Liberal Facade
It is a well-known fact that the Liberal political and theological parties pride themselves on the desire to care for the poor and needy. But we know that this is less of a desire and belief than it is a political playing card. The poor see no more liberation from Liberals as they do anyone else. In fact, Liberalism is harmful to the poor in many ways. Take a look at this well-articulated article on the matter.
As we have discussed within the Orthodox and Community series on this site, it is the Church’s tradition to care for the poor. Liberalism takes this traditional ideal of helping poor and needy from the traditional world-view and turns it on its head through a type of re-exploitation, creating a false dichotomy of rich and poor to fuel their campaign.
Liberal argument is constantly presupposing that poverty itself can be completely eliminated…
But Christ said that the poor will always be with us. The liberal notion that poverty can be completely (or even mostly) eliminated is not so much as a fairy-tale/utopian concept as it is a means of self-gratification and an attempt to squash traditional society. Liberalism is not fighting for the poor but what is Conservatism doing?
Traditionalist Fear
Let’s face it, we Conservatives are afraid! We are afraid of embracing the poor and needy because the left has a hold of them. They are dwelling in their camp and for us to help them, we would need to walk over to the border to invite them. But we are afraid because:
1) We do not have a cogent solution for their rehabilitation. Our economy of thought and practice is that of capital. Many of us are entrenched within the medieval concept of the Protestant Work Ethic, where a person deserves what they have based on how hard they have worked. We want ‘freedom.’ We want a society that is based on a radical form of reaping and sowing. This is no less a heresy and a regurgitation of Hindu teachings.
2) We are within a dichotomy in the West where to be compassionate toward the poor is a sign of weakness, an attempt to appease our conscience and give up what we have “worked so hard for.”
3) We are afraid that if we give our attention and energy to philanthropy, we will lose our fight for “freedom and democracy!” We are FALLING FOR THE TRAP! The Liberals steal the essence of philanthropic economy from us and we begin panicking over our “rights” as if we are going to lose our property and freedom to secular socialism.
Calvinistic Rights are an Abomination
Will we lose the economic gains that we believe we have worked for if we shift our focus off of protecting our freedom? We might! But is our “freedom” and “rights” worth going to hell for? Yes, that is where the path to “rights” and “freedom” takes us: to hell!
Neither the Bible nor the Fathers teach us that our calling is to preserve freedom and rights. Freedom and rights within the spiritual realm is essential, but that is not what the West is fighting for. We are fighting for a freedom that is simply unheard of within the realm of the Church. Neither the Orthodox’ nor the Catholics teach (or have ever taught) what the West was first victimized by: The Protestant Work Ethic…The notion that a society can be built based on an economical reaping and sowing.
Yes, there are Scriptures, etc., that teach how in doing good we will be returned seven-fold, etc. But doing good is to be philanthropic, NOT narcissistic. Christ says we are judged not on how hard we work or how we fight for our economical freedoms, but on how we structure our lives around those in need.
Are you getting fired up, yet? If not, take a deep breath and exhale slowly. Now, think of what it is like to be poor and needy. These people need us!
Our weapons are backfiring. We are losing not because we need to get back to our supposed roots, but because we have lost our compassion. We are too afraid to meet the majority of the population (the poor and needy) at the border of the Liberal camp. We want to defend the fort when the fort washed away years ago. It was built on a sandy foundation.
The West need not return to old capitalism of sort. That is the Protestant Work Ethic that destroyed us in the first place. It is the doctrine that fooled us in to selling off our ministries (universities, hospitals, orphanages, etc) to the secularists, who became Liberal Capitalists.
America and much of the west was built on the Anglican (Anglo-Catholic) principle of Christian philanthropy. But as the Calvinist Protestants began to take over (it is estimated that 80% of the Revolutionary rebels were Calvinists) the Anglo-Catholic principle of society began to diminish. And with the Masonic overthrow within public office (Calvinist Puritans gave up on their theocratic world-view), the outcome is where we are now: Liberal control and traditional fear!
Shifting our Thoughts and Actions Back to Christ
To “make America Great Again” would mean to return not to the heretical Protestant/Masonic rebellion but to the part of Anglo-Catholicism that first gleaned from the Orthodox (Byzantine) model of society, where economy and society was founded on the bettering of humanity, rather than the dividing of humanity…When the community was based on preventative measures rather than reactive/capitalistic measures for private wealth of a small minority.
Poverty can never become completely eliminated but a society based on class-division is a great sin. Christ said the poor will always be “amongst us.” They should be intertwined within our society and not isolated in to ghettos. And the ministries to help them should not be given over to a secular institution who could really care less about them.
We need to exit the Republican Party and paradigm all together to become the Church. Go ahead and vote if you must but do not vote (even in your mind) for the government to replace the Church OR FOR CORPORATE AMERICA TO REPLACE THE CHURCH.
Stating that we need to keep feeding the rich to support the poor is like saying we need to feed the wolf to guard the sheep!
The banks and secular government offices need to be completely outmoded through the work of the Church, as it was in pre-revolutionary times. This is what the Russian Orthodox have been doing to the Bolsheviks and this is what the Lutherans should have done with the Nazis. This calling of the Church helping our neighbor is at the heart of our salvation! The Eucharist is given to us for this, to manifest heaven on earth, to connect the spiritual with the physical. To do anything other is completely narcissistic and heretical. In a future article we will discuss what the kingdom looks like, even within a modern secular society…how we can start in small ways and not be afraid of larger ways.
“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” St James the Brother of our Lord
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