If I remember correctly, when I was raising my children in a “middle-class” family, my biggest complaint was that both parties favored the “upper-class” with tax breaks and the “lower-class” (aka poor) with handout programs of all kind. The middle-class was ignored for many years,particularly with tuition help, etc. In today’s world, the poor have all of their welfare programs in place and “poor” women on welfare are having more and more babies in order to collect more and more welfare money and housing loans while their “men” are living off the food stamps she gets and neither have to work! Sorry, kind of a stretch, I know, but it makes my point. Having said all of that, there are many poor people who need help through no fault of their own and we as Christians should reach out to them as our own finances allow. I hope the current national financial situation does not create more poor, out-of-work people. In a perfect world there would be no class distinctions….too bad this is not a perfect world.

And the ones that are being abused the most are not the ones really geared towards the poor – day care tax breaks for two income families with a BMW and a Highlander in the garage, purchasing unwanted agricultural products to prop up already inflated farm prices, grants to colleges and museums to produce work that no one is interested in and of course bailing out poorly run corporations where the CEO’s make millions.

Christian Beyers last blog post..Dead Jewish Comedian Preaches on Atonement