Christians are often charged with not following Jesus
regarding help for the poor. Admittedly, we fall short in this area as we do in
every other area. Nevertheless, many churches sponsor programs to help the
poor.
However, this isn’t the basis of the charge. Instead, it
comes down to how we vote and which party we support. The charge goes something
like this:
·
If you Evangelicals really followed Jesus, you
would vote Democratic. It is the Democrats who show concern for the
underprivileged.
It is true that the Democratic Party has championed
socialistic reforms like entitlement programs (namely welfare), income
redistribution, and equal access to medical treatment. Meanwhile, the Republicans
place more value on a free economy, characterized by capitalism, individual
initiative, and a mixture of protections for the poor.
While the Republicans might seem to be more heartless than
the Democrats, there have been a number of Black conservatives suggesting that
it is actually the other way around. According to economist Thomas Sowell, the
Black community had been far better off before White liberalism had gotten a
hold of them:
·
Many things that are supposed to help blacks
actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had
a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher
than it once was.
·
In later years, as the minimum wage was
repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from
1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged
as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the
unemployment rate of whites the same age.
In, “Shame: How
America’s Past Sins have Polarized Our Country,” Shelby Steele argues that
White guilt, the terror that Whites experience of being labeled a “racist,” has
harmed the Black community:
·
It has spawned a new white paternalism toward
minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black
family more profoundly than segregation ever did.
How did this serve to undermine the black family? Steele
argues that white indulgences, economic entitlement programs, have served to
disempower those people that White guilt had intended to help:
·
Post-1960s welfare policies, the proliferation
of “identity politics” and group preferences, and all the grandiose social
interventions of the War on Poverty and the Great Society—all this was meant to
redeem the nation from its bigoted past, but paradoxically, it also invited
minorities to make an identity and a politics out of grievance and inferiority.
Walter E. Williams, professor of economics, George Mason
University, does not think that the problems that the Black community are now
experiencing are a product of slavery, Jim Crow, or even systemic racism, but
of welfare programs, white guilt, and “political correctness”:
·
A major part of the solution should be the
elimination of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and
irresponsibility. Chief among the policies that reward inferiority and
irresponsibility is the welfare state. When some people know that they can have
children out of wedlock, drop out of school and refuse employment and suffer
little consequence, one should not be surprised to see the growth of such
behavior. The poverty rate among blacks is about 30 percent. It’s seen as
politically correct to blame today’s poverty on racial discrimination, but
that’s nonsense. Why? The poverty rate among black intact husband-and-wife
families has been in the single digits for more than two decades.
According to Williams, “progressive” political correctness
has undermined the largely black schools, failing to hold the students to the
same standards as others:
·
Education is one of the ways out of poverty, but
stupid political correctness stands in the way for many blacks. For example, a
few years ago, a white Charleston, South Carolina, teacher frequently
complained of black students calling her a white b—-, white m—–f—–, white c—
and white ho. School officials told her that racially charged profanity was
simply part of the students’ culture and that if she couldn’t handle it, she
was in the wrong school.
Failing to hold students accountable for anti-social
behavior corrupts schools and diminishes the possibility of obtaining a good
education. According to Williams, over-indulgent liberal policies have
de-motivated blacks by holding them to lower standards:
·
Many whites are ashamed and saddened by our
history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. As a result, they
often hold blacks accountable to standards and conduct they would never accept
from whites. A recent example is black students at colleges such as NYU, UC
Berkeley, UCLA and Oberlin demanding racially segregated housing. Spineless
college administrators have caved to their demands. These administrators would
never even listen to a group of white students demanding white-only housing
accommodations. These administrators and other guilt-ridden whites have one
standard of conduct for whites and a lower standard for blacks.
White guilt holds blacks to a lower standard, approving
their racial prejudices, while penalizing Whites for the same. This can only
serve to further exclude blacks from white society. Williams claims liberal
policies have also made academic excellence more unattainable:
·
Black people can be thankful that racist forms
of double standards and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and
irresponsibility were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and
’50s. There would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and
spiritual courage that created the world’s most successful civil rights
movement.
Instead of coming to grips with the negative impact of
liberal policies, the liberals have instead invented alternative explanations
for black failure, including "white privilege" and "systemic
racism." What happened to the ideal M.L. King strove to achieve - to
judge, not by skin color, but by character? We all need to be treated as equal,
responsible, and accountable moral agents, each created in the image of God,
instead of paternalistically looking down on those we help.
Can we give in a way that helps the needy recover their
sense of dignity? Many Christian aid groups have! In The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief
of World Magazine, argues that, for
300 years, the church has been doing a good job of addressing the needs of the
poor:
·
Faith-based groups a century ago helped millions
out of poverty and into homes. Local organizations had the detailed knowledge
and flexibility necessary to administer the combination of loving compassion
and rigorous discipline that was needed.
Caring for the poor is not an option, it is a Christian
duty! However, this duty must be wisely fulfilled, or it will damage the ones
we are to help. Therefore, Paul commanded: “If anyone is not willing to work,
let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
Sadly, the more that the government has indiscriminately
intruded, the less those in need have been willing to submit to Christian
programs, which require moral accountability. It has become too easy to accept
government no-strings-attached handouts.
In contrast, Christian love sometimes needs to be tough for
the sake of providing help that really helps.
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