Biblical Compassion vs. Liberal "Compassion"

The Bible, and a speech | Long ago, yet very recently | TBP

[TBP]

I was out at an event the other night and I heard an interesting story.

It comes from Acts.

At one point, Peter and John (whose names stand for faith and love) were going to the Temple. There was a man in the community who had been lame from birth. Keep that in mind -- he was lame from birth.

Now, every day this man was carried to the Temple and was laid outside the gate to beg for money while his family went inside to worship.

Well, here come Peter and John, and the man asked them for money.

Now, according to modern liberal standards of "compassion" what should Peter and John have done?

(Clue: It is NOT what they did.)

Before reading further, try to formulate an answer to this question and see if you think that the modern, "comapssionate" (i.e. liberal) answer is truly compassionate, truly designed to help, or if it just degrades a fellow human being to make the supposedly "compassionate" feel good about themselves and compensate for their total lack of self-esteem.

[TBP]

Peter told the man that he had no money for him, but would give him something else, a gift of the Spirit from the Christ. [Liberal: "What a heartless, mean-spirited thing to do. I don't hear any love there."]

Peter then has the audacity to tell this person who has been lame from birth to "Get up and walk."

[Liberal: "How cruel. Can't you see that he CAN'T get up and walk. He's been lame from birth. This Peter person clearly has no compassion. Must be a conservative."]

The man then rose up and was seen walking into the Temple.

[Liberal: The SOB.]

Liberals today would insist that the ONLY compassionate response is to give him teh money he asks for. And they would denounce Peter as mean-spirited for telling this man who was lame from birth to get up and walk.

Yet he got up and walked. How can he do that without the libs setting up some kind of government program? The subversive! Who the heck does he think he is?

Must have been one of Clarence Thomas's ancestors.

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[2banana]

From a letter I wrote to my Pastor:

What I have read and understood from the Bible is that God and Jesus wants us to help each other by using our own time, treasure and talent and to give from our hearts. Nowhere have I found anything along the lines of “Go out and institute huge bureaucracies that will take money from some people at the point of a sword and give that money to other people as a politician sees fit.”

Our Founding Fathers were Christian and very pious men. They founded this country under strong Judeo-Christian tenets and reflected on their religious beliefs on all their decisions. They wrote nothing into the Constitution of any type of government “aid” to help the poor, children or anyone else on purpose. They wanted a very limited government for good reason. Limited government is the best way to ensure that freedom will be preserved. The Scottish philosopher Alexander Tytler, who lived during the time of the American Revolution and writing of the US Constitution, summed these views:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.

From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years.

These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

There are many interesting questions if citizens rely on government to do “God’s Work.”

If a government takes a portion of a man’s wages and does good with it, has the man also done good? If a government takes away a portion of a woman’s property and does evil with it, has the woman also done evil? When a rich man pays more in taxes than a poor person, is he more Godly? If the government then does evil, is he more to blame? A woman works for the government and uses other people’s tax money and does “God Work” with it, is this government woman now a good/Godly woman? If I legally try to avoid paying taxes, does that not make me an “Ungodly” man?

Today, the US government takes nearly 50% of a middle-class person’s paycheck after all taxes are factored in (income taxes, Social Security, sales tax, real estate taxes, gas tax, death taxes, phone taxes, highway tolls, sad etc.). Uncle Sam will spend more money in just this year (2004) than it spent combined between 1787 and 1900 - even after adjusting for inflation. I cringe at those numbers. The Founding Fathers wanted nothing like the tax-consuming monster that we have as a government today. I also think of all the good work that could have be done if people were allowed to keep more of their own money and give it to organizations/people that they believe in their heart are doing God’s work. Maybe it comes down to trust. Will people do the right thing with their own money or must a government take a huge chunk of it to do the “right things?”

Except government rarely does anything right except for those tasks that were explicitly outline in the Constitution as the Founding Father intended. I could cite many examples (such as where would you rather put $10,000 in retirement money - in Social Security or in your own 401k plan?) but the plight of black America illustrates this failure beyond comparison.

In 1965, the US government was going to wipe out poverty by the “Great Society” programs, in which to date over 3.5 trillion dollars has been spent. These federal programs were designed to “help families and children” or “buy votes” depending on your political viewpoint.

At the beginning of the 1960’s, the black out of wedlock birth rate was 22%. In the late 1975 it reached 49% and shot up to 65% in 1989. In some of the largest urban centers of the nation the rate of illegitimacy among blacks today exceeds 80% and averages 69% nationwide. As late as the 1970’s there was still a social stigma attached to a woman who was pregnant outside marriage. Now, government programs have substituted for the father and for black moral leadership. The black family and culture has collapsed (and white families are not that far behind).

Illegitimacy leads directly to poverty, crime and social problems. Out of wedlock children are four times more likely to be poor. They are much more likely to live in high crime areas with no hope of escape. In turn, they are forced to attend dangerous and poor-performing government schools, which directly leads to another generation of poverty.

Traditional black areas of Harlem, Englewood and West Philadelphia in the 1950s were safe working class neighborhoods (even though “poor” by material measures). Women were unafraid to walk at night and children played unmolested in the streets and parks. Today, these are some of the worst crime plagued areas of our nation. Work that was once dignified is now shunned. Welfare does not require recipients to do anything in exchange for their benefits. Many rules actually discourage work or provide benefits that reduce the incentive to find work.

The black abortion rate today is nearly 40%. Pregnancies among black women are twice as likely to end in abortion as pregnancies among white and Hispanic women.

The “Great Society” programs all had good intentions. Unfortunately, their real world result are that they have replaced the traditional/Christian models of family/work with that of what a government bureaucrat thinks it should be.

I could make an excellent argument that if the US government had hired former grand wizards of the KKK to run the “Great Society” programs, and if they had worked every day from 1965 to today without rest, they could have hardly have done better in destroying black America than the “Works of God” that the government has done or is trying to do.

I have visited many countries in which the government “guarantees” that everyone has a job, a place to live, education, health care and cradle to grave “government help” for all children and families. It all sounds great except that the people in these countries are/were miserable. They wanted to escape but were forced by their governments, at the end of a gun, to stay. The “worker’s paradises” of socialist and communist counties are chilling reminders of letting governments do “God’s Work.”

The Bible clearly states that we are to help those in need. The question is “Who should help those in need?” I firmly believe that scripture and the historical evidence strongly support that individuals, private organizations and churches should be the ones doing the heavy lifting. Government help should be the last resort.

[King Black Robe]

Liberals would have gone taken control of the government and forced people to give money or go to jail. They would have then paid themselves 80% of the proceeds for their hard work and good will. The crippled man would have received his portion only after he filled out lengthy paperwork. He would have then been constantly reminded of how necessary it is for him to have liberals in charge of government so that he can get his fair share of other people's money.

[presidio9]

Those who feel that Mel Gibson's film attacks Jews with fictitious mystical accounts that don't appear in the NT ought to countinue reading through verse 15.

[King Black Robe]

Liberals would have also droned on and on about how bigoted everyone else was in that they did not see the need to collect funds for this poor guy by threatening everyone with jail. They would have also accused all who disagreed with them of being anti-charity. They would have insisted that good deeds could not exist without the force of government (them). This guy would then become their poster boy to advance their own grip on power.

[TBP]

Precisely. And that does nothing to help lift up or empower the man, dos it? All it accomplishes is to empower the liberals at the expense of the lame man and people like him.

By the liberal definition, that's real compassion. By the liberal definition, what these apostles actually did has no compassion at all.

[workerbee]

Peter and John, as good modern liberals, would have found some camera-loving lawyer to sue the temple for not providing ADA approved ramps into said temple, condemned said temple for being anti-disabled (and probably racist, sexist, and homophobic to boot), gone on Air America to whine that Bush's economic policies were harming the "common man", lobbied for The Lame Guy Outside The Temple's Law (a huge tax hike for any rich person making over $25,000 a year), written a book about their experience with the horrible religious institutions and conservatives that allow this kind of thing to happen, made the talk-show rounds, then become economic spokesmen for the DNC.

[King Black Robe]

Exactly. Great post, btw.

[WKB]

Bible ping

[TBP]

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.

From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years.

These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."

And that is exactly what the liberals intend, no matter how much they deny it. Methinks they doth protest too much.

[k2blader]

Bump.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The modern liberal would have held a press conference to "raise public awareness" where they encouraged people to lobby the government to raise people's taxes to give this person barely enough money to survive in the worst crime area of the city.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Liberals today would insist that the ONLY compassionate response is to give him the money he asks for.

Wrong, liberals would insist on giving him someone else's money.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Since less than half of the population even bother to vote with only about 20 to 25% even paying very much attention we went from complacency to apathy long ago and there are MANY people who went to government dependency long ago.

Within my lifetime, we will go to bondage.

[TBP]

As Jack Kemp once said, "Liberals measure compassion by how many people they're helping; we measure compassion by how many people no longer need our help."

This guy no longer needed anyone's help. By conservative standards, that was compassionate. By liberal standards, it just reduced the number of people benefitting froom their programs, and was therefore totally lacking in compassion.

Yet the guy's better off.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

BTTT!

[MegaSilver]

MEGABUMP!

[jojodamofo]

The liberal wants to force us back to a life of slavery so that he can live off us as a parasite and suck us dry. The healthy life of the American people stands against the parasitic life of the liberal. We can only choose between being devoured by the parasite or destroying it.

[GulliverSwift]

To paraphrase Bill Clinton: Liberalism is a perverted form of Christianity.

That's why most liberals hate Christianity so much. They dislike the genuine article.