Speaking of praying…
While in Springfield at a nonprofit I was referred to my contact’s church to visit as a potential site. This isn’t uncommon, there are a good number of Christians in the non-profit world, and sometimes at the end of a site visit they will do a little “Oh by the way, here is the name and number of my church, we already do this, this and this to help people in our community, can you talk to them about the Benefit Bank?”
So I called up the pastor I was referred to, on a whim that he might be at the church and available to meet. He was. I went.
This was a complete cold call, so I started with the basics of Second Harvest Foodbanks and on a very surface level what the Benefit Bank is. (Think application consolidation tool, reducing barriers to public assistance, helping low income families access food assistance, etc).
I paused to see if he had questions. Not only did he not have any, but he had something to add to the discussion.
He pulled his Bible across the table, immediately flipped to Timothy (“one of the letters that Paul wrote…” he tells me. Thanks.)
He points his finger to the bottom of the page and reads aloud “If a man will not work, he should not eat.”
After a meaningful pause he looks up at me, and then starts explaining his views on public assistance, the sins of laziness, compassion, and liberal idealism.
The funny thing is, I agreed with a lot of what he was saying. The way he approached it seemed very confrontational and judgmental, but he was basically just explaining hard love. You know, if you love someone that is addicted to a substance that is destroying them, the loving thing to do (according to him) is to not give them assistance. Open the door, offer support and help, but don’t let them walk through that door and give handouts to let them sustain a life of destruction. True compassion can be hard to put into practice. Life is hard, right? Cheating makes it easy, and handouts are cheating.
He also spoke about the current ideology of our nation, what he kept calling the liberal mindset, of REACHING OUT to people for help. This went against his ideals work ethic: If people aren’t going to work or even try to earn something for a living, we shouldn’t just hand them free stuff. If people are going to fall to the sins of laziness and not work, he said, that we don’t want to help them. We want to offer a rope of help, but they won’t grab on we won’t go chasing after them.
I think his terminology is really what got me confused. I feel like I am always throwing around terms like “reaching out,” but not with the goal of touching and pulling in everyone (willingly or unwillingly) that I deem needs help. Reaching out, to me, is just opening that door. Creating awareness that there is a helping hand, there is support, there is a way out. So when he demonized terms and ideas that I have been acting on, but in the next breath stated another solid ideal that I hold, I didn’t know what to make of it.
I concluded, about an hour and half into the conversation, that it sounded like his church would be a great referral site. In that way, if they deemed a family/ person a “candidate” to get help from the government to aid in survival efforts, they could refer them to another Benefit Bank site that would take them through the process.
He proceeded to then ask what the next steps were to actually becoming an official site (not a referral organization). “I need to make sure of something,” I began, trying to figure out how to word my concerns. “If you are an official site, you can’t deny people signing up for benefits. Anyone who comes to you, even if they don’t have a job or may perhaps seem lazy, would have to have access to your services if you are an open site.”
“Well of course!” He exclaims. Apparently, the simple act of making the effort to collect their documents and seek out help in meeting with him would be enough on their end. His problem comes if he has to seek people out, if he would have to “chase people down” if they didn’t come to him for help. I explained that none of our sites “chase people down,” that most sites serve people who are coming to them anyways, and if someone misses an appointment there is no obligation on the site’s part to wrassle them up, sit them down, and make sure they get benefits.
“Good,” he says, “because we’re living in a liberally minded nation where people are trying to reach out to everyone to help…”
Do you see where I was confused? How I agreed with what his thoughts are, but didn't? Even the public benefits themselves are called “work support,” you can’t survive on them alone. They are meant to help when a family is down on their luck, when they are in education, job training, or looking for a job. I am all about walking beside someone, teaching them self-sufficiency, not giving handouts, etc. We even spoke today about the plight of the working poor. He pointed out that even though the Bible says Christians should help the poor, the definition of “poor” should be seen as those who can’t work, not those who won’t work.
He did ask if he could pray at the end of our meeting. I obliged, and I spent a couple minutes listening to a heartfelt prayer of a man trying to help his neighbors according to scripture, a man with strong opinions, a big heart, lots of energy, and a man who has given me a lot to think about.
What do YOU think about the Christian/scriptural basics of helping the “poor” in our nation?
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