Interesting to note that there is not a single mention in this article about ensuring the efficient operation of assistance programs; I would consider this being a good steward of tax dollars.

Nor is there any mention of requiring people receiving public assistance to work, or look for work, or perform some kind of work or labor for their assistance.

“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’ We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. ” – 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, NIV

The egregious errors in this theology/philosophy are indicative of the theology and philosophy many if not most Theologically trained but NOT Economically trained personnel make. And it was precisely the MBA in Economic Development that Dr. Campolo founded at Eastern College and which I enjoyed the privilege of being within the first graduating class, that equips people to address and correct these errors.

First, $1 given to the fiscally wasteful and inefficient government for redistribution to the poor in its War On Poverty is $1 less that the private sector has to give to the much more fiscally responsible and cost effective private sector dedicated to charity — whether churches, synagogues, temples, mosques or private charities and philanthropies. This is almost NEVER addressed.

A dollar given to one entity is a dollar unavailable for any other purpose and can NOT be given to any other entity.

Ignoring the IMMORAL borrowing on the backs of our children and grandchildren out for many generations of $0.40 for every $1.00 the federal government collects and spends we know that government forcibly confiscates $1,524,000,000,000 dollars annually from ALL FEDERAL INCOME TAX-PAYING ENTITIES (private and corporate). We’ll ignore the $842,000,000,000 the Feds also collect for Social Security, Medicare and the Prescription Drug Program for the time being.

What percent of this $1.524 Trillion is spent on the failed War on Poverty? Since its inception during the LBJ administration we’ve spent ~ $19,000,000,000,000 and we have MORE POOR people collecting welfare, food stamps, CHIPs, medicaid, extended unemployment checks, disability, and subsidized housing than ever before. This unassailable fact can NOT be overlooked and can NOT be excluded from the calculus required to balance our federal budgets, reduce deficits and ameliorate the national debt. This almost never gets mentioned. What would Jesus say about this fact?

The U.S. spends about $283,000,000,000 on Medicaid (health care for the poor) and CHIPs (Children’s Health Insurance Program) combined. We spend another $466 billion on individuals and families facing hardship. These programs include: the refundable portion of the earned-income and child tax credits, which assist low- and moderate-income working families through the tax code; programs that provide cash payments to eligible individuals or households, including Supplemental Security Income for the elderly or disabled poor and unemployment insurance; various forms of in-kind assistance for low-income families and individuals, including food stamps, school meals, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance, and assistance in meeting home energy bills; and various other programs such as those that aid abused and neglected children.

In short, we spend annually about $749,000,000,000 on the War on Poverty (MORE than our entire Military Budget which IS found within our Constitution). And what do we have to show for it? MORE POOR THAN EVER BEFORE. Using the ratio of $0.40:$1.00 — $0.40 borrowed for every dollar collected and spent — this means we spend from the actual federal income taxes we collect $449,400,000,000 on the War On Poverty and borrow another $299,600,000,000 from China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, bankrupt Europe, the Federal Reserve, and elsewhere to aid our poor which are much less poor than most of the nations’ poor we borrow from.

And What Would Jesus Say about this?

When theologically trained people denigrate the notion that Charity should remain under the purview of the private sector and not the State, they NEVER mention the fact that if this were to occur at least $449,400,000,000 must therefore remain in the hands of the private sector, and if China, et al borrowings are initially included and eventually reduced, another $299,600,000,000 in the early years. What would great American Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Leftist charitable types do with this additional $749,000,000,000? Surely they would NOT give it all to private charities. Probably not even half, nor one-third. But what if the tax code was structured such that on average, about 25% was donated to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques and private charities and philanthropies in exchange for generous tax incentives? What if an additional $187,250,000,000 annually were donated exclusively to programs that engage in charity and “helping the poor?” And the other $75% or $561,750,000,000 were used to stimulate the economy that Obama’s $800,000,000,000 attempted but failed miserably to?

Asked another way: Who should Christians, HIndus, Muslims, and Charitable Leftists trust more to use their hard-earned monies to fund cost-effective and successful charitable endeavors — churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, World Vision, Save the Children, etc., or the profligate and failed Obama regime and his successors?

The answer is simple, clear, Constitutional and I would argue strenuously Biblical.

The father of our Constitution:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents…” — James Madison

An elder statesman, founder, inventor and entrepreneur:

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” — Benjamin Franklin

“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Under our Caesar’s Constitution s/he is neither mandated nor enumerated empowered to run our nation’s charitable clearinghouse, let alone 1/6th of our economy overseeing healthcare. That falls under the purview of God’s people under the law of love, not confiscatory taxation and forced wealth redistribution.

By virtually every objective metric, philosophy and theology: the failure of the State’s War on Poverty — and thus de facto War on Poor People, the wasted $19,000,000,000,000 to curb poverty, the huge budget deficits and national debt, the waste and fraud within poverty programs that is well documented, the political/economic philosophy of our founders and framers, and Jesus’ charge NOT to Caesar, either Herod, Pontus Pilate, nor even primarily the Chief Priests, Elders, Pharisees, and Sadducees, but to His apostles and disciples, the way of obedience is clear. YOU give them something to eat!

http://usdebtclock.org/

I agree with the initial premise of the blog post – that it’s nonsense to say that Jesus would oppose governments getting involved in helping the needy. There’s nothing unbiblical about governments establishing programs to assist those in need.

But the author then loses me in three areas. The first is the one Drew identified in his response – that much of the debate in this country revolves around effectiveness of federal government programs, not the propriety of the method. And when I say effectiveness, I don’t just mean effectiveness in moving money from person A to person B without a lot of it wasted or spent on other things unrelated to helping the truly needy, but actually changing the underlying situation so that person B doesn’t have to walk around with his hand out forever.

This leads to be second concern – the author’s assertion that God doesn’t appear to care much about the heart of person A or the relationship between person A and person B. The Bible and Jesus’ teaching are replete with examples showing that God does care about how we react and treat the needy, not just on a societal level, but on a personal level. You can’t tell me that God doesn’t care about my attitude towards the poor and needy, but only that of the society in which I live. My heart, and all our hearts, for the needy is very important. This relates to my first point, because federal government programs completely separate person A from person B. There is no act of love involved. There is no getting close to the needy and actually empathizing with them. Again, this doesn’t make federal government programs unbiblical, but it sterilizes our relationship by imposing a distant mediator.

My third concern is the author’s point about freedom. Yes, the people in Biblical times had few notions of freedom or individual rights and liberties. They lived in an incredibly oppressive, patriarchal society in which social norms and mores were strictly enforced. It sounds like the author is saying that the progress we’ve made away from that type of society shouldn’t be valued, or at least valued less than making sure everyone has a certain level of material wealth.

The problem with this view is that people are all too perfectly happy to trade away their negative freedoms (the ones Jesus doesn’t talk about) in exchange for positive freedoms (material comforts). At times, it’s hard to blame people for this tendency. After all, what good is the freedom of speech, right to private property, the fruit of your labor or pursuit of happiness if you’re starving, homeless and sick? But even people who live in relative comfort and wealth fall into this trap. How often do we hear Americans praising Fidel Casto’s government because there is some level of basic health care provided to all Cubans? It’s as if this one feature of his regime is to be put on a scale opposite his oppression and murder and weighed.

Or take a look at this op-ed from the Guardian. The author is lamenting the loss of the “freedoms” she had under the East German government before the wall fell. Today, she lives in one of the richest countries in the world with many material comforts and is trying to weigh the pros and cons of a regime and social system that shot people that dared to criticize the government.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/1989-berlin-wall

These are extreme cases, but my points is that when you start saying that individual liberty and rights aren’t as important as material goods you start to empower a government to provide an ever-expanding list of material comforts to its citizens, the citizens become more and more dependent on that government. The material comfort starts to erode away any appreciation for how fragile the negative freedoms we enjoy today are.

Who’s definition of poverty are we using? Anyone who has spent any amount of time in the 3rd world would scoff at this diatribe. Our poor run around in cars, use iPhone and do absolutely nothing and are granted unearned dollars from one of 65 different programs to sit around and watch satellite tv. The problem is accountability. Are we going to make someone accountable for the money they are given and how they spend it? Are we going to make someone accountable to make sure it is given to people who deserve it and administered in a way that hard working people dollars are not wasted and there aren’t a bunch of people getting rich from the administration of these precious dollars. There will be no accountability so there is no solution. Putting a church in charge of charity is foolish. Just look at the bazillions of dollars they have spent on buildings and “relevant” speakers these past 20 years… it’s a key sign they do not know God’s real priorities.

Utopian Statism — Modern Day Liberalism, Leftism, Progressivism, Socialism, and Marxism that comprise the Democratic Party — is at its core an insidious form of IDOLATRY.

Utopian Statists put a strange god (GOVERNMENT) before Him, lazily looking to government for mortal salvation from hard work and the real possibility of failure, hunger, homelessness, poverty, misfortune, disease, illness and destitution, and having to actually give to charity not only a check but oneself, preferring that government just deduct unseen a little extra from their paychecks for profligate and wasteful Welfare, Food Stamps, and other wealth transfers, which have only increased exponentially under our current non-American idol.

BIG Leftist government is to 21st-century idolatry what the golden calf was to 13th-century BCE Israel.

Utopian Statism seeks to attribute to government a power and sovereignty over life neither given by God nor enumerated by the Constitution, and it arises from outright atheism or a hatred of God coupled with a misplaced idolatrous “faith” (yes, it requires a ludicrous and idolatrous but great faith).

As God both told us the poor will always be with us and, “YOU give them something to eat,” Utopian Statism blasphemes God by its belief that by making WAR against POVERTY (and thus the poor themselves) it can be defeated and eliminated. However, the Utopian Statist warriors in this war need not sully themselves in battle but only lavishly bribe its mercenary government via slightly higher taxes AND profligate Trillion-dollar borrowing from China, and the golden calf government will engage in the mission to ATTEMPT to rid the nation of the poor on their behalf, all the while creating more and more poor more inextricably dependent upon the government golden calf for succor and nurture from womb to tomb.

And of course, Utopian Statists will accept utter defeat so long as the golden calf also advances its sodomic and filicide socially bankrupt immoral agenda mortgaged into the futures of their own children and grandchildren — at least those who survive the abortionists’ knives complicit with their mothers’ filicide dreams.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4534009907944&set=a.1247528587965.2038630.1221949455&type=1&theater