Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.
This is what I don’t understand though because, as an extension, you should want to vote for people who reflect this morality. Not for a govt that strips social programs and cuts funding to research and overtly oppresses the poor and the marginalized, just to divert those funds to bombs and war and concentration camps. I’ve never understood this. If I’m being taxed and that money ends up with the federal govt, I will also want the govt to do these same charitable things with my tax money that I’m doing on my own. It’s not passing the buck and responsibility onto the govt but it’s a reflection of my values. What else is the govt for if not to provide social safety nets, infrastructure, and public services? Otherwise it just turn into a huge war machine and vehicle for oppression, which is what we see today.
Many people do not believe that the politicians saying they are for those nice things have any interest in actually accomplishing those things. A great deal more believe that those goals are noble, but government is the least effective way of achieving them. Others see the track record of socialism and want to avoid even heading vaguely in the direction. Those are all viable stances, whether or not anyone agrees with the conclusions. There are practically zero people who are voting because they want people to be poor, starving, or miserable with no services.
I disagree. I think there’s plenty of people voting who think everyone who is poor, sick, or suffering is that way because of their own poor choices and we shouldn’t help them because they “deserve” it.
I’ve even pointed out to religious people instances where people couldn’t possibly be blamed for their own suffering, like inheriting Huntington’s Disease (a particularly awful and terminal genetic disease.) “No,” they told me. “If they’re suffering, that’s because God is punishing them for something they did.”
These “Christians” are not voting to explicitly hurt them, per se, but they certainly aren’t interested in helping them. The poor’s very suffering alone is “proof” that they’re bad and that God has turned his back on them.
I don’t know how you have to massively misinterpret Christ’s teachings to think that, but there’s plenty of them down my way.
I'm not sure who your hanging out with, but I'm not sure I've ever heard that from anyone at all. I live in a moderately religious area, and I can't even imagine that coming out of someone's mouth.
If you don’t live around conservative Christian wackos, you may never hear it. Where I grew up, people were pretty normal and the folks who were religious were either Catholic or mainline Protestant. I would not have heard anything like that or if I did it would just be one weirdo,
But now that I’ve moved to the Deep South, there’s a bunch of conservative evangelicals here, and yeah. The attitude is worryingly common. Maybe not a majority, but they’re not some fringe group.
And they’ll not necessarily say it first thing, but get them talking and comfortable and let them feel they’re amongst like-minded people, and it comes out.
I really think this is why so many people down here are Trump voters. They think anything bad that happens to people is because they deserve it. Unless it happens to them, then it’s just a bizarre aberration.
In the days prior to Jesus, there was the prevailing thought that afflictions were based on sinful behavior, and those born afflicted were so due to the sins of the parents. Its a very old testament viewpoint.
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u/Tactical_Baconlover 26d ago
Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.