Big Belly, Poor People

While downtown Saturday, Ginny and I spotted a new garbage can.

We’d never seen one like it before.

We didn’t have a camera with us, so we drove downtown again Sunday just to snap a photo of this garbage can in Hemming Park. The marquee in the background is the entrance to Jacksonville’s City Hall.

Yes, it is a Big Belly solar powered garbage can which compacts the trash put in it. According to the manufacture’s website each of these solar garbage cans weighs 300 pounds and costs $3,750.00

Now in all fairness, I do not know if the manufacturer put this fine product in Jacksonville’s premier park as a promotional gimmick, or whether our wise city government paid for it with tax money.

Wouldn’t surprise me either way.

Being a cynic, I imagine taxpayers bought this much-needed device to replace the park’s static garbage cans with plastic liners which cost about $5 for a box of 25.

Jacksonville can afford Big Belly. After all, I understand that last week President Barack Obama introduced a $750 billion economic incentive plan to help financially strapped cities.

But, the all above rant is just background, not the actual subject I want to think and write about.

I’ll get to that now:

On tv, in personal conversation, and in overhearing strangers talking—I hear a tone which disturbs me.

It scares me.

This tone rings harsh, mean-spirited, critical—but also somehow right.

I mean, it is sounds justified, like righteous indignation, but it’s doesn’t ring deep-true. Yet, what is being said probably is superficially true—but it’s not the only thing that’s true.

All over I’m hearing people voice bitter resentment toward poor people, toward sick or injured people, toward unemployed people, but especially toward people losing their homes.

I hear the term “personal responsibility” thrown out as though it were a curse word.

Ginny and I have never been late with a mortgage payment in the 15 years we’ve lived in our home. Many of our friends and neighbors say the same. Yet all over the country thousands of other home buyers face foreclosure. TV news says 10% of the homes in America are in default.

The federal government is instituting a program to help these people pay for their homes.

Last week President Obama signed a $75 billion dollar homeowner relief program.

"The plan I'm announcing focuses on rescuing families who played by the rules and acted responsibly," Obama said, announcing the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, or HASP. He explained this would be done by "refinancing loans for millions of families in traditional mortgages who are underwater or close to it, by modifying loans for families stuck in subprime mortgages they can't afford as a result of skyrocketing interest rates or personal misfortune, and by taking broader steps to keep mortgage rates low so that families can secure loans with affordable monthly payments."

A noble effort?

Yet all around I hear a lot of resentment about helping people whose own poor judgment and lack of responsibility put them in this fix.

I agree, the poor people ought to be like me. My poor judgment and lack of responsibility never got me in… Well, I’d be lying to say that.

I’ve screwed up so much and so often that the president ought to declare me a one-man federal disaster area. Heck, if President Obama knew me, he’d send in a helicopter.

But my point is I’m disturbed by the antagonism and resentment and bitterness I hear directed toward people who need taxpayer money to avoid being homeless. Or indeed against any person who can not afford the price of a ticket—like that woman with the eight embryonic implants. I’ve heard good people say, “Let the little bastards die; she should never have had ‘em in the first place”.

Part of me is inclined to agree; her actions were not very bright.

Problem is God’s a realist.

He deals with us on the basis of what is, not what should be.

Now I’m sure that if a hungry kid stood in front of a guy who expresses harsh criticism of the poor, that same guy would buy the kid a burger. We can all slough off starving children at a distance, but when we hear the kid next door hungry, we react differently.

That’s natural.

But I’m not thinking of individual charity here, but of tax dollars.

And, I’ve been reading Leviticus where God says:

If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.

Hummm.

Relieve him … that he may live with thee.

What kind of bailout program is that?

It’s as though God made some of us self-reliant so we can help people who aren’t. He made some of us responsible so we can rescue the irresponsible.

Yes, they were stupid to skate out on thin ice, but once they’re in the ice water, my duty is not to stand by the fire saying, “What you should have done…” but to risk my own life trying to pull the stupid SOB’s frozen ass out

Yes, that carload of teenagers acted irresponsibly when joy-riding they smacked into a telephone pole. Dumb of them. Stupid. No accepting of personal responsibility. But even at the risk of getting burnt, my responsibility is to jerk as many as I can of them out of the fire.

Warn beforehand, rescue afterwards.

It’s like God saying that even the dumb should be saved whatever the cost.

The apostle John wrote about this same idea:

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

Now the government is going to take tax money from you and me.

That’s a given.

That’s a shame, but that’s a given.

Remember the old saying about death and taxes being the only sure things.

And the government is going to spend that tax money on something.

Wise or wobbly, that tax money is going to get spent on something.

Which something?

Helping someone who waxed poor and fallen in decay and facing foreclosure…

Or on solar garbage cans and their ilk?