Justice

Dear Mindy:
Goodness but it's been (too) long since I've had time to spend on the blog, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about the issues. I do have to confess I am not optimistic about the direction of the blog. My original thoughts about this to myself have come true, i.e., we both are what we are. At least I know a bit more about you, but most of it I already knew. As such, it seems best to just address the issue foremost in your mind, that being justice. This is as applied to the Health Care debate, which is where it came up. Using the Bible as our source, the following exhortations come to mind:

"If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat."

"If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse that an unbeliever."


That is the bible's version of economic justice, not mine. These are a long way from "who pays for the health care of my family?" The bible of course, in the nearly 200 verses about the poor, exhorts us to not persecute not vex the poor, to be advocates for them and to help them. Nowhere does it suggest we pay his bills for him. It also speaks loudly about how we are to have compassion on the less fortunate. Doing that is the Lord's command. He does not suggest the State conficated your wealth to do it on your behalf. That would gut the opportunity for us to do it out of a heart of compassion.

As you have self described yourself as being in the information gathering stage, why not read a little Karl Marx, or Dostoyevski's "Grand Inquisitor", or a little de Toqueville, or Frederick Bastiat, or Plato's Republic. Maybe you have done this already. If not, it can add to the opinions of NPR and Twitter, and rest on some of the wisdom of those who have been there and seen it. As you may have heard, Irving Kristol passed away Friday 09/18. He was known as the "Godfather of Neoconservatism." Jewish, of course, but nowhere have I read that he became a follower of Jesus. Nevertheless, he made the intellectual circuit in his life from athiest to Trotskyist to Socialist to moderate to conservative, and many believe set the intellectual table for the Reagan presidency. I am always awed by the pragmatism of Jews. Here is a comment that would be pertinent to our debate. "It's not enough just to have a sense of what's right and what's wrong, you also have to have a sense of how the world works."


God Bless You,
Dad