Eating and Working - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

We do not and cannot hear the Bible in a vacuum. We are living in a time when our country is radically reducing support for those who are poor and struggling. We are seeing this most drastically with the federal attack on SNAP funding – our primary food assistance program for those in need. The threads of the social safety net are actively being cut. More and more people are finding themselves on the margins of society, and once there, they are finding less help than ever before. Some careless, clueless Christian leaders will even use the text from 2 Thessalonians to support this action. 

Much of the rhetoric around reduction and removal of this kind of assistance is that it incentivizes people not to work – that essentially people are lazy and these programs reward their laziness. Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. This is an age-old and pernicious characterization that allows us to distance ourselves from those in need, allows us to conveniently sidestep our mutual belonging, our responsibility to one another. 

It also ignores reality. 

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