Saturday, August 10, 2013

What happened to "Christian" kindness?

Charles Blow in the NY Times:
Today’s America — at least as measured by the actions and inactions of the pariahs who roam its halls of power and the people who put them there — is insular, cruel and uncaring…. 
How did we come to such a pass? Why aren’t more politicians — and people in general — expressing outrage and showing empathy?

Part of our current condition is obviously partisan….
But another problem may be more broad-based: the way that many Americans look at the poor with disgust…. 
[R]esearch shows that people respond not only to the poor and homeless with revulsion, but they also react negatively to people they perceive as undocumented immigrants — essentially anyone without an address.

If some people’s impulse is to turn up a nose rather than extend a hand, no wonder we send so many lawmakers empty of empathy to Congress. No wonder more people don’t demand that Congress stand up for the least among us rather than on them.

As Fiske so aptly put it: “It seems like Washington is a place without pity right now. A town without pity.”
But full of "good Christians".  Go figure.

1 comment:

JCF said...

Extreme Calvinism (even among GOP RCs): some were just predestined to "pathological" poverty.

Anathema!