The tour guide paused periodically to emphasize the virtue of the community center to the young ministerial graduates. She pointed out how the community center provided free dentistry for pregnant low income women. She beamed with satisfaction as she explained the free counseling opportunities and parenting classes.
The members of the tour group were cooing with compliments for all that the community service was accomplishing with its food and clothes bank, with its free child care, and with its Christian outreach to the community.
Suddenly one of the ministry graduates named Baxter who owned more courage then he did discretion asked,
“Who pays for all of this?”
The tour-guide answered with her irrepressible smile that there were many private donations and that the government gave a great deal of grants.
The intrepid Seminary Graduate asked again,
“Where does the Government get the money in order to give it to this community center?”
With this question the irrepressible smile of the tour-guide suddenly found itself beginning to be repressed. She responded with a voice that was a little more clipped then it previously had been that,
“Why naturally the Government gives us money from the funds they raise to help these inner city people.”
The eyes of the group were now cast suspiciously on the one in their group who was increasingly being seen as an ‘interloper.’
Un-fazed, the interloper summarized the conversation,
“So, you are showing us this beautiful community center with the hopes of impressing us but what you are seemingly trying to avoid is expressly saying that the monies that fund your job and this community center is stolen from other families who, if they had the money that is taken in order to make this community center go, might be able to more adequately provide for their own family and children?”
Finishing with a verbal pirouette the uppity Seminary interloper completed his inquiry by asking the tour-guide; “how, in light of the Scriptural prohibition against theft, can you support such governmental redistribution of wealth?”
Where the irrepressible smile had held sway there was now displayed a barely concealed snarl. With a voice that matched the snarl the tour-guide offered,
“I can see you have no love for the poor and downtrodden.”
Without missing a beat the courageous ministry graduate responded,
“I measure my love for the poor and downtrodden by how I spend my money on their behalf and not by how I spend somebody else’s money on their behalf.”
The tour-guide could see that this was going nowhere and so she hastily dismissed the students so that they could return to their afternoon practicum.
The bold Seminary student had accomplished making an enemy of the director of the community center and had insured that he would find no friends among those who had toured the center with him.
“Par for the course,” he thought as he left for the parking lot.
This is the crux: “I measure my love for the poor and downtrodden by how I spend my money on their behalf and not by how I spend somebody else’s money on their behalf.”
One thing these atheistic government types love to use is the Christian value of “caring for the poor” to persuade/encourage those to the pagan value of stealing from others. Christians with an ounce of epistemology ought to see right through this in several ways: 1. We cannot allow an ideology to take what it wants from the Christian worldview in terms of what is right and wrong and repudiate what it won’t allow and (you take it all or you leave it all) 2. Freedom and equality will always be at odds 3. The Constitution was meant to protect us from the good intentions of the government. 4. A pragmatic political ideology is still an ideology and is a tyrant in sheep’s clothing
Yes… you are correct.
They desire to embrace the Christian aspect of looking out for the poor but the way that they do it perpetuates what they are trying to relieve. You always ALWAYS always get more of what you subsidize and when you give money to the poor you create more poor by providing disincentive.
Secondly, if Americans don’t realize your number #2 we will cease to exist as a free people. Egalitarianism can only survive in a socialist political framework.
Thanks for stopping by.
I believe Plato was forced to drink hemlock for doing something similar. This seminary student may wish to pack a lunch, rather than utilizing the cafeteria.
Or he may wish to pray instead of eat because only God can deliver His Church using smart ass Seminary students.
Socrates, not Plato, drank the hemlock after being tried and convicted in the courts of Athens. Plato reported Socrates death.
Oh yeah, I remember him from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Remember the premise? The inane musings of two idiot teens become the philosophical foundation of a future society. It’s funny because it’s all too possible 🙂