March 01, 2011
For Whose Sake
There is never a shortage of organizations looking for community funding. In the very near future I’m going to have to voice my opinion on whether or not taxpayer dollars are benevolent dollars. For instance, should taxpayer funds go to support religious community missions? I certainly think that benevolence starts with the family and the church, but I’m not so sure it should be a piece of the government. Although he was addressing hospitality, John makes an interesting statement, “It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans [Gentiles].” (3 John 7 NIV) I’m wondering if, “for the sake of the Name”, churches, missions and ministry outreach programs are making a mistake by looking for worldly funding sources.
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Gail;
-----Why should taxpayer funds not be a financing source for community missions? How many people contribute to the City coffers? Forty thousand? And that number reflects only those who live in our greater community and shop in the City where sales taxes can glean from their wallets. Tourists and passers-through also stop and buy. And people from other communities shop here - Telluride, Ouray, Nucla-Naturita, etc. The broader the base of people in the funding source the smaller is each one’s contribution to a greater pool for funding community mission. Whewhoo!! And aren’t these community missions important enough to have the assured funds that taxes are?
-----The answer depends upon how shallow mindedly we wish to approach the question. If the goal is merely doing things, open the tax coffers and let the money roll! But if it is girding up the people we love, not the collective pool of people, but the myriads of individuals attempting to make their lives amongst one another, the answer must be BALOGNA!! Just doing things is not good enough if love has anything to do with it! And love has everything to do with it, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” (Rom 13:8)
-----So if we are to truly love our neighbors - truly love America - we will be concerned about the effects our decisions and efforts make upon others more than about just doing something. Collective support for missions, whether they be religious or just charitable, whether they be for health care, housing, education or anything else (and even everything else as in the pure communistic community) certainly provides everyone with some subsistence. Let’s ignore the meagerness of the amount; that topic is small fry. Everything costs. Everything! That is the most unattended law of nature. The cost of pilfering from the individual to serve the public is both psychological and spiritual to the individual and to the public (since the public is nothing more than all of its individuals.) One of the most Biblically addressed behaviors of love is edifying one another. How does doing psychological and spiritual damage to your neighbor edify him?
-----We can see the muscles of the body - the triceps and biceps and so on. Athletes know working them builds them. Laziness atrophies muscle. Laziness is a human frailty. Likewise, psychology and spirituality grow competent when exercised and incompetent when they lay fallow. Yet since they lack a physical substance for the eyes, to them this principle doesn’t get applied. Gail, I bid you, direct the people towards competence. Give them the opportunity to bolster their imaginations by sorting from their own minds what is important for pulling their own dollars from their own wallets for charity. If nothing gets done for a while, eventually, one by one, each will get upon his own feet and lend his own strength to community missions when he realizes the mess individual laziness makes of community. There may be less community mission, but there will be greater community psychology, spirituality, and competence. Everything costs.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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