Mac-Coleman

25 March 2013 –

 I read an interesting article this weekend on a Latter-day Saint website.  It related an incident in a Mormon man’s life where he learned that helping one’s fellow man often requires far more than just what the church organization can provide.  On behalf of a poor, unsophisticated, but faithful church member of his ward,  this church member not only had to guide the man through the process of getting church assistance, but also “went the extra mile” to raise skilled, volunteer work teams and extra money  to rebuild the man’s house to save it from being condemned and razed.  It was an inspiring account of how we can make a difference in the lives of others.    

Several points in this Saint’s account of his activities made me think about our individual, our society’s and our government’s task to help the poor and needy in our communities?  First, he stressed that his and his family’s offerings to his Church are substantial:  10% tithing of their income, additional monthly offerings to Church to help the needy in their ward and, literally, world-wide;  volunteer time through the Church’s Home and Visiting Teaching Programs to emotionally and spiritually support families assigned to them by the Church, etc.  He then said that such a significant commitment through the Church structure to help others in his community had started to become an impediment to his desire to help those in need.  Finally, he said that the personal task of one child of God helping another child of God blesses the giver and the recipient with bonds of love, commitment, and obligation to righteous action that nothing else can provide.  This man’s account of his actions was enlightening as to how we all can help our brothers and sisters in this life and as to what works and what doesn’t above the personal level of charity.  It affirmed several things that I have long believed.    

First:  We Americans are a generous lot.  History shows clearly that individual citizens, religious and other organizations, and for-profit companies donate money and time to better their communities, help feed the poor, educate the disadvantaged, and protect the weak.  It is clear that such charitable effort is part of our national culture and would continue to be the highest in the world, no matter if the tax laws continued to favor such donations or not.  The potential for such charity to resolve some of our society’s most nagging problems is far greater than current government thinking allows it to be. 

Second:  In fact, it is my opinion that such charity by the giver and the concomitant personal accountability in return by the recipient, rendered and received on the lowest and most personal level of organized effort, is the best way for America to reduce poverty, increase personal strength, and build vital cohesion in our communities, regions, and the nation as a whole.  The more we give up our individual and cultural obligations to distant organizations like the federal government, the more we want to distance ourselves from community problems by demanding that others do our work for us.  This separation of the individual from the society applies to those who give monies so that others may eat, and equally, to those who receive aid.   The givers, like the Saint in his story, quickly expect an organization to solve the problem, because, after all, that is what they “pay” the organization to do.  This corrupts the giver’s heart.  The recipients quickly mistake the charity for entitlements that are “paid” to them with nothing expected in return.  This corrupts the recipient’s heart.  This applies far more to federal government than it does to state government than it does to county or city government than it does to local private organizations such as churches and benevolent organizations.  The farther the organization that receives and dispenses the funds is from the heart of the giver and the recipient, the more corrupt the process becomes. 

Third:  Churches and benevolent organizations indeed play rely on peoples’ benevolent natures in order to get funds to operate and to fulfill their stated missions.  A faithful Latter-day Saint is spiritually “coerced” into paying tithing, fast offerings, and into devoting time to helping his neighbor.  If he doesn’t do these things, his standing in the church and, according to his belief system, his standing in the eternal heavens may be threatened.  Simply put, if a Latter-day Saint wants to be a member in good standing in the LDS Church and enjoy all the spiritual blessings that derive from such membership, he pays for the privilege. However, the government cannot offer similar satisfaction, especially when it comes to its collection of taxes and their use for anything other than limited government tasks that citizens cannot do for  themselves.  Feeding, inoculating, housing, and educating the poor are actions that are charitable in nature and have never lent themselves well to large government oversight and execution.  Knowing that, citizens cannot opt out of such corrupting charitable endeavors, even if they think that the methods and manner by which the government dispenses such charity is destructive to all concerned and, thereby, a waste of tax money.  Try not paying taxes and you will quickly see what “coercion” the federal government will apply to ensure that you participate in their corrupt processes.  The poverty programs that have cost trillions—$4,000,000,000,000?—of tax dollars since the “War on Poverty” was declared in the 1960s have failed to create a society without poverty; but, they have created a society that increasingly looks to the government to deal with problems that should be addressed at the local level. 

Fourth:  The cohesion that private and church organizations build among the local citizenry when they and their members dispense charity has never been approached by any federal programs, no matter how politicians have tried to sell their entitlement programs.  All the government has really delivered has been the dissolution of local society in favor of big government dictation of what is good, bad, worth entitling, and acceptable. 

Federal entitlement programs don’t work, except to get politicians votes—votes from good-hearted people who would naively give money to the government to help the poor and votes from those who would rather be entitled to aid than be beholden to their neighbors for the aid.  There certainly seem to be a lot of those voters out there.