FROM THE PASTOR’S HEART by OP-ED BY DR. ROBERT KENNEDY
I was listening to my car radio while driving home from a visit to the hospital and became very interested in the debate on C-Span that was taking place in the Congressional Budget Committee concerning what is being called the Human Infrastructure Bill of $3.5 trillion dollars to be spent over the next decade.
What was of greatest interest to me was to hear the framing of the debate from what we might call the two ideological political perspectives in Congress. While one framed the bill as a way to expand the social safety to protect working families and the most vulnerable of society, mete., etc., etc., etc., etc. The other was framing the bill as a catastrophe that is going to blow the biggest hole ever in the budget and will further allow for laziness, dependency, and killing of the spirit that says, “We are to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.”
The latter says people are to be left on their own, for that is fundamental to Capitalism. After the latter comment, one member of the opposing perspective pushed back by stating that while the society might have an ideal that seems to speak of equal opportunity, the circumstances of birth, home background, brokenness, homelessness, and other handicapping conditions demand that the government needs to structure itself so that it can ameliorate the circumstances of these most vulnerable.
While listening to the debate, as a Christian, pastor and theologian, I started to review my Bible verses that bear the instructions on caring for the most vulnerable. As soon as I got, home I began to read again and noted the hundreds of texts emphasizing caring for the vulnerable.
Here are just a few of the hundreds which I note from the English Standard Version:
Exodus 22:22 – “You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.”
Deuteronomy 10:18 – “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.”
Psalm 146:9 – “The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”
Isaiah 1:17 – “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
Zechariah 7:9-10 – “Thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
Ezekiel 16:49 “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
Luke 20:46-47 – “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
1 John 3:17-18 – “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
James 1:27 – “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
Yes, the instructions of caring for the most vulnerable are in both Testaments. After reviewing, I said what a tragedy how our political ideologies, or maybe be more, our selfish hearts have led us to be as selective in not paying attention to the vulnerable. In fact, let me insert into the discussion that while I have argued the need to protect the unborn, we need to argue that we also need to protect the unborn.
We are not to forget those in our nursing homes, those facing food insecurity, those who are without fathers and mothers (orphans), those (the multitude) who have come from abusive and addictive situations, and the foreigners, or aliens or however we call the undocumented among us, those who are unable to afford their medication or those who need to have health care. We need to think of them in policy decisions and personally.
One does not need to be clear-eyed or have a heart like Jesus to see that people are broken; they are hurting everywhere. If you are clear-eyed and have a heart like Jesus, you will see better the suffering that our God sees. Suffering is everywhere. And we need not leave it only to governmental sources to resolve, but also on a personal basis.
We need to do what we can to bless who we can. People are hurting, and God needs healers, not hurters, to make this world a better place. In fact, let us stop getting caught up with ridiculous political ideologies and seek to protect the vulnerable as Christ has called us to do. We need hearts, not just political ideology.
