Or is it?
Poverty is a stubborn creature. Democrats have social programs, Republicans have tax cuts and the end result is ...
The fiscal collapse of the West is a failure of the secular model of humanity. It's a failure of the model that says that if government provides the resources, the willing and eager poor will grab the opportunities and rise out of poverty. The fiscal collapse is validation of the Christian model of humanity where people are fallen, imperfect and sinful and where salvation is individual, not collective. Had we used the Christian model of humanity for the past four decades, we would have known in advance that spending tens of trillions of dollars wasn't going to achieve the goals we set forth.
The government has done everything it could. It spent vast oceans of money, both here and in Europe and Japan. It ran well-intentioned programs managed by competent people educated in our best Universities using the latest advances in science. In the US, after spending $14B more than we took in, the poor, the addicts, the homeless and the drunkards are still all around us. The secular model of salvation has failed, not for want of trying, but because it was wrong from the start.
Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan is all about an individual saving an individual. The Samaritan, upon discovering the beaten and robbed traveller, doesn't form an intergovernmental panel of road safety and he doesn't demand stricter punishment for criminals. He, as an individual, takes care of another individual himself, with his own resources.
Kind of like Homeboy Industries. Dig the story starting around 2:20.
I dunno. Seems to me we had less poverty and social problems when there were fewer guv'mint progams trying to end poverty and social problems.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm wrong but I can't help but think local communities could care for the less fortunate much more efficiently than a distant Federal agency can.
Plus, if the federal saftey net wasn't there, I believe those individuals would have more incentive to improve themselves thus reducing the need for government assistance.
Lawman, I think we're saying the same thing.
ReplyDelete"I can't help but think local communities could care for the less fortunate much more efficiently than a distant Federal agency can."
The smaller the scale, the closer you get to individual salvation, the better off you are.