"A rich man came to Jesus one day and asked what he should do to get into heaven. Jesus did not say he should invest, spend, and let the benefits trickle down; he said sell what you have, give the money to the poor, and follow me. Few plainer words have been spoken. And yet, for some reason, the Christian Coalition of America...proclaimed last year that its top legislative priority would be 'making permanent President Bush's 2001 federal tax cuts.'"
McKibben goes into more detail when discussing the horrible situation in Alabama when their conservative Governor Bob Riley (who will most likely be challenged by nutjob Roy Moore) decided that the state's tax code was not only medieval, but immoral. "The richest Alabamians paid 3 percent of their income in taxes, and the poorest paid up to 12 percent; income taxes kicked in if a family of four made $4,600. . ." As he notes, and we have discussed here, the Christian response was to vote the measure down 2-1, with the Christian Coalition of Alabama leading the charge.
My favorite, actually, came from the introduction where McKibben notes that despite all the claims for Christian domination, very few people even have a clue about the Bible. Only 40 percent can name more than four of their beloved commandments. But this was the best: "Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." That is, three out of four Americans believe this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture."
Go read this article.
3 comments:
yes, the gospel according to pat robertson.
I missed where the Bible says "Jesus said 'sell what you have, give the money to the government so they can set up social programs that will feed the poor and be abused by many others". Conservatives aren't "anti-poor" as we are made out to be. But I want to decide HOW to best feed the poor, and I'm not sure food stamps and social programs are the best way to accomplish Jesus' desire to feed the poor.
Yeah, UB, I have seen your argument elsewhere. It isn't completely wrong, but not really relevant here. McKibben actually directly addresses this point. Here is another quote from the article:
"In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance to poor countries. And it's not because we were giving to private charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our average daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents. It's also not because Americans were too busy taking care of their own; nearly 18 percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with, say 8 percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for hte least among us you want to propose--childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool--we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin. The point is not just that (as everyone already knows) the American nation trails badly in all these categories; it's that the overwhelmingly Christian American nation trails badly in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid particular attention. And it's not as if the numbers are getting better: the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last year that the number of households that were "food insecure with hunger" had climbed more than 26 percent between 1999 and 2003."
So, you want to claim that conservatives really care about the poor and just want to decide the best way? What do you think liberals are trying to do? And as McKibben points out, America (conservative and liberal) just aren't getting it done. But it is the conservatives who are trying to bleed programs that have actually done some good and aren't offereing alternatives. In other words, you say you want better ways, but it isn't as if private charities are really taking care of the poor and government is just a waste. In many cases, the absence of governmental assistance will just mean that there is nothing for these people, and I have yet to hear a good alternative from conservatives save this pie in the sky notion that when people have more money in their pockets, they will magically help the poor. BS, they will buy a flat screen and say "screw the poor."
And finally, if you can't find where the bible says to give the government, I can't find where Jesus tells people to get all the money they can, or that money is theirs to spend, or government is evil.
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