Conservative attitude

Someone on facebook posted this.

It's a standard "conservative" whine that people who get unemployment, food-stamps, Medicare, etc., do so willingly. "They" do it, in fact, to game the system, and take advantage of decent hard-working people (i.e., "us").

Someone pointed out that if "conservatives" are right, they've missed an even more astonishing fact: American employment figures show that every month for the last year, a quarter-million lazy welfare-mooches change their evil attitudes, and decide to get a job.

But more than factually, the "conservative" position is attitudinally wrong: at least, for Christians.

The obvious sub-text of the "conservative" attitude is that people who need help are losers, and most of them are bad people who cheat the system.

Luke introduces one of Jesus' parables with words that exactly address that "conservative" attitude: "And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt..." (Luke 18:9)

May God give today's pharasaical "conservatives" a spirit of repentance !

The politics of Cain

I heard a young "conservative" on the radio today, talking about how she chose to identify with that faction.

She said the key to her political thinking was learning about people who drove new cars to the welfare-office to collect government aid: the favorite Reagan anecdote. She was honest enough to admit she hadn't personally seen that; but hearing that it happened convinced her to be a "conservative."

Many anecdotes have a basis in truth, of course. I imagine this is one of them. People who've researched Reagan's anecdote have found some truth in it, as well as some untruth and some exaggeration for political effect. But we'd probably all agree that there are people who game the welfare or Social Security or food-stamp or Medicare or tax systems. An honest view of human nature makes it a given that manipulators...people of high socio-economic status as well as low...take advantage of those and other systems in every way they can devise.

But the thought that came into my mind was that the "conservatism" promoted by Reagan's anecdote is an expression of the politics of Cain: "I am not my brother's keeper !"

Followers of Cain argue that any system which is gamed by the unscrupulous is bad, and should be scrapped: that our highest moral duty is to not let manipulators take advantage of us. It seems a strange argument from those who continually manipulate our political system and our economic system to their own personal ends.

But for those of us who aren't deceived to the political-social thinking of Cain, the question is what we do with the truth in Reagan's anecdote ? What is our attitude toward undeserving people who take advantage of our mercy ?

I don't often quote the hackneyed bumper-sticker, but it definitely applies here: what would Jesus do ?

What was Jesus' attitude and action toward undeserving people ?   That should be Christians' attitude and actions. Amen.