The county involved should be slapped upside the head repeatedly for turning over social services delivery to a Church in the first place. The Church, on the other hand, should be slapped around repeatedly for acting like such pious prigs about the situation.
I'm no biblical scholar, but 10 minutes with a search engine and an online bible turns up the following on the topic of charity:
1st Corinthians 13:2
And though I have [the gift of] prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
That seems pretty clear to me. If you lack in your soul charity, you are nothing. In principle, these churches, when they take on the role of delivering social services to citizens, are performing an act of charity. Now, it seems, they feel that it is their right to refuse someone aid based on what? The person's identity and past.
It reminds me not so long ago of a summer afternoon when a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses approached me as I was working in my garden. They walked up to me, brandishing a copy of "The WatchTower". Emblazoned on the front cover was the word "Prejudice" in letters big enough to be read from across the yard. I don't remember the exact conversation, but it went like this:
[JW #1]: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your saviour.
[Me]: Not the way you want me to.
[JW #2]: We'd like to show you something (tries to pass me the ragazine)
[Me]: Don't even get me started on churches and prejudice.
... at this point I turned back to my gardening and ignored them.
What really irritates me about this situation is the fact that they chose to refuse service to somebody based on what they think the person behaves like. We aren't talking about someone who broke the law here, stole from the neighbors or anything like that. No - we are talking about some who is not even a practitioner of that particular sect's brand of "Christianity" breaking the "beliefs" of that sect.
Now, I realize that a lot of churches do an amazing amount of charitable work, and are run by well meaning people. That doesn't mean that those people are equipped to deal with the reality of a diverse society. The "we had no idea" excuse doesn't cut it when you take on responsibility for programs that should be available to all members of society, not just "the saved".
Just one more reason why when I feel a "need to commune with the almighty", I go find a lake in the middle of the mountains and sit on its shores. I don't think I need some narrow minded interpretation of dusty scripture telling me how to look at the world.
1 comment:
Religion is used as the justification for more pointless harm in the world than any other. Whether it is isolating people from their families or "religious wars" doesn't really matter.
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