THE POOR, CHRISTIANITY, AND GOVERNMENT ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS

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.