A NEW CHRISTIAN MISSION

A NEW MISSION FOR CHRISTIANS
For thousands of years, churches have focused much effort and resources on "helping the poor". Many of these efforts were well founded and effective. Most have been over-all failures in recent years, particularly in this country. It seems that instead of helping people who have fallen on hard times due to circumstances beyond their control such as illness or accidents or temporary job loss, we have created an entitlement mentality that discourages personal responsibility. It has become much too easy to accept hand-outs form charities and taxpayers with no accountability.
We Christians are guilty of giving our money to charities and people and patting ourselves on the back and feeling good about what a fine thing we are doing when in reality we have accomplished nothing. To the contrary, we may do great harm to people by not insisting that they take the necessary steps to solve their long term problems. The recipient of our gift is no better off than before. We are giving away fish instead of teaching the art of fishing. We should give more of our time.
We need to rethink our definition of poor. Poor is not having money and being powerless to change the situation. An American in good health but with no money is not poor. He or she is just broke. This is changed by work and by acquiring the skills and motivation to improve ones marketability. It means being willing to work those extra hours to increase income, therefore becoming self-supporting. It means acquiring the knowledge to properly manage the resources we have. It is about priorities. It is about personal responsibility.