Right wingers want the poor to make healthy food choices and so they want to find ways to CONTROL what those people eat.
Left wingers want the poor to make healthy food choices but recognize it isn't up to us as to what they choose to eat. We have no need to control them though certainly we would hope they would choose the food that they need.
Then there are people like me, who realize when we start micromanaging what people eat to that degree, we're making the program more expensive, less helpful, and based off of non-replicable metrics that can't be consistently applied, and ignoring the level of self-regulation that already occurs by nature of the fact that there's a budget and there's food. People will gravitate towards what they like and what they can afford and prioritize that.
Somebody liking Doritos but not being able to afford them, therefore saying people who are on assistance can't get them is not standardized. How is somebody else using the system supposed to know that and apply it to make the best choice? Where does that metric stop? I like blueberries, but I can't justify buying them when they're not on sale... Now are we saying that because I won't spend $5 on one pint of blueberries when I can wait for a 2 for $4 sale, rules on what fruits they buy need to be adapted? I buy frozen corn despite liking lettuce better because lettuce will go bad before I use it, so somebody else must do the same? Heck, I remember when my food budget for myself was $20 a week for all meals. Doritos were a luxury, I didn't buy them. But one November, canned corn was 4 for $1, I bought $6 worth of corn, 24 cans, which represented 12 weeks of corn for me. December rolled around, I still had 20 cans of corn left, Doritos were on sale 2 for $4, so I used what I saved not buying vegetables that month to buy Doritos as a gift to myself. Should I, in theory, have bought corn my regular amount of corn, paid more for less in December, and skipped the Doritos?
At what point are we spending so much money to regulate a system from "fraud" (which is really just people being mad at what other people are buying that they don't feel they deserve for no reason other than "because they don't") that it becomes cumbersome? Or at what hoops that we require that are reasonable and identifiable (ID, eligibility proof, and an application process), become now more subjective, random, and arbitrary (no buying Doritos because some dude on the internet doesn't think you deserve them). Is it better to force people to spend more on something that has a short shelf life and costs more, like fruits and vegetables, meats, dairy, that they have a higher likelihood of throwing away due to not using it in time, or to allow people to buy what they know is in their means to make and eat fully and is cheaper, but less healthy? Thanks to my knowledge base, history with poverty, my job, and you give me a whole chicken, a can of corn, flour, and a bag of rice, I can feed my family of 5 for four days or make a meal for 15 homeless people with no issue. Yet I know darn well that if I were to give some people on this forum a chicken, they wouldn't know what to do with it. So those people are starving and hand them a chicken instead of a bag of pizza rolls, am I doing them a favor or wasting a chicken?
People will buy what they can eat without help because it's relatively self-regulating. People don't buy what they won't get the most from based off of their needs and capabilities. They don't need to hear what somebody else would eat because of what they can do, they need to know what they're going to eat with what they can do.
In fact, I'm beginning to see a HUGE irony in all of this. The
2 Thess. 3 verse that quote misquoted above actually warns Christians against being "busybodies"...and expressed that they were being such busybodies they were refusing to work.
I gotta tell ya....the way Conservatives are trying so hard to influence these programs, it seems like a TEXTBOOK example of being a busybody. Funny how everything folds on itself and irony remains.
The gigantic irony has always been there for me. A baseline throughout the whole Bible is the constant reinforcement and drilling of how we need to help those who have less. Some of the other stuff, yeah, there's built in room to argue. Yes, hate the sin love the sinner, but what if the sinner continues to sin or is committing a mortal sin... X, Y, and Z is bad, but is it really bad in context and is it new or old testament, blah blah blah...
But helping the poor? Feeding people? Uh, no. There were no catches in that. The Bible is unequivocal. There was no "feed them, but only if they are truly poor and unable to help themselves and have demonstrated it sufficiently" or "clothe them, but only if they've tried hard enough to clothe themselves" or "if he's hungry give him something to eat, but it better not be Doritos and Pizza Rolls." I know people think I'm the big raging liberal who isn't Christian and doesn't read a Bible every day, but I do. As a Christian, we're told to feed the hungry. Full stop. Not just the "for I was hungry and you gave me something to eat... when you have done it for the least of these among us, so you've done for me" or Proverbs "the generous will be blessed when they share their food with the poor." I'm talking about Romans 12. Do not think yourselves as higher than others but with sober understanding of the measure that God has assigned them. Do not be haughty, associate with the poor. give thought to do what is honorable to all. If your enemy is hungry, give him food; if he is thirsty, give him drink. It doesn't say that the enemy must deserve it or needs to earn it. It just says feed them. Matthew 14. Jesus had compassion for the large crowd that followed him. When the disciples told him to send them away because it was late and the crowd should go find their own food, Jesus said specifically, do not send them away, you feed them, give them food. They said they only had 5 loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus didn't say "then line them up by order of who's most hungry and done least to help themselves, weed out the fakers, the lazy, the illegals, feed whomever is left." There was no wavering, no changed direction for his disciples. Just the command to feed them. James 2... What's the point of faith if you don't act in a way that carries that faith? Faith without action is dead. The specific example given is if a person is without daily food and you say "go in peace, stay warm, eat well" and that's it, you don't help, you are in the wrong. Faith without deeds is useless, a body without the spirit is dead, faith without deeds is dead.
God is super clear... I think Romans 12 again...? Love in action, wherever that passage is that I can't think of off the top of my head for some reason. Your judgment comes in how you treat even your enemies. Don't assume because they deserve vengeance, you are to be the one who does it. Do not repay evil for evil. Feed your enemy. Give them something to drink. Overcome their evil with your good, that is your reward. That is your morality. That is your judgment from God. How others use what you give them, that's their judgment. Your job is to do what God commands, which is to attend to their needs, keep your side of the street clean, and understand if they're taking advantage, God will deal with it, it's not your job to.
