Last week I was at an event in which the head of the Lutheran Mission Society spoke. She talked about how the Society fed and clothed an ever-growing number of poor. I approved of the feeding and the clothing, but I waited for "the catch." Because when religious groups help someone, there's inevitably a catch. Which is why I oppose governmental funding of faith-based initiatives, or the government's contracting with faith-based groups to provide what should and could be, purely secular government services.
So, I wasn't the least surprised when the speaker proudly added, "And we not only give the poor food and clothes, we bring them the Gospel." Like that was a good thing. Yeah, that's what the poor need most in addition to food and clothing: mythological stories about an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God who has decided, because of His very mysterious plan, to make them poor, hungry, and unable to clothe themselves.
This hasn't been the way the church has always been. It is something more recent. During the Catholic reign I don't know of any such thing, you know they had to Crusades and Inquisition. I hope to do a study on this to find out when the gift giving with strings attached all began. I think there is little evidence of it in the Babble. They certain helped each other.
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