ChristianGovernance eletter – November 15, 2012
Focus on the Family head, Jim Daly, seems to be a really nice guy, but the interests of the Church and society are not advanced by naivity. Note the story below with Mr. Daly’s comments, followed by our analysis.
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Focus on the Family Community – November 12, 2012
NYC Mayor Bans Food Donations?
Posted by Jim Daly
When I first heard the news, I assumed it couldn’t be true, that it was just another email hoax along the lines of the generous Nigerian benefactor who wants to wire me $5,000,000. But then I read the story from CBS News: “Glenn Richter arrived at a West Side synagogue on Monday to collect surplus bagels – fresh nutritious bagels – to donate to the poor. However, under a new edict from Bloomberg’s food police he can no longer donate the food to city homeless shelters. It’s the “no bagels for you” edict.” The story continued: “Richter has been collecting food from places like the Ohav Zedek synagogue and bringing it to homeless shelters for more than 20 years, but recently his donation, including a “cholent” or carrot stew, was turned away because the Bloomberg administration wants to monitor the salt, fat and fiber eaten by the homeless.”
“Richter said he was stunned. He said his family has eaten the same food forever and flourished.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been making headlines of late championing the rising threat of obesity, a significant problem to be sure. You’ll remember it was the mayor who advocated for the ban on soft drinks larger than 16 ounces.
But now every food donation will need to undergo a nutritional evaluation?
Common sense is supposed to be the genius of humanity, but lately I’m not so sure.
Is this what happens when government decides to flex more and more muscle?
To ban private food donations not only rejects and discourages generosity and goodwill but also further ingrains in the public conscience the idea that charity is best managed and monitored by government.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Where is the person of prudence?
Where is the reasonable man?
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For too many Christians today, the desire to be a nice guy has moved from attitude to theology. As a result, we try to give the enemies of Christ the benefit of the doubt as reasonable, respectable people. As a result, we keep getting caught by surprise by their assaults. This keeps us from launching an effective resistance or counter-strike. We get picked off one at a time as each of us surrenders at different points in the process. (God commands us to “believe all things” (1 Corinthians 13), but this is not a requirement to be naive.
New York mayor Bloomberg is an evil tyrant, a thug, who is happy with baby murder, and who endorsed Obama in the recent presidential election. He thinks the state should regulate the size of our drinks. He is an environmental pantheist. He is morally repugnant and an intellectual lightweight, a pappy-state elitist who wants to use the state’s billyclub to force compliance to his notions of health and safety. His latest move reported above is completely predictable. Nobody should have been surprised by such an arrogant, police state type move. Why is Glenn Richter “stunned”? Why is Jim Daly trying to interact with the move with rationality? Mayor Bloomberg is not rational. He’s a demagogue.
Gentle Christians may not like this assessment, but which analysis prepares Christians with the correct posture to combat this wickedness and injustice against the oppressed? The worst oppressor today is the growing humanist police state. Biblical prophetic condemnation and judgment against oppressors, against those who exploit their power to abuse and enslave the vulnerable, such as widows, orphans and aliens, is ruthless and uncompromising.
Christians are obligated by God to advance justice and stand with the downtrodden. This requires vigorous resistance to idolatry and passionate opposition to oppression.
In our day, this requires opposition to a growing police state. Not wasted energy contemplating imaginary concepts like “common sense.” Human depravity as taught in the Bible negates the notion of common sense. Sense is not common. We live in a world of antithesis. Sense is rooted in truth – the Bible. Humanists have rejected truth so they have no sense. Most modern Christians have abandoned this truth. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say they’ve never heard it because seminaries a long ago stopped teaching this Biblical truth to pastoral students. Christians need to rediscover this truth and embrace it if they don’t want to continue being taken by surprise to their own detriment by Christ’s enemies.
Mr. Daly also asks: “Where is the person of prudence? Where is the reasonable man?”
Again, why do Christians expect to find prudence and reason in godless men, especially the leaders of centralist civil governments? These men embrace foolishness, idolatry, false divinity, self-righteousness. Prudence is hard enough to find among Christians, but that’s the only place we will find it.
If you want prudence and reason among your political leaders, then you’d better raise the bar and only vote for Christian political leaders.
It’s only by the undeserved grace of God that we don’t have more civil magistrates who are as wicked and irrational as Mayor Bloomberg, arrogating more power to himself, pontificating from his throne while micro-managing the smallest matters of health and safety for the ignorant masses whom he is glad to rule for their own good.
Christians who actually want to make progress in this world, advancing the Kingdom of God against the injustice and oppression of wicked tyrants, need to exercise honest, accurate Biblical analysis rather than viewing the world through false humility and rose-coloured glasses. Rose-coloured glasses haven’t saved anybody from oppression or delivered anyone from injustice.
Embrace God’s truth. Embrace the antithesis. Identify the evil for what it is. Don’t give the benefit of the doubt to those whose track record is hatred of God and oppression of the vulnerable.
