million people unemployed, a minimum of 9 thousand homeless, and 49 million people living below the poverty line.  Churches, no matter how hard they try, are simply not established for the purpose of meeting that great a need. The strange thing is Christians, who are very sympathetic toward the poor, appose government programs designed to meet public needs they know they cannot.

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However Christians could, as a way of expressing God's incalculably generous love, promote, man and help administer Federal and State efforts to help the needy rather than fight them.  Without a doubt, Christian co-participation would positively influence even the more value offensive of these programs.  Nevertheless if conservative Christians refuse to assist, guide, and encourage government programs they should at least not oppose them.  It is almost as if there is a blind-spot to the harm they are doing to their neighbor by fighting them.  If they worked cooperatively with government, as they do in places like Camden, New Jersey, much of the crime and suffering of our neighbors would be alleviated.  Sympathy looks at a neighbor’s need sentimentally.  Instead Christ’s compassion moved Him at great personal coast to do something about it.  His disciples, conservative and liberal, are called to do likewise…fulfill the law with love.