Government social justice is false compassion

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andyandely1997

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We have shunned our responsibility to the government on too many things. Before social security, medicare, medicaid & welfare, who took care of the poor? And I do not include the slothful, “For also when we were with you, this we declared to you: that, if any man will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10) It was the church & the family, but now it is becoming more & more the government. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Does the government bring compassion along with the gospel of Christ to people who are really in need? Is there less or more poor within America since the New Deal & the Great
Society? Money alone will not solve the problems. All of these social justice programs from the government come from false compassion, which leads to greater dependence on the government.

Who took care of the elderly before these social programs? Wasn’t it the family & the church? Now we expect the governement to take care of the elderly, which includes our parents. And now we are going down the same route with our immediate family. We expect the government to take care of our family. Our entitlement mentality is not of God.

Our nation does not need more social justice from the government. We need to repent as a nation & turn back to God. All of this soical justice, without Christ, will not fix the problems. The saving message of the gospel & Jesus Christ is the only way to help our nation along with helping all people, not only the poor, find true joy & peace.
 
An interesting salvo and one I’ve thought much about. (Though I suspect you meant shunted rather than shunned. It rather largely changes the meaning!).

While there is much merit in your argument, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a false dilemma to state that we should either have government provide for the needy or else let private charity do so.

The problem with government social services is that they are horribly inefficient and only serve ONE of three of the benefits of REAL charitable giving. Those three parts are:
  1. The physical needs of the weak and poor are met.
  2. The heart of the giver is moved by the personal contact with Christ in the receiver and he/she is the richer for it.
  3. The heart of the recipient is moved by the personal contact with Christ in the giver and he/she is the richer for it.
When you take #2 and 3 out, what is left is severely depleted of the power to change the world.

I don’t have all the answers, but I am sure that the enormous tax burden we pay for social benefits is depriving the world of an equal or greater effect that could be had if individuals gave a hand up to individuals instead of having those financial resources filtered through a soulless government bureacracy first.

I think the right approach is not to overturn the existing “entitlements” but to fight new ones until the economy grows enough that the relative burden is not so severe. Don’t rail against the welfare moms and those “too lazy to work.” Instead lament the fact that the current approach gives them only a fraction of what they really need.

It is instructive to note that in the story of the Sheep and Goats, Jesus never says to the sheep “when I was hungry you petitioned Caesar for a food stamp program and when I was homeless you lead a march on the capital for public shelter funding…” It was always direct action. Food for thought.
 
Funny, I too have been thinking about this subject a lot lately. Maybe it’s a result of the ongoing healthcare debate?

In any event, I agree that government “charity” is problematic for Christians in several ways. First, it crowds out private charity. We have less incentive to give on our own because the government has programs that ostensibly deal with homelessness, unemployment, the destitute disabled and elderly, etc. In addition, most of us have less to give because our incomes are reduced by the taxes we pay so that the government can give instead.

Being “charitable” by means of redistributive taxes is both financially inefficient (government as middleman) and spiritually destructive. Our free will doesn’t enter into it. We don’t see problems around us and choose to engage in works of mercy. Instead, we wait for some unknown, distant organization, to which we are compelled by law to make contributions, to do works of mercy for us. The whole process provides almost no opportunity for ministering to others.

Another issue is empowering the government to decide what forms of “good” should be done. If the people running the government (and the people electing them) decide that abortions should be publicly funded, then everyone else will have to participate in that form of “charity” or be sent to jail. I don’t want my charitable giving to be subject to majority vote, and I don’t want to impose my own charity preferences on others by means of government.

All that being said, I’m not sure where to go from here. It looks like Medicare, for example, is on track to implode if we don’t make hard decisions in the next 25 years.

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You need to have some government programs. However, all things are needed in moderation. We also need stricter rules in regards to who benefits from social programs and who should be taken of the public doll. Once we get to a point where we have all things in moderation I think the whole system will work a lot better.
 
I would go as far to argue that not only is govt social justice a false compassion but it is also theft. In a free country I should be left to spend my money as I see fit not how the government thinks I should spend it. The welfare entitlement mentality must be stopped. The only way to do that is to stop rewarding people for sitting around doing nothing. I think people would be a lot less likely to be perpetually unemployed if they had to ask their family members, friends, or churches for money instead of filling out some forms and having the government send them a check.
 
I agree with a lot of this stuff. If all this money that was spent on these programs was given back to the people who earned it and they gave it to private charities that don’t waste it or used it to start businesses to employ people everyone would be better off! The people that say that no one would do the right thing and be generous have a sad (and incorrect) view of human nature. Does anyone have a figure on what % of taxes goes to these programs that are failing to help people?
 
andyandely1997 said:
We have shunned our responsibility to the government on too many things. Before social security, medicare, medicaid & welfare, who took care of the poor? And I do not include the slothful, “For also when we were with you, this we declared to you: that, if any man will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10) It was the church & the family, but now it is becoming more & more the government. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Does the government bring compassion along with the gospel of Christ to people who are really in need? Is there less or more poor within America since the New Deal & the Great
Society? Money alone will not solve the problems. All of these social justice programs from the government come from false compassion, which leads to greater dependence on the government.

Who took care of the elderly before these social programs? Wasn’t it the family & the church? Now we expect the governement to take care of the elderly, which includes our parents. And now we are going down the same route with our immediate family. We expect the government to take care of our family. Our entitlement mentality is not of God.

Our nation does not need more social justice from the government. We need to repent as a nation & turn back to God. All of this soical justice, without Christ, will not fix the problems. The saving message of the gospel & Jesus Christ is the only way to help our nation along with helping all people, not only the poor, find true joy & peace.
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I stand in absolute agreement.
 
The Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on socialism is very interesting in this regard. Of course, the historical parts of the entry are incomplete, because it was written before WWI. But the discussion of the ways in which socialism is inconsistent with Catholicism remains applicable.

In sum, the Encyclopedia identifies the following respects in which socialism conflicts with Catholic teaching:
  1. Socialism is materialistic. “Socialism appropriates all human desires and centres them on the here-and-now, on material benefit and prosperity. But material goods are so limited in quality, in quantity, and in duration that they are incapable of satisfying human desires, which will ever covet more and more and never feel satisfaction.”
  2. Socialism is deterministic. “Holding that society makes the individuals of which it is composed, and not vice versa, it has quite lost touch with the invigorating Christian doctrine of free will. … Any power which claims to appropriate and discipline [the individual’s] interior life, and which affords him sanctions that transcend all evolutionary and scientific determinism, must necessarily incur Socialist opposition.”
  3. Because of 2, socialism is hostile to the Church and the family. “Socialism, with its essentially materialistic nature, can admit no raison d’etre for a spiritual power, as complementary and superior to the secular power of the State. … The State was never meant to appropriate to itself the main parental duties, it was rather meant to provide the parents, especially poor parents, with a wider, freer, healthier family sphere in which to be properly parental.”
  4. Socialism conflicts with the natural law regarding private property. “If man, [according to Aquinas], has the right to own, control, and use private property, the State cannot give him this right or take it away; it can only protect it.”
In other words: "It is true that the institutions of religion, of the family, and of private ownership are liable to great abuses, but the perfection of human effort and character demands a freedom of choice between good and evil as their first necessary condition. This area of free choice is provided, on the material side, by private ownership; on the spiritual and material, by the Christian Family; and on the purely spiritual by religion. The State, then, instead of depriving men of these opportunities of free and fine production, not only of material but also of intellectual values, should rather constitute itself as their defender."

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andyandely1997 said:
We have shunned our responsibility to the government on too many things. Before social security, medicare, medicaid & welfare, who took care of the poor? And I do not include the slothful, “For also when we were with you, this we declared to you: that, if any man will not work, neither let him eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10) It was the church & the family, but now it is becoming more & more the government. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Does the government bring compassion along with the gospel of Christ to people who are really in need? Is there less or more poor within America since the New Deal & the Great
Society? Money alone will not solve the problems. All of these social justice programs from the government come from false compassion, which leads to greater dependence on the government.

Who took care of the elderly before these social programs? Wasn’t it the family & the church? Now we expect the governement to take care of the elderly, which includes our parents. And now we are going down the same route with our immediate family. We expect the government to take care of our family. Our entitlement mentality is not of God.

Our nation does not need more social justice from the government. We need to repent as a nation & turn back to God. All of this soical justice, without Christ, will not fix the problems. The saving message of the gospel & Jesus Christ is the only way to help our nation along with helping all people, not only the poor, find true joy & peace.
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If one can look at the “charity” that the government provides and even come close to concluding that it is sufficient, then I would say that one is interested only in donating the bare minimum to those in need. If, on the other hand, one recognizes the lack in what the government offers but nevertheless refrains from giving since one perceives that taxes have not left enough for one to donate, then I would suggest that such an individual seriously review the manner in which he makes his donations in order to be sure that he offers his whole livelihood rather than just his surplus. (1)

(1) Cf. New American Bible. Washington D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2002. Luke 21:1-4. Available online at: usccb.org/nab/bible/luke/luke21.htm
 
If one can look at the “charity” that the government provides and even come close to concluding that it is sufficient, then I would say that one is interested only in donating the bare minimum to those in need.
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I think the inadequacy of the government’s “charity” is largely the point. Government “charity” is woefully inefficient in terms of how much the government takes in vs. how much good it does. It’s also allocated in all manner of disordered ways. And perhaps most important of all, it’s completely divorced from free will, the exercise of virtue, and ministry.

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Langdell said:
I think the inadequacy of the government’s “charity” is largely the point. Government “charity” is woefully inefficient in terms of how much the government takes in vs. how much good it does. It’s also allocated in all manner of disordered ways. And perhaps most important of all, it’s completely divorced from free will, the exercise of virtue, and ministry.

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Granted. However, Christians have a moral obligation to address those deficiencies whether or not this is recognized or even passively endorsed y the government.
 
Social justice is a euphemistic way of sying Socialism. Socialism is a euphemism for marxism.Marxism is atheist. Ergo social justice is an atheist project.
 
Government welfare creates special interests such as the “fat cats” that you abhor. Mix your good intentions of helping the poor through government welfare and you end up with a result that you never intended, special interests. You should not be surprised at the end result! Government employees are not public servants; they do not drop their self-interests at the door of government service.

Incentive is the key difference between capitalism (private ownership of resources) and socialism (state ownership of resources). Private ownership boosts incentive, while public ownership retards it.

If you truly are going to help poor people, you are going to have to understand incentives and the true consequences of your actions. You will also have to understand the accounting concept of internal control. You may be hurting poor people more than you are helping them.

When I was in India I did not give money to women with babies because I would be encouraging women to steal babies in order to get money. I did not give money to mutilated children because I would be encouraging parents to mutilate their children in order to get more money. However, I would buy food for the hungry and I would watch them eat it!

I follow the same procedure for the homeless in this country. I do not give anyone money. However, I do buy them food and I watch them eat it. If these people curse me, then I know that they were not hungry. They just wanted money for other purposes.

As an individual I have internal control. The government does not have internal control. We have spent vast sums of money since the 1930s on government welfare, all to no avail. You have to ask yourself why before you advocate more of the same.
 
I don’t think the government can do or afford to try and provide every service society needs. Some things have to be done by the private sector because it is economically more efficient.

On the other hand, unregulated free market capitalism can be destructive in a number of ways. The recent GFC was strong proof of the dangers lack of regulation can cause. While I think buisnesspeople should not have their profits or property taken unfairly by arbitrary taxation or interference by government, we need to ensure private rights and greed do not get out of contol and lead to the creation of a large underclass of poor and disadvantaged. We are already seeing this occur a lot in the US with the expense of healthcare and in Australia due to expensive housing causing a rise in homelessness and poverty, to give two examples.

The state should co-operate with the private sector to maximise the public good and the flourishing of the state as a whole and also for the flourishing of individuals. People should not be denied access to basics such as housing, food, education, and healthcare merely on the grounds of being poor.
 
Aboveallbereal said:
Social justice is a euphemistic way of sying Socialism. Socialism is a euphemism for marxism.Marxism is atheist. Ergo social justice is an atheist project.
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Social Justice is most certainly not socialism, since it affirms the good of private ownership. Ergo, your syllogism fails.
 
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