Care for Others: Public vs. Private

Many conservatives like to say big government is bad and often infer that government is just plain bad anyway. This conveniently ignores that in recent times the Democrats have consistently reduced the size of government while Republicans have increased the size of government. It also is an over simplification. But that is not the point.

There are a lot of well meaning conservatives that just think the needs of the public can be better served by private individuals rather than the government. You will find numerous conservatives as well as liberals working in soup kitchens, volunteering in hospitals, raising money for worthy causes and the like. A good example I ran into was a conservative who goes to the city and picks up surplus produce donations from farmer’s markets at the end of the day and then delivers that produce to charities that seen that it gets to those in need. That’s good, but how many people do it? Compare it to the food stamp program, which conservatives want to do away with, and see which is best able to reach the objective of feeding the poor? I would think that the answer is obvious.

That is the point of a recent Christian Century article by Steve Thorngate. The question we should raise is not whether a program is public or private but whether it works.

I have worked in churches all my life that have multiple programs to raise money for mission work. They seek fervently to help out those in need in local communities, in national efforts and international efforts. They take responsibilities seriously to be their brothers and sisters keepers; who seen the need to share their wealth with those who are lacking. It is good work. In Old Testament times this was how social welfare was handled, through religious organizations. But in Old Testament times the Religion was the government. In modern times we have delegated that work primarily to the government. In churches I have served I promoted the idea that every congregation should tithe to mission; meaning that at least 10% of the income of the church should be put towards mission purposes. Ten per cent is an arbitrary figure; the Old Testament tithe was much larger than that, but it hard to promote more the 10% in giving. In fact on a family level, the average church giver gives about 2% of their income to the church. Oh, I never ever had a church, even though it supported that ideal, that actually made it to the 10% level, though some do. The rising costs of church operation make giving to others increasingly difficult, especially for the majority of churches which are under 150 members.

The truth is churches and other religious organizations plus benevolent individual givers just cannot come up with enough funds to care for those in need. And if you look at the expenses involved, especially in conservative churches (think of TV evangelists’ scandals over the years), the administrative costs are way too high.

We are better served almost always by government programs taking on these issues than by any other means.

The issue truly is who can do the job best? And the answer invariably is the government. And, it is also the responsibility of government to see these programs are run fairly and efficiently. Church programs and government programs go awry, surprise, surprise; they are run by human beings who mess up. So, our job is to make sure they run as best they can rather than just doing away with them.

Of course, there are those who just say the poor and poor because they are lazy and don’t deserve anything and government programs just make them lazier. They have hearts of stone and are ungrateful compassionless, cruel, mean, unkind and stupid.