He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will He pay him again
 Proverbs 19:17

“And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrong”
                                            G.K. Chesterton
        —————————————————————-

   The word “poor” occurs one hundred and ninety-nine times in the King James Bible. Most of the references are in the form of encouragements by God, to His people, to help those in need. The Proverb quoted above is characteristic of them;
” remember the poor”
” consider the poor”
“leave a provision for the poor”
” God will remember him who considers the poor”

   If you add the eighty-two references to “widows”, forty-three to the “fatherless”, and one hundred and ninety-eight to “stranger”; most of them in the same vein; you have close to five hundred admonitions, from God Himself, to aid those in need. Taking the Proverb above to heart, to have God consider Himself indebted to you would surely be a most desirable and sought after thing.

   With nearly five hundred clear statements of His will in this area, it is an undeniable Biblical truth that God wants each of us to help the poor.

   However, nowhere in all of the scripture; Old Testament or New, from the front to the back, from left to right, top to bottom; NOWHERE does it say – GO YE THEREFORE UNTO YOUR BROTHER AND BEAT HIM ABOUT THE HEAD AND SHOULDERS UNTIL HE HELPS THE POOR.

   That thought is not in the scripture.

   God commands YOU and Me to remember the poor. The obligation is not transferable. If He puts compassion in your heart for the poor, He expects you to deliver it to them. Personally.

   Any preacher worth his salt will tell you that God’s purpose is two-fold; to provide for the least among us, and to change the heart of the giver. To pass off this obligation to a soulless bureaucracy is to cheat the giver of his reward and deny the receiver their humanity. It’s the difference between offering a man in a ditch your hand to pull him out, and sending a steam shovel to do the job.

  Poverty has three causes; ignorance, laziness, or just plain bad luck. Ignorance is cured by teaching; laziness, left to itself, is cured by starvation. Bad luck; falling in the ditch; is cured by another human being coming and offering his own strength and hazarding his own safety because he cannot stand to see something of value, You, wasting away in a ditch. He is commanded by God to love you as well as he loves himself, and the natural offspring of that love is a genuine distress at your misfortune.

   Programs to help the poor from the public fund are beloved by politicians for the same reason candy is loved by child-molesters; it is a cheap effective tool to entice the innocent and unaware to serve the desire of the molester-politician; the acquisition or expansion of power. Once that goal is reached, the fate of the victim is of no concern to the molester-politician. As proof, witness the War on Poverty begun in the 60’s; an all-encompassing program to “Help the poor” that was so structured as to systematically destroy the single most important predicate of an individuals well-being; the family. When it was begun 80% af African – Americans grew up in two parent homes. Now that number has been reversed, 80% are in single parent households; a virtual guarantee of impoverishment. In other words;the plan to end poverty-guaranteed poverty.

   The legitimate function of government is the protection of its citizens, from thieves and killers with-in and with-out. If it does that effectively it will outperform most governments that has ever existed. Charity is the province of God not Caesar, because people in need are most in need of what only another human heart can provide-Love. God is love – Caesar is not.