Wherein the Apostle Paul of Ryan attempts to get Jesus to understand why helping the poor and sick only hurts them.
'A woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”
Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”'
It's sad because it's true.
And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan … – The New York Times
A parable considers the Republican “health care” plan.
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I wonder if any of these characters ever read these polemics against them. If they do, what rebuttal might they offer?
+Travis Bird An interesting question. I have to imagine, after a time, it just becomes background noise to them.
That said, one can always hope.
And that said, people can find what they are looking for in Scripture, which is why you can get folks straight-faced insisting that the Bible distinctly speaks out against the minimum wage (or, in generations past, for the legitimacy of chattel slavery). I am certainly guilty of same, though (to my own mind, of course) to a higher purpose.
As Will Shakespeare put it:
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Or Georg Lichtenberg:
A book is a mirror: when a monkey
looks in, no apostle can look out.
+Travis Bird The usual response I get is that it's the church's (and other charities) job to care for the poor, not the government's.
http://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx
+Josh Brown Yes. Usually punctuated by "that's how it always used to work". Which ignores little things like the fact that caring for illnesses then basically meant food and bed and wait to see if you survived. To mention just one problem with that history.
The man still acts like a Randite. The Catholic Christian veneer — not a lot of Randites getting elected in the US — is paper thin.
Remember that Ryan was for Ayn Rand until he was against her.
2005 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/audio-surfaces-paul-ryans-effusive-love-ayn-rand/328754/
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"I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people."
"I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are."
"It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well."
"But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."
"And when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism—that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism—you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand."
"It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are."
"Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works."
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2014 https://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/5450-paul-ryan-rejects-ayn-rand-in-the-new-york-times
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I always understood you as being an Ayn Rand aficionado. But you distanced yourself from her writing during the campaign. What’s your real view of her?
No, I wasn’t distancing. I adored her novels when I was young, and in many ways they gave me an interest in economics. But as a devout, practicing Catholic, I completely reject the philosophy of objectivism.
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+Josh Brown The argument is that any claim to Christian obligation has to be voluntary, not imposed by the Gubbiment.
Leaving aside the pragmatic reasons for not having people die in the streets from starvation and disease, I think there is a Christian argument for advocating for societal support of the poor and sick — it does not accrue to the virtue of those who do it involuntarily, but those so advocating act in keeping with the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:31-46&version=KJV).
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25:31-46&version=KJV
+Kee Hinckley If private charity could solve all of these problems, I'd be wildly in favor of it.
But a review of even "how it used to be" shows that a lot of people continued to suffer because those who choose to offer charitable support net far less than the needs of those who need it. Review the debates over the original Social Security act over the elderly dying of starvation, of illness, of cold …
+John E. Bredehoft Apparently then he is only lately a "devout, practicing Catholic."
Which is not beyond belief, certainly, if his actions actually supported his words.