Do justice, love mercy...

Jess: Wes and I have both expressed frustration with the recent $40 billion cuts to SNAP.Personally, I have been disgusted with the way many of my friends and family are reacting to this—with joy. I am so sick of hearing/seeing comments like “Stop being lazy and get a job!” or “Why should I pay for someone else to eat just because they’re too lazy to work?”

Let’s get something straight. Most people do not choose to be poor, to be on food stamps, to be on welfare or any other form of assistance. It’sembarrassing. It can make adults feel useless and unproductive, and children feel excluded from “normal” life. Sure, there are probably—definitely—people taking advantage of the system, and we should work to eliminate that. I am perfectly okay with periodic drug testing and other such reforms. But simply cutting funding to human beings is not cool. And I am especially disappointed when I hear these things from my Christian friends, people who read or hear week in and week out about the God of justice, the God who cares for the poor and needy and requires that all God’s people do the same.

Wes and I are living proof that poor people are not lazy. We have been fortunate enough throughout our marriage that we have not had to be on any sort of public assistance. But just barely. When we first got married, we were digging into our savings each month just to pay for health insurance, a relatively small car payment, groceries, rent, and gas so that I could work. Either I had to get a second job (and we already barely saw each other due to my schedule) or Wes had to work part-time and go to school full-time. We were blessed that Wes was appointed to the churches and we even had a parsonage.

Although I would never call our financial situation for the next three years “comfortable,” it was much better. After Wes got his job, the laws changed and we were both able to go back on our parents’ insurance, leaving us responsible only for copays instead of monthly payments. Our car insurance went down as we remained safe drivers. We were able to go out to eat with friends on occasion and not wonder how we would pay my student loans that month if we did. We were able to build our savings back up again and save for a second car, which we needed when I started school.

Having James didn’t significantly change our financial situation, but only because we have wonderful friends and family who helped with the cost of furniture, diapers, clothes, and other necessities. Then we moved, and everything changed again. First came the moving costs themselves. Although both the Southwest Texas Methodist Conference and Triumphant helped with moving costs, we had to get a car, two adults, two cats, and a 6-month-old from New Jersey to Texas. Then we had a month where we had no home because we were waiting for Wes’ job to start. Then we waited another couple of weeks before he got paid. We went two months with no paycheck and we’re still hurting. While we are earning well above the poverty level (I can’t imagine living on that), we are in no way “stable.”

Our savings has suffered because of the long stretch without income. We had to buy a second car so I could commute to work—which also increased our gas expenditures. As when we bought Wes’ car, we found that the only way to save money buying used was to buy a car so old we would soon be spending tons of money to keep it running. So we took on another loan. Wes’ school loans came out of deferment in August. And about half of my paycheck each month goes to putting James in childcare—which is cheap, comparatively.

We are not lazy. We work hard. Both of us worked through college; both of us have worked at least part time through seminary. The cost of the education that is required for us to be in the vocation to which we are called is ridiculous. The cost of living in NJ was almost unbearable. If we didn’t have health insurance through Wes now, we wouldn’t be able to afford it for the family. If we didn’t have the parsonage through Wes, we wouldn’t be able to afford to live somewhere decent, either. If I lost my job for some reason, we might make it. But if Wes did, we would be in serious trouble.

And there are many, many people in this country who are way worse off than we are. Please don’t call them lazy. Please don’t assume they aren’t trying. Please recognize that there are MANY factors that go into this problem, and most of them are systemic, not individual. Please pray for those who cannot support themselves or their families. I can’t imagine how terrifying that must be. 

(Some interesting charts to see.)

Wes: Hey, friends. Something has been bothering me for a while, and I’ve been trying to figure out how best to broach the subject. I still haven’t decided if this is the right medium for it, but here goes:

I’m worried. I’m worried about America. I’m worried about the church. I’m worried about the world in which we live.

Two weeks ago, there was a mass shooting in the Naval yard just outside of Washington D.C. I found out about it because a parishioner was watching T.V. and called me to make sure I knew about it. I jumped on my computer and read story after story of the incident, my heart breaking as yet another community in our nation was hit with the onslaught of needless violence. People died. Others were seriously injured.

And no one said a thing about it on my Facebook feed all day.

Now, I’m not so attached to social media that I think that this is the only place people share their thoughts, reactions, and emotions. But it does serve as basically a data dump for everyone with whom I’m “friends”, so that I can see exactly what they thought was relevant and important enough at the time that they posted it on their walls. Here are a list of a few of the things that I did see:

·          Articles from The Onion

·          Pictures of food

·          Memes… so many memes…

·          Statuses about football

·          Religious quotes and Scripture references

·          A Boy Meets World video (Okay, I posted this one because I needed to smile)

Now, this tells me a few things about my friends (as well as the major political and religious figures that I “follow”)—mainly, that they either don’t watch the news, or the fact that innocent people were shot and killed so close to our nation’s capital was not considered important enough to beat out that link to a GIF of a cat dancing for prominence on my Newsfeed.

And it’s not only online that I was unpleasantly surprised by the lack of response to this. I spent a good deal of my office hours on the 16^th in Starbucks, working on stuff, but also listening to the people around me. There must have been over 200 people who came through that coffee shop while I was sitting inside, and not a single person said anything about the shooting.

Are we getting to a point in our culture where just don’t care anymore?

Have we reached a new level of apathy, where we think that if it’s not happening directly in front of us that is doesn’t actually impact us?

Why don’t we care more that innocent men, women, and children are dying around the world due to war, violence, starvation, and disease? Why are we splitting hairs over minor details in laws and governmental funding when parents who are working as hard as they can are unable to provide food for their children? Why aren’t more people worried about the fact that there aren’t more people worried?

Now, I don’t want to come across as high and mighty in this. I know I’m right in the middle of it. I have accepted the call upon my life to be God’s voice in the world, which includes saying the hard things at times. I have a soapbox in the form of a pulpit that I can utilize on a weekly basis to talk about these kinds of things. And you know what? For the most part, I don’t. I see the hurting, I see the pain, I hear of the horrendous things happening, and I think to myself “someone should care more”, or “someone should say or do something.”

To quote Relient K, “I’m part of the problem, I confess, but I gotta get this off my chest.”

On September 16^th, 2013, thirteen people were shot to death. We should care about this. We should hurt because of this. We should fall down in prayer to a God who has promised to make all things new, and pray for restoration in the midst of horrible brokenness.

And we should be worried if we are not doing these things.