I recently watched a Hallmark movie: Welcome Home; it showed how easy it is to become homeless in America; and if in America, certainly everywhere else in the world. [Amazon Prime offers the Hallmark channel for $5.95 a month.]
The film was a moving portrayal of this critical problem that exists in every state of the USA.
The following states have the highest numbers of homeless according to endhomelessness.org: NY, 91,897; FLA, 31,030; CA, 129,972; TX, 25,310; WA, 22,304; MA, 20,068; OR, 14,476; and CO, 10,857; but the problem exists in every state.
The movie starred Luke Perry and Camille Sullivan, 2018.
At the end of the movie, the following statistics were given: 600,000 men, women and children will sleep on the streets tonight in the USA; 1.6 million children will experience homelessness this year.
To contrast the above statistics with some others that you are familiar with if you up to date on current events, there are many millionaires in the USA. If fact, in 2018, 250,000 people became millionaires in the USA, stated NYpost.com.
At Kiplinger.com, the “total households in the U.S. with at least $1 million in investable assets have increased by 534,000 in the past 12 months, Thompson notes. In the past decade since the financial crisis, the number of millionaire households has grown by more than 2 million.
Those contrasts are apparent in the daily newspapers: athletes, actors…sign multi-million dollar contracts; while teachers, police…are cut because of funding deficits.
What does all of this say about Americans?
RELEVANCE TO THE CHRISTIAN LIFE:
The picture presented above says something about what Americans value.
My point is not to criticize athletics, or any other profession wherein many are millionaires. The big problem is that so much poverty exists side by side with so much extravagance.
Furthermore, I am not for socialism. I believe what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (10 minute video below) said about communism: it sounds great in theory, but it is inhumane in practice.
I think that as Christians we should notice and consider the extremes in lifestyle around us in the USA, while we strive to life the simple godly life that the Bible calls us to live (see, categories, Christian Meditation, Walking with God; A life of Salt and Light, November, 2019). These social contrasts are addressed often in the Prophets and wisdom literature of the Bible.
While meditating upon these contrasts, and considering where you fit and what you value as seen by your lifestyle; also, consider supporting the rescue mission in your neighborhood, as the fortunate homeless are there; others are under bridges…. Those agencies need to be supported, especially by Christians.
The following 11 minute video states that socialism is not the solution to the above problem of social disparity; furthermore, it provides a reality check for all those voters who think the progressive party / democratic party’s socialist agenda is a great idea.
Obama sought diligently to hasten the transformation from a democracy to a socialist nation, per the teachings of Saul Alinsky, that is apparently the progressive party agenda, see quotation below the video:
The following material was copied and pasted from: http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm
Please listen to the above 11 minute video before reading the following quotation. The full post on Alinsky’s book at the above site, is only a single page.
Note: The third paragraph under “The Purpose,” seems to describe well what Obama was attempting to do when he created so much national debt?
The following is from Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules For Radicals
Hillary Clinton’s 1969 Political Science Thesis (“There is Only the Fight”) refers to an earlier version of Alinsky’s training manual. “In 1946,” she wrote, “Alinsky’s first book, Reveille for Radicals, was published.”
Opening page – Dedication
“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
Prologue
“The Revolutionary force today has two targets, moral as well as material. Its young protagonists are one moment reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also urge violence and cry, ‘Burn the system down!‘ They have no illusions about the system, but plenty of illusions about the way to change our world. It is to this point that I have written this book.”
1. The Purpose
In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace…. “Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.’ This means revolution.” p.3
“Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing.” p.6
“A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage — the political paradise of communism.” p.10
“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth — truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing…. To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations….” pp.10-11
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Notes on Saul Alinsky and Neo-Marxism: Alinsky’s tactics were based, not on Stalin’s revolutionary violence, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci’s transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes. Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins’s wrath by suggesting that Lenin’s revolutionary plan wouldn’t work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish. Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:
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2. Of Means and Ends [Forget moral or ethical considerations]
STUDY RECOMMENDATIONS:
***My posts on Paganism / Neo Paganism, see categories, consider the revolutionary ideas of Aleister Crowley and Carl G. Jung; if you consider that series, you will see many similarities with the progressive party agenda.
***As you read scripture, note the verses where God calls us to care for the poor (that does not mean that it is our government’s job to care for them, but the individual Christian’s responsibility to care for them). Following, are just a few such verses: [I searched “the poor” on my free e-Sword Bible software, and got 166 results, the following verses came from that search]
Deu 15:4 “There should be no poor among you, for the LORD your God will greatly bless you in the land He is giving you as a special possession.
Deu 15:7 “But if there are any poor Israelites in your towns when you arrive in the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward them. Deu 15:8 Instead, be generous and lend them whatever they need.
Psa 41:1 For the choir director: A psalm of David. Oh, the joys of those who are kind to the poor! The LORD rescues them when they are in trouble.
Pro 14:31 Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but helping the poor honors Him.
Pro 19:17 If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD—and He will repay you!
Pro 21:13 Those who shut their ears to the cries of the poor will be ignored in their own time of need.
Pro 22:16 A person who gets ahead by oppressing the poor or by showering gifts on the rich will end in poverty.
Isa 3:15 How dare you crush My people, grinding the faces of the poor into the dust?” demands the Lord, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.
Amo 4:1 Listen to me, you fat cows living in Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, and who are always calling to your husbands, “Bring us another drink!”
Amo 5:12 For I know the vast number of your sins and the depth of your rebellions. You oppress good people by taking bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
2Co 9:9 As the Scriptures say, “They share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever.”
Gal 2:10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.