I wrote this letter to my Aunt who believes it is the government's role to take care of the poor. This conversation began when I said that in light of the poor in the world America does not really have "POOR" people. She told me that I could not compare American poor people to the poor of the world, that a family of four making $40,000 a year was POOR! And they and anyone else needs government to give them financial help.
After a few back and forth comments this is my final summary, my solution to American poor.
Aunt Anne,
I knew you grew up poor. And I know you have seen poor people. YOU WERE POOR! You grew up very POOR! There is nothing wrong with admitting that because it is true. You lived in a slave quarter one room building behind a rich home in New Orleans while your mother did laundry. Your brother had to wear girl's jeans to high school because your mom could not buy him a pair of male jeans. He was continually picked on - bullied as they say today. You lived in an orphanage for at least a year. You may not remember these things or you might, but you WERE POOR. Your mom might have never made you feel you were poor. If she did not, she covered it well.
If you don't remember you may also be blocking it, or denying it.
Yes, you have been educated and so have I, but no one gave me anything and I don't think anyone gave you anything and we made it! Matter of fact, the resistance we faced made us stronger. Just like the resistance a butterfly must push through in order to fly out of the cocoon enables it to soar. If someone helps the butterfly out, it dies.
This is true of humans also. If a person doesn't learn to push through their life circumstances they are trapped at that level. We MUST be there to assist when a person can do no more for themselves but we MUST let people push up and out or they will remain down until the day they die. These are laws of nature - these are God's laws.
God's Word is very clear that if a person does not work - he does not eat. He is also clear that WE are to help our neighbors, but we are not to do for them what they can do for themselves. We must help them in a way that they grow - we must help them in a way that they feel dignity. We are to give when we are asked, but we are also to teach others how to take care of themselves so that they can get out of their dire circumstances. If we give them what they do not work to get they will squander it, and never learn to be able to teach their own children. I struggle that you cannot understand these simple principles of life.
You know I am a loving person. You know I would never intentionally inflict harm on a human being or an animal. I will help each and every person God places in my life that He allows me to help with the resources and abilities that He has given me.
You and I and your friends and our neighbors and our families are the system God choose to help the poor. He want US to help those who need help. He wants US to meet the need that is placed before us in our life. He want the children and adults in your church taking care of the neighborhood children and families that need a meal. This is God's design. He says that the poor will always be with us. This is a fact of life in an after-sin earth.
We are the hands and feet of God. He wants the poor to see HIS hands and feet - not a government program handout. He wants the person to feel the tender hug of a person who loves them enough to do something about those who are needy in the areas that they live.
We must use God's solutions to solve bad circumstances and situations. We must always say, "What does the Bible teach? What does God instruct us to do?" People who are not Christians do not think like that. They can't, but we can and we must!
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| We must not put our poor in pretty cages, we must set them free from dependency. |
If the world (or our city or our street) is going to see Jesus we have to be visible to them. America has enough Christians to greatly improve the lives of the poor indeed and to see all the families that struggle matched with another family that can help them to learn how to provide for themselves and then in turn to provide for others. THIS IS GOD's method.
If Christians keep abdicating their God given responsibility to government who is NOT Biblically responsible or Constitutionally responsible to care for the poor, we will never be blessed as individuals, people or a Nation in whole.
We - Christians - are the solution - It is high time we start being the Church!
UPDATE: July 2014
The Church in America is faced with a new dilemma caused by the lawlessness of the Obama administration. They are laughingly allowing illegal aliens to flood into our Nation by the tens of thousands, soon it will be over a 100 thousand. God has all the means in the world and if he desires for His church in America to provide for more and more poor people we can meet this need, but this is not about meeting a need. This situation is evil. People are being mistreated and used as pawns for the purpose of those who are in power; this is about a president and his administration that wants to see America brought down to the level of third world nations. They see it as a punishment for the blessing we have gleaned over the years when we were a godly nation. Unfortunately our Nation is reaping what it has sowed. In the early 1960's we decided to remove God from public education and by the early 1970's our Nation's courts have legalized abortion. Now after the murder of 55 million Americans we are still spiraling into sinful ways doing what we see as right in our own eyes and not following God's Holy Word.
Yet, America can not solve the problem of all the poor people in the world because in comparison to the world we are so few. We need secure borders and to repent returning to God and His Word. It is through healing our own Nation that we will once again be able to reach out abroad to help the poor in other Nations. Poverty begins in the spirit, not in the material realm. A person in poor indeed when they do not know God and trust on Him for their provision. This is message we need to be sharing. Becoming a Christian does not make you rich financially, but it secures your eternal future and your present needs (not wants). God provides for His own, but He does not promise plenty. For over 100 years Americans trusted in God and in turn became a blessing toward others, but we are no longer as a Nation in this same position. We have walked away from God. We are spiritually poor, as poor as the illegal aliens traveling hundreds of dangerous miles to get to our spiritually bankrupt Nation.
Again, there is a solution. We must individually and as a Nation repent, turn from our wickedness, obey God's Word and align our laws, mind and words with God's wisdom.
Yes, the borders need to be sealed. Our sovereignty needs to be upheld as a Nation. But we have a much more serious crisis than the border, we are spiritually bankrupt.
