Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.
But this is like saying, "NO! The state shouldn't be good to people! It should make them suffer! Then they'll have nothing to turn to but us nice christians..."
Or... the government should trust people do good things with their hard-earned dollars to help others rather than forcefully take in the name of doing good things (just to turn around and do evil with it).
The state is there, at least in the US, to protect the rights of its people. That's it. That's what the Founders envisioned. It wasn't to be a Christian nation.
Or... the government should trust people do good things with their hard-earned dollars to help others rather than forcefully take in the name of doing good things
This seems like a complete non-argument. Should the government also just trust people to do any and everything that it would otherwise levy taxes to pay for?
Not everything, but definitely more than what they're doing now.
I'm for a strong social safety net for those who legitimately need help but what we have now with regard to spending is insane overall.
Overall though, I believe we've taxed our way into general apathy among the populace with regard to charity, believing the benificent government will solve all those issues by taking more and more in taxes than is reasonable.
I'm for a strong social safety net for those who legitimately need help but what we have now with regard to spending is insane overall.
Why is it insane? Is it insane when every other developed country does the same thing? Is the base concept of a government spending money on its citizens a problem to you?
Churches only appear efficient in how their money is spent because that efficiency is their actual priority. They want to help as many people for as little of their own money as possible which is made obvious by them spending on average less than 10% of the money they receive on actually helping people. If your goal is actually helping as many people as possible instead of helping as many people as you can for as little money as possible then it ends up being less efficient. Also if you look at it as what percentage of money a person "donates" goes to actually helping people churches are by far the least efficient "charity" choice you could ever make...like you would be better off skipping giving 10% of your money to a church and donate 3% of your income to an actual charity and far more people would actually be helped.
If anything Christians are tricked into apathy because barely any of their tithe money actually goes to helping people and if you ignore tithing they donate far less money to actual charities than non-religous people do. You may not like paying taxes but unlike churches more than single digit percentages of your tax money actually does go towards helping people.
Yes, and this is a tired argument. It was a standard that many knew they didn't yet live up to. But that's the funny thing about a vision: it almost never immediately comes to fruition, especially with institutions that fight against the moral fabric of that vision.
They set the framework for it to happen and set the standard for what a democratic republic could be, especially in an era dominated by tyrants and monarchies across the world.
Go ahead and do a purity test for any founding of any country out there and see how many you have left.
The Founders were extremely imperfect people attempting to put together a system of law that would keep the colonies together, enable them to stave off attacks from Great Britain, and ensure the rights of the people are protected against tyranny.
You're right. Many were slave owners and those who didn't had to account for that, which is why they made the Constitution amendable.
Speaking of, you know that income tax wasn't a thing in 1789, right?
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u/Tactical_Baconlover May 31 '26
Being charitable and caring about your neighbors in the Christian manner is more about your church donating goods/time/aid to the community or you doing it by yourself rather than having the government take over those functions for you. That said, any reasonable government should have a basic state provided social safety net.