If we reduce the gospel to the one dimensional amelioration of poverty, hunger, and sickness then we seemingly set a standard that is fraught with potential problems.
1. It encourages a focus on charity which is being shown to be harmful to the recipients in many cases.
2. It puts the focus on; the helper, the helped, the government, and possibly God in that order?
3. It puts the focus on competition for who can do the most “good works”.
4. It completely ignores the spiritual in favor of the physical.
5. It’s attempting to achieve an unachievable objective.
6. Is it better to gain a subsistence level objective than to lose one’s soul?
7. It places the helper in a position of power over the helped?
8. It’s following a model that neither Jesus, nor the early church followed.
I’ll probably add to this as other things occur to me.
2 comments:
1. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. That some people, and in the Forefront we have conservatives who tend to do this, that some people Embrace charitable methods that are harmful does not mean that being concerned for justice for the poor will inevitably lead to bad policies and programs. The program design to align with, work for and with, promote Justice for the poor will stand or fall on its own merits and how well it does that. But then concern for justice for the poor does not equate to bad policies. That is just a stupid stupid stupid hunch.
2-8. Stupidity, repeated. Add in some nonsensical pablum, and weak-minded dribble, and you begin perhaps to understand how wrong-headed this post is.
1. The most current research indicates that much of what has been done in the name of charity in the past is actually harmful to the people it’s designed to help. Of course, you miss that and misrepresented what I said, well done.
2-8 since you can’t actually deal with any of those points, you simply dismiss them. Again, we’ll done. Very thoughtful and excellent use of facts and evidence.
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