October 28, 2013
Burdening the Church
The other day a woman looking for financial help
called the church and I listened to her hard luck story. She lost her apartment,
didn’t have a job or a car, and she could only survive for a week in her
current circumstances. With every suggestion I made about where she might find
assistance, she counter punched with justification on why it wouldn’t help. I
told her the deacon in charge of our church benevolence would have to interview
her first, but unfortunately he was recovering from surgery. She understood,
and as if to say she was worthy of help, she said that she attended church with
her mom. Then in a quick follow up she said, “But I can’t stay with my family because they don’t have room for me.”
Tactfully (at least I think I was tactful) I told her that it’s a family’s
responsibility to take care of each another so that the church won’t be
burdened. Abruptly she said good-by and hung up. “If any woman who is a believer has widows in her family, she should
help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can
help those widows who are really in need.” (1 Tim 5:16 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Our American culture has served us a responsibility set very oriented towards the individual. To earn your own keep is to produce as much as you consume. The social focus through the formative years of our land was for each of us to step into this responsibility of our own volition. But man has both an individual and a mutual nature. The economic aspect of monetary currency breaks down at the family boundary of mutuality.
-----Now, my intention is not to be repetitious by reference to “monetary currency.” Money and honor are reciprocating concepts. Honor is the vessel in which money receives its value. And, in turn, honor is maintained by the proper exchange of money. Outside the family, money, goods, services, and capital are the prominent elements of economy. So, the prominent aspect of the exchange currency is money. Inside family boundaries, these take a back seat to honor. And honor is generated by character. So there, the currency for exchange is more defined by honor than money. For sure, none of the concepts of goods, services, capital, or exchange go away inside family boundaries. Nor even does money. But honor rises to the fore.
-----This is why family is very important for the more laissez-faire cultures. Both the importance of direct-exchange and honor must be cultivated into the individuals of that kind of society. In the indirect-exchange structure of collectivism, honor takes a back seat, if it is not thrown under the bus, entirely, along with character and family. For the exchange transaction there is between the individual and the collective with emphasis upon the collective.
-----It is hard to say whose character is sub-par in the situation where room for a woman out of everything can not be found somewhere. For too long we’ve been the rider of a two horse culture with a foot on each saddle. Our economy had been prosperous enough that few families had to worry about housing a member for any more than a short time. If it had to be done, it seemed like quality of character and depth of honor factored the level of investment offered.
-----Yet the government has been pouring a generous trough-slopping before every weakness within the general public. By it, individual character and honor are being spoiled within those too careless to control their ambition to get something for nothing.
-----By riding both horses, the population has become proportionately more of the latter than the former. We now live in a time where the fear of the hard working to invest in the livelihood of the freely-taking is beginning to disrupt the important rhythms between the two horses. This rider had better commit to one horse or the other before his backside gets firmly planted in road apples.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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