The Greedy vs. The Needy

        Don’t miss George Lakoff’s excellent piece over at HuffPo, entitled “Occupy Elections with a Simple Message.” The right wing, he says, has made too many Americans believe “democracy is about citizens only taking care of themselves, about personal and not social responsibility.” 

        Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my part, but there was something about the tone of what Lakoff wrote that gave me hope for evangelical Christians.  These are basically good people torn between a strict sense of personal responsibility and social duty.  In recent years, they have been led astray, mesmerized, by political issues and adeptly manipulated by the Republican Party.  They have been diverted by such tangential issues as abortion and homosexuality—topics on which Jesus said nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  You’d think the Son of God would have, at least, made a passing reference to these age-old activities, of which He was well aware.  Instead, He spends his sojourn on Earth talking about love, mercy, justice and income discrepancy, saving His greatest fury for the greedy.

        Today the gulf between the greedy and the needy is greater than it has been in decades.  While we can give all kinds of excuses to justify the imbalance and raise bogus distractions to relieve our guilt, correcting this injustice is one of the great challenge of mankind.  That’s what the Occupiers and Lakoff are trying to tell us and what the Good Book has been telling us for centuries.