Christian Nation

[bladespark]

silveradept makes a point with less ranting than I'd use, so I shall borrow his words and links:

"Speaking of those who are poor or uninsured, the Slacktivist is floored by a statistic that ultimately originates from Tony Pugh’s "U.S. Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty"- that nearly 16 million Americans are living in what is considered“severe poverty”, defined as individuals making less than $5,080 U.S.per year or a family of four making less than $9,903 U.S. per year.That second figure is half of the amount that places the family under the federal poverty line. Sixteen million people are making do on that small of an amount of money per year. And some of that is probably with the help from government assistance programs. If people want to put some meat on the claims that America is a Christian nation, assisting their brethren to get out of poverty would be a good place to focus effort, rather than wasting it crusading against homosexuals or other“deviants” that don’t do harm to anyone. When every person in the country can be secure that they won’t have to decide between food and another necessity, then there may be cause for trying to get Christian morality across, and it might have a little more weight because of all the good works that Christians did in getting rid of poverty."

I need to start doing more about that myself, I think.

Comments

[xpieces-of-usx.livejournal.com]

amen.

i only made a little over 8 grand last year. total. it would have been nice to have some support somewhere along the line. if we as christians united to end poverty, that would be something to talk about.

[we have a faith-based ramblings lj which is mainly mine, if you're interested in reading the drivel there. lol.]

i wonder how one would go about such a thing. unifying the church against a common goal like reducing poverty. hmm. something to think about.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in reading a faith based journal, sure.

[xpieces-of-usx.livejournal.com]

reach_that_far

nothing glamorous up there yet, but hey. lol. i'm trying to use it more. it's really a struggle sometimes.

[xpieces-of-usx.livejournal.com]

&!!@#$!!

Stupid hyphen.

reach_that_far

BWAHA.

[privatepony.livejournal.com]

It's not even crusading against homosexuals or anyone else -- it's blowing hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan on contracters and other expenses -- There's a /serious/ waste of taxpayer money where I'm at here, with the TCN (third-country nationals) pretty much getting paid to SLEEP! I hardly ever see them do any work, and they're paid by the hour. Honestly, if you take $16 billion from the money that they're paying to have TCN's mop the floors of government buildings, and have soldiers do it, you could give each of those 16 million individuals/families $1000. The problem /is not/ with the American people giving or helping out; it's with the government having the means to solve the problem, but not acting on it, due to a gradually increasing conservative standpoint over the past twenty or so years on budget and welfare expenditures. Pull us out of the middle east, take the money you were going to spend on contracting and everything else, and distribute it to those persons that REALLY need it. I say we need to take care of our own before we go helping the rest of the world. What's that verse about taking the plank out of your eye before the speck of dust in your brother's?

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much.

The problem is that other than voting, you and I can't do anything about the war spending. But it is possible to do something, however small, about poverty on a daily basis, for anybody who's not below the poverty line him or her self.

So while I would LOVE to see us out of the war and spending that money in better places, for now there's not much I can do about that. But I can make a donation somewhere where it will do some good for feeding the hungry. (Personally I'm probably going to make a monthly fast offering through my church, they have a wonderful record with sending your donation money exactly where it's supposed to go, without lining anybody's pockets.)

[privatepony.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. :( And I don't anticipate any elected official helping anyone out anytime soon, with the way the current political system is set up. There are some of the workers here, though, mainly the ones that work in the dining facilities, that work hard and don't get much in return -- Qatar has a huge class division between natural-born citizens and foreign immigrants; basically the immigrants do everything while Qataris enjoy it. So, I try to help one of the guys out there, slip him about thirty riyals (about $10) each paycheck.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

That's cool. If more people helped each other out, it would make such a difference. But not very many do, really.

[loweko.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if monasteries and such might have a use.