Problems are for Solving

Matthew 25 Network
mission statement
The Matthew 25 Network is a community of Christians – Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Evangelical – inspired by the Gospel mandate to put our faith into action to care for our neighbor, especially the most vulnerable.

The election of our public officials, and the politics they stand for, are a reflection of our core values. We believe that those elected to public office carry an important trust, as their decisions have a profound impact on our nation and our world.

We believe that people of faith should actively participate in the political process as an important avenue for social change. We are called by our faith to engage in the world as it is, while we seek after and hope for God’s Kingdom.

Therefore, while no elected official will be without flaw, we come together as individuals to support candidates for public office who share the values of the Matthew 25 Network: promoting life with dignity, caring for the least of these, strengthening and supporting families, stewardship of God’s Creation, working for peace and justice at home and abroad, and promoting the common good. (emphasis mine)

Sounds like something we can all get behind, right?

I want to call upon all Christians to actually vote in ways that will protect those who are most vulnerable: those children who our nation allows their own parents (with the help of licensed physicians, I might add) to murder while in the womb.

If you are a part of a church whose pastor is in the Matthew 25 Network, false shepherds who want to steal money from the rich in order to pay for, among other things, the murder of the unborn children of the poor, then you need to call on these leaders to repent.

May God have mercy on those who would lead so many astray.

Pushing Help on Flood Victims (Cato-at-liberty)
Libertarians often talk about the possibility of private charity picking up the slack for reduced government welfare. Statists scoff at such notions, pointing to the weakness of local community and cultural institutions today. The charge rings true, but the reason, if this is the case, is not that the American character is weak and that it casually ceded responsibility to government. It’s because government largesse is an insidious, attacking organism that goes right for the fibers and joints of civil society to draw down their strength and make them arthritic.

I found this quote to be quite insightful. I believe that more private charity is necessary, and here is one reason why it doesn’t exist. The government will spend your money before a charitable organization has time to jump in, all too often.

So if we are to be salt and light, and to move true charity into our communities, we’re going to have to be aggressive, bold, quick, and competitive. We’ll have to find ways to get ahead of jimmy gummint in the race to do good, so that true good will actually be done.

Ok. So I got four comments on a post that I just threw together without really thinking about it. That’s more than I’ve gotten on a single post in quite some time. Which means people are reading and thinking (or at least a few of them) and so I’ll write about that.

If you didn’t read the other post or the comments under it the link is right there. What I’m about to say has its jumping off point in what the two posts (and underlying comments) by Josh Gibbs that Seth linked to. I used to read Gibbs but stopped because I was skipping more posts than I was reading, but these two were pretty good, or at least thought provoking.

Some of what I’m going to write on this topic is in the “thinking out loud” category. I realize that it’s dangerous to think out loud walking around a room of people who kind of know you—and that doing the same thing on a blog that can be accessed from anywhere in the world but Tibet is another level of insanity altogether. But then maybe I’ll start a controversy and become famous. Not likely—but I might attract more than the current seven loyal readers.

It is somewhat ironic that I write this on tax day. I filed my taxes quite some time ago, but today is the day that many are rushing off to the post office to mail tax forms and extension forms. It is in this realm of taxes that some of the controversy surrounding poverty happens. At the outset of this discussion of poverty I want to make it very clear that I completely oppose any helping of the poor through dollars taken from taxpayers at the point of a gun. All government run poverty “helps” do just that—and while I’m going to talk a lot in this series (oh no! It’s over now) about all the things that need to be done in ministering to the poor in Jesus’ Name it is Christians who are supposed to do this, and with our own resources, not those that the government has taken from others.

I have been looking at this issue from one perspective of economics for quite some time, and have not found a lot out there that I agree with. It seems like somebody decided that there are two ways to look at the poor, and we have to simplify it down to those. There are those who think we should take money from the rich to help them (I’ll call these the Christian Robin Hoods) and those who just assume that you’re poor because you’re lazy or a drunk. There are varying grades of these two views, but there are very few in between.

As you read what I’ll write, you’ll know that I am decidedly in between. Here are some guiding questions as I get started:

1. Who are the poor? Defining who is poor and who is rich is controversial and difficult at best. Who is objectively poor and who is objectively rich? I have some thoughts on that but it’ll be a post in itself.
2. What is our responsibility? And how do we carry that out? And by whom? Is it enough to give lots of money to the local rescue mission? Should the rescue mission even exist? Is it OK to give a drunk money? Methodologies abound. I will make a distinction between methods and methodologies (principles that guide the methods). Of the former there are many right ways, of the latter the principles ought to be the same.
3. What are the goals? Is the goal that the poor become rich? Or that they are less poor?
4. Why is this a big issue of disagreement? Why can’t we agree that helping the poor is important and figure out how best to do it and go out and do it?
5. What are charity and justice? What do they look like in our current society? What might they look like in a non-capitalist society?

There may be more, but these are questions that can guide any discussion that takes place here and on other blogs that might throw stones this way. I’ll have more later.

The Gospel Coalition | Vision
We cannot look at the poor and the oppressed and callously call them to pull themselves out of their own difficulty. Jesus did not treat us that way.

I read a blog each day (or most days) called Of First Importance which mostly has quotes that remind me of the centrality of Jesus and His Gospel to my life. These are short reminders each day, and on many days I need them. Today there was a quote from this Gospel Coalition vision statement, including the quote above.

I have added some emphasis to the quote and I haven’t at all digested its context, but this quote struck me this morning because it’s something I’ve been thinking about in another context.

How should Christians, being like Christ, respond to poverty? This quote makes me wonder if our response needs to have in its context symbolism of what and how Jesus has done for us.

Lord willing I’ll have more thoughts on this later–no time this morning to expound. I wanted to put this here though so others can remind me later, and so I’ll remember to go back and look at this whole vision statement.