What it is like to be poor. One of them says "Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away." And one boy lost his life because of it.
When this stops happening in America, maybe I will sew up my bleeding heart.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Scripture and Poverty
One of the clearest teachings of Scripture concerns poverty. For every verse on homosexuality therre are about 10 that deal with caring about the poor, and that's a conservative estimate. So why are so many Christians opposed to programs like universal health coverage, which are designed to help the less fortunate in our society? I think there are three theses which can be used to defend this kind of position.
1) The poor deserve it, since they're so lazy. (Hardly biblical, to say the least).
2) If government lets big business run its course, the benefits will trickle down to the least fortunate. (On this I agree with Ross Perot. Trickle down didn't trickle).
3) Private charity does it better, more efficiently than government programs. (I'd like to see real hard evidence that private charity picked up the slack when many of the mentally ill were put back on the street during the Reagan adminstration.)
On my view, none of these propositions is true,
1) The poor deserve it, since they're so lazy. (Hardly biblical, to say the least).
2) If government lets big business run its course, the benefits will trickle down to the least fortunate. (On this I agree with Ross Perot. Trickle down didn't trickle).
3) Private charity does it better, more efficiently than government programs. (I'd like to see real hard evidence that private charity picked up the slack when many of the mentally ill were put back on the street during the Reagan adminstration.)
On my view, none of these propositions is true,
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