one of my favorite guiding passages in the Bible of what is 'right' and what is not.
Matthew 25:31-46New International Version (NIV)
The Sheep and the Goats
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
That's right. The people who think that other people don't do enough should provide shelter and food to these people.
Instead of trying to force others to do it.
Public policy, government policy is important:
If policy is a reflection of society‘s values, the resulting image in America resembles that of a fun house mirror. Neoconservative thought, amplified by the media and hard-wired into American culture, assumes that our economic and social systems are inherently fair. This assumption leads to presumptions. The first is that those favored by the system prosper because they are smarter, harder working, and more virtuous. This naturally leads to the idea that those not so favored are mentally deficient, lazy, and immoral. One of the roots of this understanding of poverty is the English ―Poor Laws that came to America from England, laws that treated poverty as the natural result of improvidence, and the poor as if they had a self inflicted and communicable disease. The resulting conclusions are that our poor willfully avoid success, so we have a moral obligation to insist that they feel like rubbish. Under these circumstances, if we must help, every tool we use to do so should double as a club to punish and shame them.
The poor, demonized as a drain on society, are also the poster children for
individual acts of charity conducted through donations of time or money to fraternal or religious non-profit organizations. Individual acts can be beneficial on many levels, not the least of which is to give the people who join those organizations the opportunity to express
as a group what they find to be socially important. Nevertheless, government policy sets national standards, and is the collective expression of what society holds as valued, valuable, and worthy of collective and universal
investment, not merely to benefit certain individuals or groups, but as an advantage to the community as a whole.
People don‘t
want charity. Citizens deserve a government that responsibly stewards the economy and squares the rules between people and corporations to provide achievable opportunity and protection from the predatory claws of a capitalism that would have all of the power, the rights, the profits, and none of the responsibility. Most poor, unemployed and underemployed poor people would love to
earn the means to provide even the thinnest slice of the "American dream" for their families. Crumbs provided instead, begrudgingly and with a sneer, are valued for what they are worth.
