Disturbing

What has happened to us?

I belong to an art site where people make art using AI. Each day, the site offers a challenge, which is a contest, and specifies the topic. Yesterday it was “acts of kindness”. Today I voted on 40 images (required for credit). Of those 40, almost half showed a robot offering a flower to a human as an act of kindness. A substantial portion of the remainder was someone offering an umbrella in rain, or helping an old lady across the street, a transient act with little cost to the giver. Only TWO showed food banks or serious efforts to give food to the hungry of our nation.

Recently, the American government was shut down. Even more recently, this meant that people who get food stamps are not getting them. They’re presumably going hungry, although most have some income they can use to buy food. Food stamps has been a bad program from the outset, because most of the benefits are spent on junk that destroys health. The last thing needy people need is to be sick.

Why are so many people relying on government, which forces people to pay for food stamps with taxes, instead of their local church? In fact in some locations, it is ILLEGAL to give food to the hungry in a public place or even in a church. Why? Would you go to your neighbor, point a gun in his face, and demand his money? Why are you allowing government to do this for you? Charity is what is freely given out of love. Not what is provided by robbery.

Last I looked, Meals on Wheels still exists. This is the Salvation Army taking food to the elderly who are no longer capable of preparing their own meals in their own homes. There are several other such programs. My recollection is that only one of these efforts offers genuinely nutritious food, free of stuff we know causes harm like seed oils aka vegetable oils. While it is possible most people don’t know it, I do, and a growing number do, that seed oils undermine health worse than sugar. Why are these meals being offered so full of ingredients that make people sick and so devoid of real nutrition? And why are these the only systematic efforts of any size to provide food to the hungry?

I find this whole thing highly disturbing. I hope you do, too. I don’t know how to return the nation to sanity. I hope people will think about it, and actually figure this out. We need to return the task of charity to the church and family where it belongs. God didn’t give this responsibility to government. In the meantime, there is one thing we CAN do, and that is pray. And we can contribute to our local food bank. We need to do both.

I don’t have the answers. God does. Think about it. Let’s vote for people who understand the true nature of kindness and charity, and get the policies of this nation restored to what God intends and the Founders tried to provide. Then find a way to help with the problem and act on it, no matter how small.