What would Jesus do?
Thursday, March 9th, 2006One of today’s top news headlines is Religious Charities Get More Federal Money. President Bush is very proud, it seems, that his policies have resulted in more of our increasingly scarce social service dollars going to faith-based non-profits.
It takes me back. Many years ago, I was briefly homeless. For about a month, I learned lessons that are forever burned into my psyche. One of those lessons was, “Don’t go to a religious charity if you can possibly avoid it.”
These charities, by and large, liked to believe that they practiced their faith through their actions, and didn’t force their religion onto the people they served. Unfortunately, that simply wasn’t the case. Every word, every gesture, every decoration hanging on the wall screamed out, “Only Jesus can solve your problems!”.
Many of the homeless people that I hung around with (safety in numbers!) were military veterans. As a result of their war experiences, a number of these vets were Athiests, or at least decidely non-religious. The last thing they wanted to hear was some self-satisfied believer who’d never been on the battlefield spouting off Bible quotes. And to this end, almost everyone chose to go without food when necessary to avoid the “God-talk”.
I find it ironic that our current government gives lip service to helping vets at the same time that they make it even harder for those vets to get basic services from secular organizations.