Ask the poor if we are a Christian nation

Some like to call us a Christian nation. That is a lie that disparages the name of Christ. As a nation, we have never behaved in a manner befitting the teachings and sacrifice of Jesus. We have engaged in wars, social injustices, and economic injustices since our founding as a nation. And we seem to become more mean-spirited and hard-hearted as time goes on.

Barbara Ehrenreich discusses our latest shame as a nation - fleecing the poor.

Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.

Ehrenreich goes on to explain how employers, creditors, and government are deliberately taking what little the poor have and even going so far as to criminalize poverty. It is our national disgrace. Lately, local and state governments have doubled down on looting the poor in the name of fiscal austerity. Not to be outdone, Congress is looking to reduce the deficit by slashing what is left of the safety net while creating new tax breaks for the rich.

Let's face it. No person of conscience, let alone of faith, should be unmoved by things like this:

Local governments are discovering that they can partially make up for declining tax revenues through fines, fees, and other costs imposed on indigent defendants, often for crimes no more dastardly than driving with a suspended license. And if that seems like an inefficient way to make money, given the high cost of locking people up, a growing number of jurisdictions have taken to charging defendants for their court costs and even the price of occupying a jail cell.

Or this:

Being poor itself is not yet a crime, but in at least a third of the states, being in debt can now land you in jail. If a creditor like a landlord or credit card company has a court summons issued for you and you fail to show up on your appointed court date, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. And it is easy enough to miss a court summons, which may have been delivered to the wrong address or, in the case of some bottom-feeding bill collectors, simply tossed in the garbage -- a practice so common that the industry even has a term for it: “sewer service.” In a sequence that National Public Radio reports is “increasingly common,” a person is stopped for some minor traffic offense -- having a noisy muffler, say, or broken brake light -- at which point the officer discovers the warrant and the unwitting offender is whisked off to jail.

Many of the most abusive business and government practices have come at the hands of people calling themselves Christians, strong supporters of family values. These are not secularists and atheists run amok. These are the people that worship political ideation and money more than God. Their professions of faith are little more than a cloak for their cold heart and sallow soul.

How many good "Christians" do we hear running as pro-life candidates. Yet, all that means is they oppose abortion, but have no problem with treating the vulnerable and less fortunate with a savagery that borders on barbaric, if not outright evil. How many good "Christians" express outrage over what they call sexual immorality, while glorifying greed? And how many good "Christians" find ways to blame the poor as an excuse not to lift a finger.

And lest you think I am exaggerating, then consider this. How many laws have been passed to restrict access to abortion and even contraception in the last several years? How many laws and ballot measures have been passed to limit the rights of same sex couples? In short, there has been a tremendous amount of energy devoted to the culture wars. At the very same time, programs have been slashed, fees have raised, and new ordinances have written to kick the poor in the teeth by the very same self-righteous culture warriors. And how much energy has been devoted to culture wars by churches and the faithful while barely lifting a finger for those in need?

Not all Christians have fallen for the trick of public piety and obsession with purity while ignoring injustice. But too many have. If they think the Lord will be merciful for neglecting the poor while pretending to be righteous, they are mistaken. They are deceiving themselves but they will not fool the Lord.

Here is a little reminder from James 2:1-7:

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?

Yes, many can find a few passages in scripture as an excuse to ignore what the Lord taught about loving others. Yet, they ignore more than 2000 passages that demand protection of the poor and condemn greed and the rich. I am sure the Lord of Lords, King of Kings will be understanding when you explain your preoccupation with the purity of others while ignoring His teachings and too many scriptural references to be overlooked in good conscience.

James goes to highlight the dishonesty of speaking shallow words of comfort to the poor (James 2:14-17).

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “ Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

I love that passage because it cuts to the dishonesty that has plagued many so-called Christians. Some like to pound the pulpit and say we are justified by faith alone. While it is true that no amount of good works justify a place in the Kingdom of God, professions of faith that are not mirrored in action are nothing but hollow words. We demonstrate to the Lord by how we act whether our faith is real or just a stale intellectual exercise. You can lie to anyone and everyone about how much your faith means to you, but God is not fooled. Faith without works to match it is dead. Ignoring the poor while you pretend to care about morality and life is nothing but a lie.

Ehrenreich closes with a devilishly simple perscription:

Before we can “do something” for the poor, there are some things we need to stop doing to them.

I pray God shows us the same mercy as a nation as we shown the poor. Christian nation? As James put it, that blasphemes the name of the Lord.