Aid from the government as opposed to giving in the Church

In addition, a few of my friends have posted something about how there are homeless vets, unemployment and a variety of other social ills but yet we send a ton of foreign aid overseas instead of taking care of our own.  First off, the amount of foreign aid we give is less than one percent of the overall budget.  Secondly, how much of that is actual aid money and how much is military aid money, two very different things in my humble opinion?  

All that aside, I have a hard time listening to people who talk about welfare fraud and abuse but don’t spend any actual time with the poor.  Conservatives are quick to point out that they ‘support helping the poor, but do not support enabling the lazy.’  It was something along those lines anyway that I saw on facebook that someone had posted.  That’s a fine argument to make, as long as the ones making the argument actually help the poor personally.  My fear/experience is that many of them don’t.

I heard Tony Campolo once say in regards to welfare and the social safety net, “My friends tell me and complain that the government shouldn’t provide a safety net.  It’s the church’s job to take care of the poor.  I then respond that they’re absolutely right, but if we take away the government safety net, then we better be prepared to have a social net to replace it, and I can assure you we don’t.”  That’s not an exact quote but it was that general idea.  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

You see, ultimately I have big dreams for the Church, both in the USA where I’ve been raised as well as the global Church.  Not only that, but I dare say God’s dreams for His bride far exceed anything I could even imagine.  I wonder if His heart breaks when local expressions of the church are strapped for money because their people don’t give enough or because of financial mismanagement.  Similarly, I wonder if His heart breaks if local church leaders and members successfully help their other members get on track financially to where they’re able to give back to the church but when they do they spend the vast majority of their people’s money on an enormous building campaign.  All the while there are people in their very own communities who go to sleep without a roof over their heads.

I wonder what we could accomplish in the world if only the Christians in the USA alone gave 10 percent of their income in tithing?  People argue that is an Old Testament command, but my response is that I have a hard time seeing anywhere in the New Testament where it says to give less than the tithe.  If anything, it usually says to give more, right?  I mean, that would be a tremendous amount of money to be stewarded, right?

For starters, money obviously doesn’t solve all the problems in the world and never will.  It causes corruption both at home and abroad.  It can be used very well though in the world if people are wise with how they handle their personal finances and how they hold the organizations they support accountable.  With that in mind, even if every Christian tithed in America, how would we then spend all that money?  If you look at our recent history, there probably wouldn’t be enough land for all the new church buildings that we’d inevitably build.  What if people caught a heart for loving their neighbors as themselves though?  What if that spread like wildfire throughout the church in America?  I wonder what that would look like.