Non-Christians speaking truth, second installment

The above image is from an Asian manga translated into English. Because it is from the Far East, you  read it from right to left, top to bottom. I put this in because, like my last post that also used a manga image, this manga makes a moral point that is almost identical to the point the is made by Our Lord and by the Apostle James and by the Apostle Paul and by many of the Church Fathers.

If one goes to the Old Testament, the point is made in an even stronger fashion. The care of the widow and the orphan is one of the strongest and most well-documented expectations in the Old Testament. Notice that in Psalm 82 below, the judgment of God falls on those who are wicked, who are called wicked because of their lack of care for the orphan and the poor.

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.

Psalm 82

Go back to the manga above. Is that not much of what we are hearing today? We give lip service to the idea of the care of the widow, the orphan, and the needy. But, when it comes down to it, we find reasons to declare that those orphans, those needy, those widows, are really takers and thus deserve none of our help. Frankly, I fail to see how children can so quickly be classified as takers who are not worthy of help.

Since Reagan’s time, we have gotten around that in the USA by pointing at the mothers and saying that if we reward them by helping needy children then we are simply encouraging them to have more illegitimate children. If we are honest with ourselves as a country, most of the images of overly fertile women were black women, even though the majority of people receiving welfare and unemployment aid are white.

We then went on to misapply the phrase “blessed are the poor” by creating this myth of a Great Depression generation whose children were happily poor and went on to become greater people than we are. They were not happily poor, just read the actual history. Country songs, such as “Song of the South” document the incredible help given by President Roosevelt’s massive help programs. That song documented child labor, helpless poverty, etc., along with the changes that came with government help.

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch, we all picked cotton but we never got rich. …

Gone, gone with the wind there ain’t nobody looking back again. Well somebody told us Wall Street fell but we were so poor that we couldn’t tell. Cotton was short and the weeds were tall but Mr. Roosevelt’s gonna save us all. Well momma got sick and daddy got down. The county got the farm and they moved to town. …

Song of the South — Alabama

Those who actually listened to the songs of the Great Depression and talked to their grandparents know that there was no mass of happy poor people who delighted in their poverty. Rather, as Song of the South acknowledged when it was first recorded about 40 years ago, it was rough and bad and it took government aid to get us out of poverty. To listen to today’s conservatives, one would never know that. Somehow, against what history clearly shows, poor people pulled themselves up by their non-existent bootstraps. This is historically false.

And so, we are in the position where if the Great Depression had happened today, this country would have collapsed even worse, people would have died in droves, and it is probable that a massive social upheaval/revolution would have taken place. Instead, “Mr. Roosevelt’s” programs gave us the breathing room and the money to both live and to climb out of the hole. Oh yes, the rich did have to pay higher taxes, oh my!

And, where is the Church in all this? Well, I do not know because I cannot see her. Most of the so-called Church is either silent or actively supporting the “merchants.” May God have mercy on us.