The guy who wrote this for my hometown paper was a (sort of, I think?) family friend who went to the same church we did, and even with all the requisite god/religion stuff I pretty much agree with 100% of what he says here:
In The Old Testament God orders his people to support “orphans and widows.” It’s an order not a suggestion. Jesus added “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” So, who are today’s orphans and widows? They are the troops who come home devastated by the mental and physical scars of the war; they are the elderly who worked hard all of their lives and are now living on a subsistence income; they are the battered women, homeless, living in cars with their young children, having run away to save their lives; they are the mentally ill, unable to find meaning in their lives and incapable of seeking employment; they are those who, living in a competitive society, have “lost out” and are at the very bottom of the economic scale.
These are today’s “orphans and widows,” and our country, a country world-famous for its compassion, more generous and giving than any other nation, has developed agencies to serve these poor, to enter into their suffering, and try to help them recover hope.
Not only that, but since we are a nation of great wealth and filled with the care and support of one another, we have reached out to other nations, saw their suffering poor, and developed “care” agencies to help bring them to a survival level.
Where did all of these blessings come from? Read the words we print on our currency and you will see: “In God We Trust.” That’s our “secret power”; it didn’t come from our clever minds. It came from the love and Grace of our God. It came because what we engraved on our currency, we really believed, and He who always honors His Word has cared for us all of these centuries.
This was our glorious past, but what is happening now? All the programs designed to give compassion and help to the needy are being stripped away. It’s the same old argument of the rich: “The poor are just too lazy to work; they are cheating the government out of billions!” These words come from billionaires who pay fewer taxes than a school teacher. And then they charge the poor with “cheating!”
Why do the rich always rob from the poor? Why don’t they rob and cheat one another. They could certainly afford to lose a few million or two, while when the poor lose what little they have, they are forced to choose sometimes between food on the table and desperately needed medicine.
What I fear now is not just the increased suffering of the poor, but the fact we are now establishing a despicable pattern, putting our own greed ahead of the promise our wealth had once attributed to His Benevolence: In God We Trust. Currently we are turning our backs on the Source of our strength, our God. Holding a Bible upside down in front of a church is not faith in God; it is, instead, hypocrisy of the most disgusting kind for it demeans our Creator and threatens the very well-being of our society. We cannot prosper without God as the center of our lives. We will fail and, like ancient Rome, we will crumble and become victims of our enemies. We will then be ruled by the Chinese or the Russians, by despots who will deceive our gullible leaders and rob us of the freedoms God has allowed us to enjoy.
Jesus got it right when he said, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and “It is more difficult for a rich man to enter paradise than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” Jesus may well have been using hyperbole to get his point across, but just how close to actuality was he?
I know they won't because it's not in their makeup, but at the end of the current monstrosities there should be some "Christians" who are wildly fucking embarrassed at themselves for even pretending to be "Christian".
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