The famous passage from II Thessalonians 3:
The passage is not exactly relevant, given that most SNAP beneficiaries do work (if you leave out children, 45% of the total, and the elderly and disabled), their problem being not [jump]
laziness but crap wages from bloodsucking employers (including the United States Department of Defense, support our troops!); then again, as the Vixen remarks,
I wish I hadn't lost the tweet or blog post where I saw this (I'll be delighted to give credit to anybody who's mentioned it in the past couple of months, or ever), but the Thessalonians Paul was sniping at were not really buying T-bones and driving around in Cadillacs at the community expense as much as they were sleeping outdoors and hogging all the food at love feasts in the certainty that Jesus was going to show up any minute. Because people were really living in the End Times in those days—there were plenty of living witnesses to Jesus promising he'd be back soon. What's the point in working when the Rapture is right around the corner?
No, Paul is saying, if you want to be a member of our commune you have to work for it. He's not attacking poor people, he's attacking those who sat around jabbering about Jesus after dinner while he was helping with the dishes and taking out the garbage. And feeding the poor is of course part of the work Paul expects Christians to do. He doesn't expect the poor to feed themselves or assume that they can all find jobs that will take care of that, he expects as a Jew that the community must help and that the message of Jesus doesn't let you off the hook. (Unlike, say, pork-eating, which is OK per Romans 14:3 if your faith is strong enough, and I submit that the same should go for blow jobs and other Levitically abominable victimless crimes. All you weak-faith cats are free to abstain, just keep your hands out of my shrimp cocktail.)
Who believes that Christianity lets you off the hook is the all-grace no-works party, which Paul is often accused of leading: Paul is saying here, with great clarity, that's not my party. Also known as the Republican Christianist party, because conservative Evangelicals, with their focus on the personal conversion experience of Amazing Grace, are firmly ensconced there: that's the reason they oppose government assistance to the needy, because they feel their special friendship with Jesus ("He walks with me and He talks with me") entitles them to do it. Whereas liberal Christians like James 1:22-24:
Update:
Some more anti–Food Stamp Republican welfare queens, from Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed:
10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.has been very popular among Republicans advocating plans to cut $40 billion from the SNAP ("food stamps") program over the next 10 years, from Stephen Fincher (Scroogist-TN) in early June to Kevin Cramer (Xtianist-ND) yesterday.
11 For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.
12 Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.
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| "Conservative" Kevin Cramer sort of soliciting bribes on his way to the House. |
laziness but crap wages from bloodsucking employers (including the United States Department of Defense, support our troops!); then again, as the Vixen remarks,
But that's what I dislike about adding scripture to any justification of policy just generally--it means whatever the person using it wants it to mean. I think it's shitty as politics and as theology.What I immediately want to know, of course, is just how shitty as theology is it? (I'm the Tourist of Theology: fantastic place to visit, wouldn't want to live there.) Pretty shitty, as it turns out.
I wish I hadn't lost the tweet or blog post where I saw this (I'll be delighted to give credit to anybody who's mentioned it in the past couple of months, or ever), but the Thessalonians Paul was sniping at were not really buying T-bones and driving around in Cadillacs at the community expense as much as they were sleeping outdoors and hogging all the food at love feasts in the certainty that Jesus was going to show up any minute. Because people were really living in the End Times in those days—there were plenty of living witnesses to Jesus promising he'd be back soon. What's the point in working when the Rapture is right around the corner?
No, Paul is saying, if you want to be a member of our commune you have to work for it. He's not attacking poor people, he's attacking those who sat around jabbering about Jesus after dinner while he was helping with the dishes and taking out the garbage. And feeding the poor is of course part of the work Paul expects Christians to do. He doesn't expect the poor to feed themselves or assume that they can all find jobs that will take care of that, he expects as a Jew that the community must help and that the message of Jesus doesn't let you off the hook. (Unlike, say, pork-eating, which is OK per Romans 14:3 if your faith is strong enough, and I submit that the same should go for blow jobs and other Levitically abominable victimless crimes. All you weak-faith cats are free to abstain, just keep your hands out of my shrimp cocktail.)
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| Home to Tea Party Hearty Stephen Fincher, where he doesn't grow cotton for $70K a year. |
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.Thus Rep. Fincher seems a good deal like unto a man who forgetteth what manner of man he is, given that he gets considerably more in welfare payments than most of us get in salary:
23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
he received $70,554 in farm subsidies in the year 2012, and received $3.48 million in taxpayer cash from 1999 to 2012.While Rep. Cramer might be regarded as a disorderly busybody, with his claim that "liberal" abortion laws are responsible for school shootings (the only thing that can stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with an ultrasound wand). I've always tended to dislike Paul as a whiny misogynist creep, but compared to these guys he was a mensch.
Update:
Some more anti–Food Stamp Republican welfare queens, from Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed:
Another Republican congresswoman who voted to make cuts to the food stamp program was Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. Her farm received more than $800,000 in Department of Agriculture subsidies from 1995-20102. In 2001, her farm received $135,482 in subsidies.
Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who also voted to make cuts to the program, was a partner in Racota Valley Ranch, her family’s farm and previously had nearly a 17% stake through 2008. The farm received $3.4 million in subsidies from 1995-2012. The Environmental Working Group, which analyzes subsidy data, says the “estimated amount of subsidies attributed to Rep. Noem from 1995-2012 is $503,751.”Rep. Marlin Stutzman, a Republican Rep. from Indiana also received his fair share of government subsidies. He personally took in nearly $200,000 for the farm he co-owns with his father.According to the New York Times Stutzman said Thursday the bill cutting food stamps by $39 billion over the next ten years “eliminates loopholes, ensures work requirements, and puts us on a fiscally responsible path.”
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