Kris Vallotton recently wrote a blog post titled, "The Worth of Work."
One of his major points is that he can't understand why people can't find work and why so many people live on government handouts.
He's all for hand ups, not hand outs.
Unfortunately, Vallotton makes a major leap-frog over a ton of facts to reach his conclusion.
For instance: To begin with, social inequality in the US is directly related to economics.
Don't take my word for it. Watch this short video by Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution.
Reeves makes a logical, factual case that in the US, the circumstances into which we are born is the chief determining factor as to where we wind up in life economically.
Columbia University's National Center for Children in Poverty notes that there are about 72 million children under the age of 18 in the US and 44 percent of them (31.4 million) are living in low-income families. 21 percent (15.4 million) live in poor families.
Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger relief organization, reported that in 2014 more than 46 million people in the US were living in poverty. 15.5 million of those individuals (or 21 percent) were children.
According to Poverty USA (an initiative of the US Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops), the official Federal poverty threshold (in 2014) for a family of four was $24,000. "People living in poverty include those "...working at minimum wage jobs. Seniors living on fixed incomes. Wage earners suddenly out of work. Millions of families everywhere from our cities to rural communities."
Poverty USA reported that in 2014, 47 million people lived in poverty in the US (consistent with Feeding America's findings).
When such a high percentage of people need help, something is clearly wrong with the state of economic equality in our country.
The bottom line is that Vallatton may be looking at the wrong issue.
It's not a question of the dignity of work, or even laziness. It's a matter of the stark reality of economic inequality that makes most people poor.
Stan Choe, of the Associated Press, recently reported that "CEOs at the biggest companies got a 4.5 percent pay raise last year. That's almost double the typical American worker's."
Choe also reported that "the typical chief executive in the Standard & Poor's 500 index made $10.8 million in 2015." And the median CEO raise for this same group in 2015 was $468,449.
There was never a broad-based rags-to-riches American Dream.
The number of individuals who "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" and are offered as motivational examples are actually very few and far between.
This is so because it's a myth.
Sometimes, well-meaning Christians, when talking about poverty, say things like: "God helps those who help themselves."
It's often quoted as if it's straight from the Bible, but that saying has no basis in scripture.
Yes, the Bible does clearly warn about the pitfalls of being lazy,
But being lazy is not the same as being poor.
There are many scriptures that show us how we should be treating the poor. Check out Proverbs 4.27, 4.28, 14.31, 17.5, 19.17, 21.13, 22.9, or 28.3.
Jesus also spoke on the same subject. Take a look at Matthew 5.3, Matthew 11.5, Luke 6.20 or Luke 11.41. He called the poor "blessed."
No where in the Bible is it recorded that Jesus ever told the poor to pick themselves up and get a job.
And he didn't seem to be especially interested in separating the "deserving" from the "undeserving" poor.
When Jesus came across hungry crowds of people, he fed them.
In more modern times, Mother Teresa, encouraged us, "If you can't feed a hundred people, feed just one."
And here's a great quote from Heidi Baker, who runs Iris Ministries with her husband, Rolland:
"It's not complicated. Just love the one in front of you."
Lord, please help us to follow their example.
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