A note about charity
Photo by Don Selguera from Pexels
Leftists love bitching about Christian hypocrisy. One of their favorite things to whine about is how we Christians supposedly hate the poor, and refuse to help the poor, even though the Bible commands us to care for the poor, etc.
I am going to start off with 2 Thessalonians 3:10:
I love the YouVersion Bible app. I’ve been using it a while, and I can make nice graphics like the one above. Anyway, I think this verse is pretty straightforward. Lazy people who refuse to work will suffer the consequences, and the consequences of that is that they do not eat. When we conservatives complain about welfare programs and such, we’re not condemning all poor people. Rather, we’re complaining about the kind of people that stay on welfare, make bad decisions that necessitate their continued reliance on welfare, and their refusal to do anything to get off of welfare. A lot of people do not pay income tax – however, not all people who pay income tax are billionaires or even millionaires. Those people making, say, under $500,000 a year are not one-percent high rollers bathing in champagne and driving expensive cars, etc. They often have plenty of expenses of their own, and here’s the important part: they work. They often work pretty hard. They’re not Mark Zuckerberg/Warren Buffet/Bill Gates/George Soros rich. Not even Hollywood actor rich. Their taxes are probably high too, and it’s not just income tax I’m talking about.
I think they have the right to complain. Furthermore, many leftists seem to think that these people don’t contribute to charity or perform charitable acts. Many of them do. In fact, the American people are among the most generous on earth with the amount of money each individual contributes to charity every year (and yes, I’ll give them credit even if they use such contributions as a tax write-off).
I believe that personal, private charity is best. Leftists don’t, because they think that welfare should be perpetual and eternal. Yes, they have actually complained that private charity doesn’t last long enough. That’s the point, though. It’s not supposed to last your whole life. It’s supposed to help you get back on your feet. Welfare, Section 8 housing, WIC, Food Stamps, Medicaid – all of that is designed to “help” a person for life, basically. Maybe not outright, but many of the people using it find a way to get those benefits for life (and don’t get me started on the illegals committing identity theft and fraud to gain access to those benefits).
The Bible is indeed pretty tough on the “rich” but I believe that when it says “rich” it really means greedy assholes that don’t care about anyone but themselves and their material wealth. I found Proverbs 29:7 pretty interesting:
The left believes that we are the wicked that do not care about the poor. This is flat out false. We DO care about the poor, but we have different ideas as to what would best help the poor. Government programs, in my opinion, do not do much to help the poor. The programs the left loves so much enable people and are impersonal.
It’s better to serve in a soup kitchen, serving meals (or even making them) for the homeless than to vote Democrat and go, “well, this person will keep the Food Stamps program coming.” Does the leftist in question spend any additional time thinking about the nameless and faceless people his vote supposedly helps? No, but the person serving in the soup kitchen can look at the people they’re helping. They can greet the person as they serve them a meal, ask them how they’re doing, and ask if there’s anything else they can do for that person. This is what those Jesus Freaks they despise so much do all the time.
For most leftists, it’s pretty obvious that all they do is vote Democrat, and that’s where their “charity” ends. The only other charitable groups they donate to or spend time with are leftist pet projects, like gay rights, trans rights, abortion rights, racist nonsense like Black Lives Matter and anything else that will promote the Democrat agenda. None of those “charitable” groups have anything to do with helping anyone other than Democrats and their endless quest for power and control.
Of course, I might get whiny comments from leftists saying that they DO indeed volunteer in soup kitchens and homeless shelters and such, but so what? They clearly didn’t give us Christians the benefit of the doubt. Or rather, us Christian Republicans. It’s not nice, is it, when people make sweeping generalizations of you? Now you know how I feel.
As I said, Republicans do not hate the poor. We don’t appreciate lazy people, and we have different ideas on helping the poor. We expect that everyone, even the poor, take responsibility for their own lives. That, after all, is part and parcel of freedom, which is something we dearly cherish.