Many times we become so worried about the things we cannot change or influence. We neglect the things we can do at hand. It is said when addressing a huge assignment and we are feeling overwhelmed the best thing to do is take a piece of it that you can do and work on that. We have two sides of one coin when we look at bigness. There are those that think the bigger the better. They hold to this theory no matter what the topic or thing. Then there are those who believe small is beautiful. They purposely sabotage or oppose any attempt to grow a bigger church or social organization. I have come to believe that neither is necessarily better. To everything there is a season. The issue is not bigness or smallness but ‘what is the plan?’, ‘what are the motives of going either way?’. The far right promotes small government. They will say the government that rules the least is the government that is the best. Big governments will impinge upon our freedoms. Yet strangely enough corporations have no limits on their growth. We are to allow them to grow totally without hindrance. The economic invisible hand will adjust any problems that big corporations may cause. So they oppose most if not all government regulations on business. They blindly trust corporations they have no voice in over government which they have some voice in. Now this is the theory. But in practice when the right approaches big government they mean cut social welfare programs. Now they seldom offer solutions to poverty. If you are living in poverty, in order to make themselves not feel guilty of their neglect of the poor, the right will vilify the poor. They are lazy. They are taking advantage of the system. They have no work ethic. They are the dregs on society and cannot achieve anything. With this assuage of their conscience they move to cut social welfare programs. They will offer that the private sector (NGOs) will keep the problem under control. Yet the NGOs for the most part say they do not and will not have the resources to fully address the problem. The only government program they are comfortable with growing big is the military. And when we say big we mean huge. Strangely enough like corporations they see no problem with letting the military grow big. It is as they say ‘we can join hand in hand with the poor to protect my stuff and nothing else’. Yet the primary ones who in the end could take their guns or threaten their freedom is the military. Meanwhile, liberals propose that the social welfare programs of the government is the way to address the ills of poverty. They do not believe the private sector could ever completely address the problem. They do not have the ability to tax corporations and the wealthy. Plus how services are delivered is important to the left. The government will not put religious or moral restrictions for receiving help from them. The government will have requirements and standards but they will not determine that there are worthy and unworthy recipients. The government, to a liberal, is the chief enhancer of the common good. This role is as important as protecting us. They also know that the wealthy as a whole will never give away enough of their wealth to care for the poor. This is always the syndrome of humans. I got mine you get yours. Of course this would be a better philosophy if everyone started from the same place and had the same opportunities. The Year of Jubilee in the Bible addressed this problem. Land is divided up and every seventy years built up debt is dismissed and property returned back to the original family. In Georgia’s early days when property did not go to an heir it returned to the government and was put back in the lottery. This was to keep from having huge landowners and always have land for the new immigrants and those who have fallen on hard times. The government is responsible to create as much as possible a level ground. So you have two opposite views of government. One relies on the goodness of people and the other protects against the evils of people. The right basically does not have a good view of sin. They honestly believe that corporations and wealthy will do good without any checks and balances. The left meanwhile believes one of the best arbitrators of doing good is one that the people have checks and balances. They vote on the policies and programs of the government. The only check on corporations is their stockholders who are a set breed and whose main interest is making money. In a few blogs back I proposed that the good works I did kept the poor form rioting and demanding more. The Carnegies and Gates of the world who work at giving their wealth away. Yet in so doing they make it okay for the rest of the wealthy to be greedy and keep their money at the expense of others. The wealthy will use their money wisely and for the betterment of society look at Carnegie and Gates. So here we are: the far right ask us to believe in invisible hands to make our economy do the right thing. They ask us to believe that people will do the right thing without any checks and balances. The left believes that the economy must be monitored and checked to ensure it does not abuse the public. Nothing Invisible. They believe that people need to be taxed to provide for our common good. They know people will not sacrifice enough on their own to create the best common good possible. They will always offer explanations of why they cannot give or why the other is not worthy of their time. So I say to the right whatever happen to your belief in sin. A sinful nature will always needs checks and balances. And have you forgotten the concept of corporate sin? Because you are so caught up in the idolatry of ideology, the judgment of others, and greed you have left the common good disappear in your thinking.
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