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Not just any Wednesday
Another Wednesday morning has dawned. For those who work Monday through Friday, Wednesday is typically known as "hump day." For yours truly, Wednesday is a half-day so I can save hours for our double-edition Fridays. I like Wednesdays. I've enjoyed many a Wednesday morning over the years while others have come and gone largely unnoticed. This Wednesday, however, comes with a certain measure of trepidation.
As I write this, it is too early for even the earliest of returns and although the headline "Dewey wins!" was long before my time, the reticence it engendered remains.
Keeping that in mind, by the time this edition of the McCook Daily Gazette hits the front porch, the entire nation will know who has been chosen to lead this country for the next four years.
The trepidation I feel doesn't come because I am afraid of either candidate's platform, policies or heritage. My trepidation comes from the potential for fall-out across the nation, regardless of who wins. Emotions have run particularly high during this election cycle. Evidence is everywhere, but is particularly strident on online blogs, which I frequently peruse as I visit newspaper sites across the length and breadth of the nation.
It seems the original subject matter has little to do with the online conversation that follows. It inevitably turns to the national election, with comments becoming more and more venomous with each entry, regardless of party affiliation. Certain phrases coined during the campaign have obviously evoked nightmarish memories and re-ignited fears long thought dead.
One phrase in particular, "socialism" has been bandied about in response to one candidate's "spread the wealth" economic platform. As I explained to a young staff member here at the Gazette, in my generation, the word socialism and its sister (if not more sinister) phrase "communism" were closely linked together through all the long, dark years of the late, unlamented Cold War. The duck and cover generation heard the warnings about these ideologies as frequently as we now hear about all of the horrors of global warming.
The lessons stuck.
I've certainly heard all of the arguments defending the modern view of socialism, and I've even heard the claim of some that if Jesus had been compelled to lay a political platform, it would look a lot like socialism. After all, he advocated for the poor and downtrodden like no one before him and he had harsh words of warning for the rich and greedy. All of Scripture in fact supports the notion that those who have ought to share with those in need. Indeed, there are Old Testament passages that dictate openhandedness, to the point of leaving the corners of the field unharvested so that gleaners, who had not contributed to the labor or the expense of producing the crop, could nonetheless reap the benefits.
Jesus' teaching on this could not be plainer than what is found in Matthew's Gospel where he welcomes some to glory and shuns others with the statement "I was hungry and you fed me (or not); naked and you clothed me (or not); sick and you cared for me (or not). (Matthew 25:31-46)
In the Kingdom of God, openhandedness amounts to a command and those who would follow Jesus and call him King adhere to this teaching with great joy.
However, the United States of America is not the Kingdom of God, though many would claim otherwise. Whenever countries legislate socialism, it inevitably ends in failure.
Anyone familiar with human nature, plainly revealed in the life of the typical 2-year-old, understands how it happens. For example, if my grandson, Luke, has a sucker, and climbs in my lap to offer me a taste, he is a bundle of smiles and giggles when I accept. In fact, he offers up another taste. However, if Luke has a sucker in hand and I come up to him, and take the sucker from him and plop it into my mouth, his reaction is decidedly different. A hue and cry goes forth that will only be silenced by the return of the sucker. And the next time he has a sucker, he'll undoubtedly keep it under close wraps, for fear he'll lose that one too.
The same thing happens when those who have lose the opportunity to freely give. Recipients become nothing but leeches and any new need, that may have been met with joy and abundance, goes wanting, those in need told to "get in line" with the other leeches and take what little is offered there. In many ways, we are already there. The war on poverty, declared during the Johnson administration, much like the war on drugs and the war in Iraq, seems to be un-winnable and interminable.
It's a matter of the heart and who reigns there. Any assistance given under compulsion apart from compassion, with enough catgut attached to form a string quartet, will inevitably spoil the heart of both the giver and the recipient.
"If I give all that I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." I Corinthians 13:3 (NIV)
Things you won't see in heaven:
bread lines
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