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Thoughts on charity, our responsibility to our fellow man, and "social justice"

Two recent essays posted at The Resistance, along with today being Palm Sunday, got me to thinking about our responsibility to help those less fortunate than ourselves. During the announcements after Mass Monsignor Desmond implored us to "give as much as we are able" at the Easter collection next week. It is a time of need, and the Church relies on our generosity to see that their good works are fulfilled.

I have always been a "give 'til it hurts" kind of guy. Given two pennies, there's one for me and one for God. I don't make a big deal about charitable giving, to me it is an intensely personal matter, but one that I take very seriously.

Yet during the seemingly never-ending pitch for Obamacare there was time and again the trotting out of sob stories, anecdotes pulled from the depths of human misery to tug at our heartstrings in the effort to have us endorse a government program. As if a legion of bureaucrats could ease someone's suffering. Why is it that the people who wrote to Obama seeking salvation did not turn first to their Church and their fellow man?

And it struck me — government has replaced God in the eyes of the people. It's had help. Decades of "establisment clause" jurisprudence has eradicated God from the lives of most Americans. And with God gone the imperative to give charity has likewise disappeared. Why give alms when government stands ready to step in for us? Socialism is the antithesis of God; in it the state replaces the Divine.

Religious Humanism, or the omnipresent power of the state, is what drives the desire for Obamacare (and Social Security, welfare, Medicare, and pretty much every other government social program). It relieves the citizenry of the need to care for themselves and installs a purportedly benevolent government as the guarantor of our earthly wants, needs, and desires.

What need have we of God if government promises us bread and circuses?

Indeed, the insidiousness of socialism and humanism is so despicable that it actually uses God against those who would oppose its hegemony. I speak, of course, of the imperatives presented under the banner of "social justice".

Matt puts the concept into perspective:

I've been reading a lot lately that Jesus would support social justice. I've also seen that many evangelical groups and the Catholic Church support it as well. Just take a moment to let that thought percolate. Would Jesus support Marxism? Would He support a system that is openly resistant to any God but the state? Mind you that social justice is nothing more than Marxism renamed, so I have a difficult time accepting that Jesus will support it.

Me too. The Bible encourages charity, but in its teachings charity is entirely voluntary. "Social Justice" is compelled charity, the state confiscates wealth from one group and redistributes it to another. I've read the Bible. Jesus never held a gun to anyone's head and forced him to satiate the needs of his fellow man.

Confiscatory charity can only plese "your God" if "your God" is the state. Under the social justice umbrella charity is compelled because otherwise no one would give charity! Socialists, humanists, progressives, and Democrats are notoriously ungenerous with their own money. The plight of the poor is a matter for the state, and selfishness is the order of the day. They're not known as the "me" generation for nothing.

"I gave at the office" is replaced by "I gave to the IRS". When you see Joe Biden, with all his wealth, give a mere $300 in charitable contributions you can see how he views the poor. They're not for him to help directly, his job is to conjure up another government program which will let him feel good about helping them without having to commit any of his own resources.

And that is the mantra of "social justice". Individual responsibility is replaced by collective guilt. Those who cannot, or will not, take care of themselves must be helped, not by "us", but by "the government". And likewise, those who seek help turn not to their own strengths but to the omnipresent power ensconced in the state. When a man says "somebody should do something" he never stops to think that it is he who is the "somebody" to which he refers.

Prior to the enshrinement of the state as guarantor of "social justice" a great man, and probably the only member of the Kennedy clan who wasn't a parasite on the body politic, said "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

In invoking the memory of Ted Kennedy to laud the passage of Obamacare our Congress effectively put paid to any quaint notions of self-reliance or service to God and country. It is now "demand what your country must do for you, and never contemplate what you might do for yourself."

Charity "given" at the point of a gun is not noble. It reminds me of another great man who presciently said, "a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." I fear that we are about to rediscover the downside to that adage.

Posted at 23:16 by Chris Wysocki   []   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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