Tag Archives: the less fortunate

The Neighbor Parable

Story telling is an ancient art. Aesop told parables in long-ago Greece. Various ancient tribes passed down stories around the campfire. For centuries, parents and teachers have encouraged virtues with stories based on moral teachings.

No wonder Jesus taught with parables, a time-honored way to make a point.

A listener once asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he must first love God with all his heart and secondly love his neighbor as he loved himself.

“And who is my neighbor?” The listener asked.

Jesus then responded with the story about the man known as “The Good Samaritan.” An unfortunate traveler, after an attack by thieves, languished in need of care to save his life. A couple of pillars of the religious and political communities ignored him, passing by and leaving him. He was finally saved by a member of a minority group.

Jesus’ story made several points, of course, as effective parables often do. Those with power and resources sometimes choose to ignore those in need, caught up with growing their own bank accounts, not caring enough to share their resources with those we term “the less fortunate.”

Those in need surely would include children who don’t have enough to eat or proper medical care or adequate education. They would include many adults who work in jobs without health insurance. And surely, if we are to follow Jesus’ example of helping, we would include those who have made poor choices with their lives and end up homeless on our public streets.

Public funds should be adequately monitored to prevent fraud, of course. That anyone in our rich nation lacks food, medical care, and basic housing, however, surely puts us in the category of those who passed by the man who fell among thieves.

It may require tough love for those who have made poor choices—perhaps having them choose between supervision or entering a treatment program after too many public drug offenses. Or perhaps we may find better ways to offer treatment.

The fact that solutions are not easy does not prevent us from tackling the problems. We are called to do so.

Getting What We Deserve

We tend to subscribe to the idea of good things going to those who deserve them. People who earn high salaries should earn them. People who receive charity should be the “deserving poor,” in need only because of a bit of bad luck. Politicians who win elections should be the best qualified.

We know, of course, that it doesn’t always work that way, but we want the rules to favor the deserving as much as we can make them do so.

Many of us, however, did not earn a good many of our blessings.

I did not choose my parents, who loved each other as well as their children, and worked hard to buy and maintain a home for us. That home, wonderful for the love in it, also eventually provided, when it was sold, the financial help my brother and I needed to start toward home ownership ourselves. Even more important, of course, were the good habits instilled by our parents in terms of managing money.

The idea of “no free lunch” has merit in that we should earn our own way, not be dependent on handouts we didn’t work for. However, should little children, having no part of their parents’ lifestyle choices, not have enough to eat or a safe home because of choices they had no part of?

I don’t suppose I have a definite answer to the question of how financial blessings should follow at least some baseline rules, yet that all those who cannot take care of themselves be taken care of.

However, we could ensure that no powerless person is unable to meet basic needs, be they children, adults with physical or mental conditions they had no part in causing, or those struck by momentous events they did not cause.

Jesus Christ did not seem concerned about how deserving were the people he ministered to. Jesus once called a man back to life simply in pity for the man’s bereft mother, a widow. He also healed a Roman centurion’s beloved servant, even though the Romans were overlords of Jesus’ people. Once, on the way to heal a religious official’s little daughter, he stopped to assure healing to a sick woman accidentally placed in his way.

And, as another example, our public school systems are ones we generally desire, without thinking about it, to benefit all children, those of the undeserving as well as the deserving.
The idea is not to sanction public money ripped off by the undeserving. It is, as much as possible, to see that a country as blessed as is this one, will provide all with certain minimum care and possibilities.

And we can all support private groups, including our religious communities, known for providing hope and care to “the less fortunate.”