Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

• Galatians 6:2

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

• 2 Corinthians 9:7

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’

• Acts 20:35

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

• Acts 4:32-35

“The proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift.’”

• C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

This is between the anniversary of the passing of C.S. Lewis and his birthday.  He passed away one week before his birthday.

Whenever I read this C.S. Lewis quote, I think of the subsistence programs in the USA.  They are not designed to produce a state where the receiver never needs the gift again.  They are given the money to subsist for one month and then they get the next gift.

There are some people who are handicapped and are unable to work.  Some people have so many children (because they get more subsistence money that way) that babysitting would cost more than the wages they might receive.  But many, far too many, have received such checks all their lives and their parents before them, and even the grandparents.

Yet, you will still see panhandlers in the USA.  Even the free money program is broken.

One president, a few decades ago, put a reform program in place.  Your welfare checks would stop unless you went to school and worked a job for a week.  My brother took the job of being their teacher and work foreman in one community.  His welfare reform warehouse disassembled broken pallets and reassembled serviceable pallets.  It was good honest work.  Each Monday morning, he would teach possibly twenty people how to do the work, but less than half tried.  Each Tuesday, one person would come back.  While my brother supervised him doing the work, he would call the others to ask why they were absent.  The response was usually, “I have to show up every day?!  That was torture just watching you work yesterday!”  The subsistence program had taught them to not work, to not be productive.

As a result, my brother and his one helper worked hard for the rest of the week.  They had a quota that had to be met.  The quota would have been easy with half the people working half the time, but as it was, my brother worked well into the night a couple of nights each week to make the quota.  And usually, the one hard worker that he had taught went back to collecting subsistence the next week.

After a month or two, my brother quit.  He was not getting paid for the overtime, and he saw no lasting results from the program.  My brother was a pastor who visited the sick after he finished his daily work, and his new job reduced his available time to write his sermon.

But we are taught to give generously.  We should give to the point when the receiver can take care of himself.  The idea of teaching a man how to fish rather than giving him a fish dinner comes to mind.

And the last Scripture above about pooling all their resources for the common good sounds like Communism.  But Karl Marx insisted that Communism irradicate religion.  As such, Communism at its heart is atheistic.  And what the world sees of Communism today is that those that lead the rebellion and their friends live well and eat well, while the peasants that do all the work are starving.  And note, the terrible bread lines in Russia back in those days ran out of bread so that some people did not eat at all, but the grain to make the bread came from the USA mostly.  It was that thing about loving one’s enemies. And I think the early church was more like one person had a vineyard, another had sheep, another had grain. Together, they all could eat well.

But Rev. David Robertson asked a question recently.  The people who are calling for a return to global communism are the rich.  He wondered what their motivation was.  But is it not obvious?  They have their riches in their gated communities, and the rest of the world starves to death.  The result is more for them.  Rich has no meaning unless you compare your wealth to someone who has less.  I think Rev. Robertson, the Wee Flea, knew the answer to his question, but he wanted us to think.

And one last thought to ponder.  God tells us to give generously.  He never says to elect officials that they will create subsistence programs so that we do not have to get our hands dirty feeding the poor.

Give to food banks.  They check out those who ask for help.  And they give to people that work hard but simply cannot make enough in this fallen world.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.