Where are those who truly help needy?
This is the season of rejoicing so let us all rejoice that we can:
• Shop 'til we drop and buy many more presents to go with our other things.
• Build bigger and better churches to be totally used on average two to three full days per week with impressive sanctuaries used less than one full day a week.
• Furnish such churches with the latest equipment and most comfortable surroundings, so we don't have to inconvenience ourselves while we worship.
• Donate money and volunteer from two to four average hours a week to help the less fortunate but still keep them at arms' length to preclude any thoughts of depression.
• Operate an organization that provides less than 25 percent of its collections to any charitable cause and still avoids taxes.
• Continue to find leaders who find cozy and noncontroversial topics to preach against each week, so we are not made uncomfortable in our religious hours. After all, our private lives are too busy and hectic. We need some relief.
• Justify all our personal behavior on cherry-picked Bible catchphrases, so we are not to blame for the loss of religious values.
• Gloss over pedophilia with the use of extreme situational ethics.
• Be able (hopefully) to discriminate (on religious grounds) against the constitutional rights of others.
• And finally rejoice in the glow of the Gospel of Prosperity which is now our common theology. The prosperity will at some point trickle down to our neediest people when our self satisfaction and greed is slaked.
Where, oh where, are churches and their members and leaders in the vanguard in attempting to solve the causes of our needy fellow men?
William Raymond
Wheaton