Huh, thank you for explaining why the phrase “Christian Charity” has no meaning.
It’s hard to help a refugee if the [del]Sultan[/del] President won’t let him in the country.
I wonder how many fundamentalists really want a blanket ban on Syrian refugees.
An acquaintance was raised Particular Baptist. Apparently they don’t believe in missions, or conversion, or preaching to the unsaved, or any of that sort of thing that was (at least ostensibly) central to the kind of Christian upbringing I had. I suppose in a country with freedom of religion, and hundreds of sects, there are going to be some weird variations.
And to the OP, I guess there are even going to be “Christian” sects that just ignore even the most strongly stated words of Christ in favor of following Sodom and Gomorrah down to damnation.
Charity is only charity if you’re the only one contributing. And welcoming is only welcoming if you’re the one doing it. I grew up in a Lutheran church and there was no shortage of people who would gladly volunteer at a shelter or donate to a good cause, regardless of what type of person was getting the food or money. However, most people that I know have never met a refugee. In essence they would be supporting something that only effects other people, namely the ones that claim there is a cost to admitting a large number of them. So I don’t think Christian charity is necessarily at odds with being against taking in refugees.
Wait, what? There’s no such think as collective charity?
If there was “no shortage” of people, presumably none of them were engaged in charity, since none of them was “the only one contributing”.
This makes absolutely no sense at all. If Americans, collectively, pay a price to provide protection for refugees (e.g. by paying taxes through which they pay for refugee resettlement) then Americans, collectively, are engaged in an act of charity. And Americans who oppose this are saying “we should not engage in this act of charity”. And, given what the bible has to say about how you should treat the stranger among you, it will requires some nifty intellectual footwork to square that with the ethical dictates of Christianity.
Its not hard to square at all. The charity begins and ends with the individual. Yes, there is indeed collective charity but my contribution would be my own and you yours.
IMO there nothing that says you need to project your Christian politics onto others, I think the world has had quite enough of that
You know who else was in the minority and widely condemned?
No. Not that guy… try again.
Here’s a hint: being in the minority and widely condemned didn’t make Him insular and hateful. Quite the opposite, in fact, or so the ancient texts tell us.
This isn’t a particularly Christian perspective, IMO. In the Christian tradition following the gospel is something we do both individually and collectively.
I have to point out that if you take the view that only individual charity matters, and seek to have that reflected in law and public policy by, e.g., opposing the admission of refugees, aren’t you projecting your Christian politics onto others?
Politics - a bit like Christianity, really - is necessarily a collective endeavour. It’s not really possible to have a political stance which isn’t projected onto others.
Christianity is not a collective endeavour. For instance is it okay not to give to your church as long as you vote for politicians who promise to give public money to the church?
Yes
I would not vote for politicians who have that little regard for separation of church and state.
Sadly, I’m afraid that we may be on our way to losing the whole “separation of church and state” concept. Chilling!
No, no, it’s fine. No one’s going to make you take refugees or tithe. All those churches that believed in Christian charity will be purged, and all will love Trump, the son of the living god. You will take his mark on the right hand and on the forehead, that you will be known as True Trumplanders, citizens of the True Trumped Trumplands of Trump.
(The mark is four T’s forming a negative-space gammadion. It’s classy.)
I don’t understand the relevance of the question. To support your church is, by definition, to participate in a collective endeavour. You’re contrasting two different ways of participating in the collective endeavour that is the church, and trying to suggest that the contrast somehow shows that Christianity is not a collective endeavour. That doesn’t work.
FWIW, the answer to your question is; it’s fine. Germans who pay the church tax, for example, need not necessarily make further financial contributions to their churches.
I’m wondering if the fundamentalist and similar churches referred to by the OP, if I am understanding the post correctly, are not simply exhibiting the xenophobia culturally native to their congregations. If so, it doesn’t have much to do with Christianity at all.
Can we have some evidence that this is the case, before we move on to asking why?
I’m (technically) affiliated with a mainline church, not an evangelical one, but I have worked overseas before, and while I was there I never failed to be impressed with the extensive work done by the Seventh-Day Adventists, for example. (Agricultural development aid was the area I was most interested in, but the do a lot of other relief and development work as well).
If you mean specifically mass immigration, I would strongly disagree with the application of verses like that (or other ones about ‘welcoming the stranger’) to debates over large scale immigration, including by my own church. Mass migration has very significant costs to the societies that receive immigrants (as well as in many cases to the countries that produce them), and I don’t think a healthy world conducive to human flourishing is one with large migration flows. A much better solution would be to try to equalize incomes between countries (through foreign aid, trade, and economic development) so that people don’t feel as much of a desire to move.
There are lots of ways to help people without allowing them into your country. You can give your money to charities that do lots of foreign aid, for a start (and governments can and should do that as much as individuals).
Your suggestions help those who are refugees for simple economic reasons.
These are refugees from a war zone.
The only way to help them is to let them leave the warzone. Charitable foreign aid will not help in this situation. (Unless the aid includes getting them out of a war zone.)
Then is it okay to kill someone if you support higher taxes for crime prevention?
No.
You have to pay the murderer tax for that. (Usually comes in the form of incarceration and fines.)
I believe the idea is that the Good Samaritan was wrong. He also should have “passed by on the other side” and then asked the Romans to increase welfare spending and crime prevention.
Regards,
Shodan