You raise a good point. This Sunday’s Gospel, about Lazerus and Dives, illustrates that charity benefits the giver as much as it does the one who receives it. Forced charity is no charity at all, and carries no benefit to those who are taxed to pay for it. And often the bureaucratic rules are degrading to those who receive it, as well.I was on food stamps. One evening it occurred to me that I wasn’t accepting a freely offered gift; I was accepting money taken from people who hadn’t all agreed to give it, since taxation is not voluntary. I thought, well, its to keep me alive, though…But then I realized that there were ways I could survive without the stamps. Iwasn’t in a poor country starving, I was living in the USA in the beginning of the 21st Century, a place and time of inconceivable qwealth, and if I worked at finding food even as hard as my ancestors a hundred years earlier, I would find all I could need and more. I gave up the stamps and tried harder to find work, harder to find help freely offered, and harder to make what I had last longer. I got by. Now I have a better income.
I think the only time people have the right to money taken by force from others is when it’s an emergency, life-or-death. Otherwise charity should be voluntary. I would have stayed on food stamps without any problem if I had been in a Third World country and had no realistic other way to get enough to eat. After I gave up stamps I still took charity food. It was offered freely, not taken from those who meant to keep it, it was given voluntarily.
I believe we should help the needy without judgement, and warn sinners whether we are giving them anything or not. Charities shouldn’t function as a way to get a captive audience. Charity should just be there to help people. Warnings about lifestyle issues should go out to the rich as well as the poor. Emergency and disaster relief, etc. should be there for those who really need it, who would probably not survive otherwise, like hurricane victims etc. That should continue to be public and private.
Personally, I find the message harsher still. Notice that damnation required no direct evil act. The only sin was one of omission. Fundementally, we have a person thinking only of himself.You raise a good point. This Sunday’s Gospel, about Lazerus and Dives, illustrates that charity benefits the giver as much as it does the one who receives it. Forced charity is no charity at all, and carries no benefit to those who are taxed to pay for it. And often the bureaucratic rules are degrading to those who receive it, as well.
Actually price supports and other measures do not ensure “a stable, plentiful, and affordable food supply for the nation.” That was never their intent. In fact, at the beginning, food was plowed under in the fields – the aim being to create higher food prices (at a time when a third of the country was out of work.)Personally, I find the message harsher still. Notice that damnation required no direct evil act. The only sin was one of omission. Fundementally, we have a person thinking only of himself.
Notice that the attitude survives into damnation. Lazerus is not seen as an equal, beloved by God, but fit only to bring water to HIS lips, or be a messenger for the welfare of HIS own…
Something worth noting is that whenever the question of salvation is raised in the Gospels, the answer is always the same - rather the context is nations (ex. Matt 25:32-46) or individuals (ex. Luke 10:25-32). So both the Scrooge argument (‘don’t I pay taxes?’) and the Norquist argument (‘why should I pay taxes?’) seem pretty dubious, at least to me.
Particularly since most of us (the exceptions being Washington DC and US protectorates) have taxation with direct representation in the US. And, most programs serve compound purposes. Take the example given above. Food stamps, since the idea was first enacted in 1939, has always been intended not just to help the needy, but food growers as well. Much as we still pay growers to leave land idle. In other words, it isn’t simple forced charity, but also part of an effort to have a stable, plentiful, and affordable food supply for the nation.
Well, it was their stated intent. Land overuse can be (and was) a legitimate problem, as are subjecting family farms to typical economic cycles without dampening. Note the timing - Food stamps introduced in 1939, the same year The Grapes of Wrath was published.Actually price supports and other measures do not ensure “a stable, plentiful, and affordable food supply for the nation.” That was never their intent.