Welfare and drugs
I had a discussion on Facebook a while back with some Christian people who praise the Lord when appropriate, pray for everybody at a moment’s notice, but think it is a great idea to drug test welfare recipients before they can get any help.
If the mother fails, do the children go hungry? Do they suffer from hunger if she is too sensitive or proud to go pee in a bottle for food? For sure drug testing mothers will make more hungry children!
The following emotional paragraphs by me ended the discussion on Facebook:
“There will never be a solution. We are beating our heads on opposite side of the wall. I can still remember the horror of sitting in the back seat of the car as my mother sobbed in the front seat after being totally humiliated in the county welfare office. My dad had just abandoned her and us boys, and there was no food in the house. I was eleven years old. She eventually went from door to door offering to iron people’s clothes or clean their house. We lived on donations and handouts for about two years.”
“You are looking for ways to refuse welfare to needy people. I have worked my whole life to make it easier for hungry children to eat and needy people to get help. We are on opposite side of the wall and my head and my heart are hurting.”
Many years ago when my wife Carolyn was a young girl, being raised by a father who would go on alcoholic binges periodically, there would be days when there was nothing in the house to eat but commodity cheese and cornbread. Carolyn’s maternal grandparents had a small farm near Caddo, OK, where they raised chickens, dairy cows, geese, etc. Carolyn found out years later that her grandparents would not share milk and eggs with her family because they judged that Dan Wright was an alcoholic and it was his duty to feed his family, not theirs. (“I found out when we moved to Caddo that they were pouring their excess milk out to feed the cats.” Carolyn)
I’ve never understood the Biblical concept of punishing the children and grandchildren for the sins of the father.
A few years ago a local neighbor lost his job in the mines because he failed a random drug test for marijuana one Monday after a weekend partying with friends. He had two children; a teenage daughter and a boy of about eleven. Carolyn and I and another neighbor, Marilyn Files, understood what was going to happen in that family. In fact it was Marilyn who first heard the news and proposed that we help.
We went to the grocery store and bought cereal, milk, rice, beans and canned food--and when the children were in school we called the mother and took the food over to their house so the kids wouldn’t have to know. We all understood how they felt. All us us have been there.
None of us are perfect. All of us have our own faults and weaknesses. Some people can’t handle alcohol. Some can’t handle other addictive drugs. Some can’t handle gambling. Some can’t handle overeating. Some can’t handle not judging other people.
Jesus said, “Feed the hungry.”
He never said, ”But not if they’re on drugs.”
He didn’t say, ”But not if they drink to excess.”
Or, “But not if they have a gambling problem.”
Or, ”But not if you think they aren’t trying hard enough to find work.”
Jesus just said, ”Feed the hungry.”
Jesus said, “Visit those in prison.”
He didn’t say, ”He made his bed, now let him lie in it.”
Or, ”He shouldn’t have done the crime if he didn’t want to do the time.”
Have you visited a prisoner lately? Have you sent a letter to someone in prison? Jesus said we should. He also said we are not to judge.
Another story of charity occurs to me that has been overlooked and under appreciated until now. When I was entering my junior year in high school, the Seventh-day Adventist church in Merced, CA, saw fit to provide me a scholarship to Lodi Academy, a parochial boarding school about 75 miles away. I’m sure that money came from several individual church members, but I never knew which ones.
But it was a mixed blessing because the school had a rigid dress code for the students. No Levis or jeans were allowed, and no tee shirts also. I hadn’t had any slacks or dress shirts for years, I think, at least since my dad left our family.
One summer day before the school year started, Mr. Robles came to our house, picked us up in his car and took my mother and me to Stefani’s, the biggest clothing store in town, and I got several pairs of slacks, a bunch of shirts, and a new suit with a white dress shirt and tie, and also lots of socks and underwear. I don’t know to this day if that was his money or from the church. I don’t know if it was his idea or his wife put him up to it. I just know that he was there and paid for all of it.
I very much appreciated it and thanked him, although probably not enough.
But in the back of my mind, I remembered overhearing some of the other church members being critical and even judgmental of Mr. Robles because he worked for the Post Office on Sabbaths. His wife was a member of the church, but he did not join because--some people said--he didn’t want to give up his good government job, which required work on Saturday.
Years later, after he retired, he was baptized into membership.
He has been gone for many years now, but I would want him to know that he did more of God’s work that day at the clothing store than a hundred of the critical backbiters who never missed a Sabbath at church, and who never missed a chance to judge another’s weakness.
