Soap Box

A friend of mine went to the drug store to get some deodorant and decided to pick up some razor blades. To his surprise, and mine, the razor blades were all in a locked cabinet. When he asked the clerk about this the reply was "its bad out there man, people will steal a package of razor blades and sell them for a dollar just to support their crack habit." He went on to tell how his cousin was hooked at 58 years of age after just one hit of crack.

Now for the soap box. I may be way off base and feel free to contradict me if you think that I am off base. In my opinion the main reason we have problems "in the projects", that we have so many single parents, such a drug problem and many of our other social problems is that the modern day church, all churches not just one particular faith, have abdicated our responsibility to the community and turned it all over to the Federal Government.

There was a time where family took care of family and if your family could not handle it the local church did. It is the churches responsibility to take care of the poor, the widows and the orphans but it is now more convenient to let the government handle that problem. If it was not for the government stepping in to fill that gap, I think you would see the numbers at local churches swell. Why? Because to get help you would have to be involved in that family of believers. It is my opinion that God in his wisdom knew that not only did we need to help the ones who needed help, he knew that they needed to come to us as believers for that help. Not only would they get the things they needed to survive by doing so, they would get the spiritual help, guidance and sense of belonging that came with being a part of and helped by the family of believers. With this would come - if not behavior modification maybe some moral responsibility in the way one conducted his/her affairs.

Now there are no consequences. The Federal Government is going to hand out the check regardless of your behavior because you are "entitled" to that money. Maybe if we took the entitlements away and reinstated responsibility then things would get better in our communities. Maybe if the churches were doing what they should be doing then things wouldn't be so bad out there. What do you think?

In Him,

David