I hear a great deal these days from the tea party followers, and from a few of my friends, about smaller government. We must, they argue, get government out of the business of trying to level the human or business playing field. Robbing from the rich (taxes) to give to the poor (welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other subsidies for the have-nots) is ruining this country and running up a national debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay.
This is akin, they argue, to the bumper sticker popular with many of our RV friends: SPENDING OUR CHILDREN’S INHERITANCE. We frequently saw this sticker on the motor homes of our traveling friends. These friends, or course, were usually retired and had enough money to own an RV and to travel around the country. Their wealth may have come from actual hard work and smart investments, but as often as not the life style they enjoyed was possible because they had a defined-benefit pension plan and social security – and large mortgage payments on their RV.
The cry to privatize Social Security, to reduce taxes, or to eliminate government subsidies to the poor comes exclusively from those who have money and secure jobs. True, they went to school, worked hard and deserve the position and pay they receive. I never understood, though, how they could so easily dismiss those who, through no fault of their own, need a helping hand. Granted governments – well, politicians actually – frequently get carried away with the welfare thing and too often give away more than the nation can afford. They never seem able to establish programs that that provide temporary assistance and do not promise life-long support.
That said, we have to face the fact that some people will need support for the rest of their lives. Ignoring this fact will return us to the era of poor houses, Oliver Twist-like children begging (or stealing) in the streets, the elderly or injured dying prematurely because of inattention to their health, and other bad socio-economic conditions we have long-since put behind us as a nation.
Are there people who will take advantage of any system you set up? Certainly. Are there bankers who presently take advantage of loopholes in banking regulations to make millions for themselves while allowing their stockholders to lose money? Getting government out of people’s lives makes as much sense as getting government out of regulating banks.
Actually, we all try to “beat the system” when we fill out our tax returns and list all the legal exceptions. How so? Well, the fact that the government allows exceptions invites all of us to look for every deduction we can find – even sometimes if we have to bend the rule just a little to make it fit our circumstance. We do it and companies do it. Companies even go so far as to hire teams of lawyers to find every loophole they can to save money on their taxes. Few, if any, of us ever opens the tax form, fills in the personal information, lists our total income for the year and turns immediately to the tax table to see what we owe. That would be stupid.
Can you then blame the person on SSI, food stamps, unemployment (yes, unemployment benefits are a government subsidy), welfare, Medicaid or any other government program for trying to get from it all they can?
And that brings us to all those other subsidies the government provides: tax breaks to businesses to relocate, subsidies for tobacco farmers, subsidies to cotton growers, subsides to honey bee ranchers, subsidies to corn growers, subsidies to railroads, subsidies to keep the price of milk from dropping too low, subsidies to maintain the interstate highway system, subsidies to the aero-space industry, and so on.
Consider the CRP program for farmers and ranchers. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) provides technical and financial assistance to eligible farmers and ranchers to address soil, water, and related natural resource concerns on their lands in an environmentally beneficial and cost-effective manner. The program provides assistance to farmers and ranchers in complying with Federal, State, and tribal environmental laws, and encourages environmental enhancement. Farmers receive an annual rental payment for the term of the multi-year contract. Cost sharing is provided to establish the vegetative cover practices.”
The annual rental payment varies depending upon a variety of factors, but farmer with 300 acres in the CRP program may receive as much as $100 per acre or $30,000 a year for essentially doing nothing but planting, say, Lespedeza (a member of the pea family) and mowing it once a year. That’s a government subsidy for farmers than the rest of us never get to participate in.
Like all subsidies, it makes sense, or did at one time. Maybe it still makes sense. Not all government subsidies make sense, however.
Froma Harrop in her October 18 column points out that Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is being criticized by some for wanting to stop people from using their food stamps to buy “Coca-Cola and other sugary, fattening drinks.” He is not. Moreover, she adds, he does not want to stand between all New Yorkers and their cans of soda. “But he would end the taxpayers’ role as enabler of poor nutrition choices.” Further, she reminds us, “There’s a difference between a government ban on something and its refusal to subsidize it.”
That makes sense to me. If I lend you money because you can’t pay your mortgage or buy groceries for your kids, I sure as hell will resent it if you take some of that money to buy a case of beer or, worse, spend a weekend at a nearby casino. When you are using other people’s money (the NYC taxpayers, in Bloomberg’s case), you have to expect some oversight and restrictions on how you spend that money.
There is a difference also between what Medicare or Medicaid insurance will pay for (subsidize) and what medical care you may have. You may have any medical procedure you want and can pay for. Insurance is agrees to pay only for specified procedures.
Regardless, smaller government (which I favor) means fewer subsidies. The problem is that not many of us are willing to give up the various government subsidies we receive. How many subsidies are you willing to do without? Before you answer, you may want to take a few minutes to review the subsidies you now receive: unemployment insurance, school tax relief, road maintenance, police and fire services, insurance and banking regulation, meat and produce inspection, etc. All of these are important, but in simpler times, when taxes were lower, some of these services did not exist or existed in a greatly reduced form. Are we ready to return to those days?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
WHY ATTEND CHURCH?
This past summer while driving across the central U.S. we stopped for the night at a motel that offered free copies of the Marysville, KS Advocate. Having a newspaper to read was a special treat for us as we had spent the five weeks we were at our place in Colorado without television or a newspaper. You can understand why we felt somewhat out of touch with what was going on in the country and welcomed the chance to read a newspaper.
True, we had some radio reception at the ranch, but we were 50 miles from Colorado Springs and about the same distance from Canon City. The few stations we received were mostly music stations and they only did a five-minute news wrap up at the top of each hour. After that, it was all music – mostly country music.
We eagerly took the Advocate back to our room and started reading it. We learned, among other things, that the cattle disease anaplasmosis had been reported in the region. That, we surmised, was news to local cattle farmers. We also learned that Boos Pumpkin Patch would be open that coming Saturday.
One article that caught my eye was the one by Jerry Zanker, pastor of the Marysville First Christian Church. The title was “Why go to church?” Being a doubting Thomas, I wondered what answer he would give, so I read the article.
Pastor Zanker started right off by feeding my doubt with the statement that “79 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians but only 20 percent attend worship service regularly.” While I never had definite figures to support my cynicism about religious folks, I already knew that a great many so-called Christians were such in name only. Not only did they not attend church services regularly, the rest of their daily lives belied the notion that they were serious Christians.
Indeed, by the simple, unscientific practice of observing people, I learned that being a Christian for many folks was something akin to being a Democrat or Republican or Rotarian or Chamber of Commerce member. Whatever the label, whatever the organization, it was important to these people to belong to something. They desperately needed to be identified with an organization or cause – not so much that belonging required them to change the way their live but enough for them to enjoy the social aspects of belonging. Even if they attended church services with some regularity, they did so to see and be seen more so than to actually take part in the religious outreach of the church.
Pastor Zanker wrote in his article that he looked at “the Scripture from the Book of Acts to discover what going to church can do for us.” Imagine my surprise when the first thing he mentioned was “that the church gives us a sense of fellowship or belonging.” Well, that was legitimate. We are herd animals and whether it is a political party, the Sons of Norway, the Lions Club, or the local sports booster club, most adults belong to something; actually, we usually belong to several groups or organizations. Whenever we move into a new school, a new community, a new job or any new social setting, we immediately set about trying to find someone with whom we can identify so we can have that essential sense of belonging.
Not being a student of the Bible, I had no idea if the Book of Acts actually addressed the matter as specifically as the pastor suggested, but I was willing accept that it did. (A minister wouldn’t lie, would he?)
The second thing the church gives us that Pastor Zanker identified was the opportunity to worship. “Worship,” he said, “is more than what goes on in a church building, but is a way of life.” We need, he added, “one hour of focused worship with our attention on Jesus Christ.” My disappointment began to grow. One hour? The pastor was justifying his church’s weekly service and his position as the church’s leader rather than answering the question posed by his article’s title.
Ministers, I fear, are guilty of asking questions and answering them the way they want, much like politicians, because they are seldom, if ever required -- from the pulpit at least -- to defend what they say. Parishioners are expected to sit passively and absorb whatever “wisdom” the pastor presents. Notice that even when people in the pews are sitting there with Bible in hand, the minister feels completely comfortable telling the congregation the meaning of a particular passage he just read to them. He expects them to accept his interpretation. And they seem always to accept it. I’ve never seen a parishioner stand up and say, “Wait a minute, reverend. I don’t think that is what this passage says at all.”
Apparently, we take seriously the notion that we in the congregation are the minister’s flock, and we act like sheep, following his every direction or suggestion.
Moving on, Reverend Zanker identifies the third thing the church does for us is “to lead us to spiritual maturity.” That means, I imagine, the spiritual maturity defined by the pastor and, possibly, church doctrine. Independent spiritual maturity is frowned on. The church is a congregation, a melding of many into one. There is strength in numbers but especially if those among the numbers think and act as one. (I will again confess that I am not a biblical scholar and I have not checked the Book of Acts to see if it spells out these four characteristics of church membership in any detail.)
The good pastor tells us that the “fourth thing the church does is that it prepares us for ministry.” Zanker explains what this means with these words: “God has placed each one of us on earth to make a contribution to society. We weren’t just created to consume resources and take up space. God designed each of us to make a difference with our lives. We all have special gifts and abilities that God has given us for ministry.”
I have no quarrel with that, but I do wonder how many of his congregation – remember, this is central Kansas – will acknowledge, "that God designed each of us,” including homosexuals, say, “to make a difference with our lives.” It is something to wonder about, wouldn’t you agree?
The final thing the church does for us is “help us to understand and carry out our life’s mission.” But only, I fear, if your life’s mission, as you have come to understand it during your growth in spiritual maturity, agrees with the tenets of the church and the general position of others in the church with which you have developed a sense of fellowship or belonging.
I learned years ago that the fundamental responsibility of any good pastor is to look after the needs of the church. The church is first. Pastor Zanker confirmed my suspicion when at the end of his article he writes, “My prayer is that maybe I’ve given you enough reasons why you might want to attend worship.”
Not satisfied to let it go with that, he adds, “Because as I told our congregation that when you understand what it means to not just go to church – but be the church, you will have discovered your life’s true purpose.” Although he means to make it sound like the church is nothing without you, he really wants you to believe that you are nothing without the church. I have to balk at that.
The pastor is preaching to the choir. He wrote this article not so much to persuade those Christians who do not attend church regularly but to confirm that for those who do, that according to the bible they are doing the right thing. He probably received many positive comments from his parishioners on his excellent article as they left church this Sunday. And that is what he was going for, I suspect.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was a doubting Thomas, but I feel compelled to say further that I was once a participating member of the church. I sang in the choir, often at two services, served as a deacon and later as an elder of the church, and served as vice president of consistory. I also served on the church’s budget committee, among other things. I know how things get done in the church and why. Modern churches are businesses, and more decisions in the church are made for business reasons than for religious reasons.
True, we had some radio reception at the ranch, but we were 50 miles from Colorado Springs and about the same distance from Canon City. The few stations we received were mostly music stations and they only did a five-minute news wrap up at the top of each hour. After that, it was all music – mostly country music.
We eagerly took the Advocate back to our room and started reading it. We learned, among other things, that the cattle disease anaplasmosis had been reported in the region. That, we surmised, was news to local cattle farmers. We also learned that Boos Pumpkin Patch would be open that coming Saturday.
One article that caught my eye was the one by Jerry Zanker, pastor of the Marysville First Christian Church. The title was “Why go to church?” Being a doubting Thomas, I wondered what answer he would give, so I read the article.
Pastor Zanker started right off by feeding my doubt with the statement that “79 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians but only 20 percent attend worship service regularly.” While I never had definite figures to support my cynicism about religious folks, I already knew that a great many so-called Christians were such in name only. Not only did they not attend church services regularly, the rest of their daily lives belied the notion that they were serious Christians.
Indeed, by the simple, unscientific practice of observing people, I learned that being a Christian for many folks was something akin to being a Democrat or Republican or Rotarian or Chamber of Commerce member. Whatever the label, whatever the organization, it was important to these people to belong to something. They desperately needed to be identified with an organization or cause – not so much that belonging required them to change the way their live but enough for them to enjoy the social aspects of belonging. Even if they attended church services with some regularity, they did so to see and be seen more so than to actually take part in the religious outreach of the church.
Pastor Zanker wrote in his article that he looked at “the Scripture from the Book of Acts to discover what going to church can do for us.” Imagine my surprise when the first thing he mentioned was “that the church gives us a sense of fellowship or belonging.” Well, that was legitimate. We are herd animals and whether it is a political party, the Sons of Norway, the Lions Club, or the local sports booster club, most adults belong to something; actually, we usually belong to several groups or organizations. Whenever we move into a new school, a new community, a new job or any new social setting, we immediately set about trying to find someone with whom we can identify so we can have that essential sense of belonging.
Not being a student of the Bible, I had no idea if the Book of Acts actually addressed the matter as specifically as the pastor suggested, but I was willing accept that it did. (A minister wouldn’t lie, would he?)
The second thing the church gives us that Pastor Zanker identified was the opportunity to worship. “Worship,” he said, “is more than what goes on in a church building, but is a way of life.” We need, he added, “one hour of focused worship with our attention on Jesus Christ.” My disappointment began to grow. One hour? The pastor was justifying his church’s weekly service and his position as the church’s leader rather than answering the question posed by his article’s title.
Ministers, I fear, are guilty of asking questions and answering them the way they want, much like politicians, because they are seldom, if ever required -- from the pulpit at least -- to defend what they say. Parishioners are expected to sit passively and absorb whatever “wisdom” the pastor presents. Notice that even when people in the pews are sitting there with Bible in hand, the minister feels completely comfortable telling the congregation the meaning of a particular passage he just read to them. He expects them to accept his interpretation. And they seem always to accept it. I’ve never seen a parishioner stand up and say, “Wait a minute, reverend. I don’t think that is what this passage says at all.”
Apparently, we take seriously the notion that we in the congregation are the minister’s flock, and we act like sheep, following his every direction or suggestion.
Moving on, Reverend Zanker identifies the third thing the church does for us is “to lead us to spiritual maturity.” That means, I imagine, the spiritual maturity defined by the pastor and, possibly, church doctrine. Independent spiritual maturity is frowned on. The church is a congregation, a melding of many into one. There is strength in numbers but especially if those among the numbers think and act as one. (I will again confess that I am not a biblical scholar and I have not checked the Book of Acts to see if it spells out these four characteristics of church membership in any detail.)
The good pastor tells us that the “fourth thing the church does is that it prepares us for ministry.” Zanker explains what this means with these words: “God has placed each one of us on earth to make a contribution to society. We weren’t just created to consume resources and take up space. God designed each of us to make a difference with our lives. We all have special gifts and abilities that God has given us for ministry.”
I have no quarrel with that, but I do wonder how many of his congregation – remember, this is central Kansas – will acknowledge, "that God designed each of us,” including homosexuals, say, “to make a difference with our lives.” It is something to wonder about, wouldn’t you agree?
The final thing the church does for us is “help us to understand and carry out our life’s mission.” But only, I fear, if your life’s mission, as you have come to understand it during your growth in spiritual maturity, agrees with the tenets of the church and the general position of others in the church with which you have developed a sense of fellowship or belonging.
I learned years ago that the fundamental responsibility of any good pastor is to look after the needs of the church. The church is first. Pastor Zanker confirmed my suspicion when at the end of his article he writes, “My prayer is that maybe I’ve given you enough reasons why you might want to attend worship.”
Not satisfied to let it go with that, he adds, “Because as I told our congregation that when you understand what it means to not just go to church – but be the church, you will have discovered your life’s true purpose.” Although he means to make it sound like the church is nothing without you, he really wants you to believe that you are nothing without the church. I have to balk at that.
The pastor is preaching to the choir. He wrote this article not so much to persuade those Christians who do not attend church regularly but to confirm that for those who do, that according to the bible they are doing the right thing. He probably received many positive comments from his parishioners on his excellent article as they left church this Sunday. And that is what he was going for, I suspect.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was a doubting Thomas, but I feel compelled to say further that I was once a participating member of the church. I sang in the choir, often at two services, served as a deacon and later as an elder of the church, and served as vice president of consistory. I also served on the church’s budget committee, among other things. I know how things get done in the church and why. Modern churches are businesses, and more decisions in the church are made for business reasons than for religious reasons.
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