Something is Not Right Here

A new survey came out by the Pew Institute the other day and I found it quite interesting. How could these be? I mean I thought we were moving forward a little bit but how could we get things so… wrong. The survey polled evangelicals and non-evangelicals on budget items they would like to increase or decrease.
Number 1 in spending cuts for evangelicals is Aid to World’s Poor, coming in at 56%, compared to 50% of non-evangelicals. On the flipside you have 45% of evangelicals in favor of increasing “defense” spending compared to 28% of non-evangelicals.
The list of things to cut was closely followed by unemployment and the environment where evangelicals favored reducing spending towards the 2 issues at almost a two to one rate compared to non-evangelicals.
Christians over non-Christians are willing to spend more money killing people than helping people. I don’t mean to demonize here but how did this happen?
I have one theory. I troll the Relevant website and have started to notice a trend. In many articles addressing serving the poor or helping those in need, many people comment that it’s not that they don’t believe in helping the poor, but they don’t believe in a handout and want people to take personal responsibility. Ah, I think we are starting to get to something. Folks are still buying the 1970’s myth of the welfare queen cruising along in her caddy spending government money on drugs and other non-necessities. This was beautiful crafting by the larger than life Ronald Reagan which is apparently sticking with us through today. Just to speak a little bit about the myth, with our economy in shackles, currently 1 in 7 Americans live in poverty. With welfare, the maximum many states set is $400 a month and that goes to single mothers with children, which do make up 90% of welfare recipients. These are tough numbers but its truth.
We have got to give people the benefit of the doubt, that includes those who are poor and it includes evangelicals who I am trying to hold to a higher standard. Many folks haven’t met each other and don’t know each other’s plight. I’m going to chalk this depressing graph up to misinformation but how about we all get together and have a face to face talk. See others eyes and learn the truth that were all children of God and deserve a fair chance to plea their own case.