Correct me if I'm wrong here, but a life led like Jesus' would involve personal, hand-to-hand charity from what you had to give.
Right.
Unfortunately,
no one gives to charity on a personal basis, which denotes the need for the government to do it for them.
Non-institutionalized charity would mean a lot of hungry kids.
A "liberal" (U.S. term) government would take from those who have and hand it out to those who have not, i.e. all the charity "work" is done by a middleman and all you give up is cash. How is this a religious ideal, when the religion is being sold as a personal save?
To the religious (and the Conservative), institutionalized charity is not Charity. It is arguable whether or not it materially benefits mankind as a whole, but it doesn't benefit the individual giving the cash in any meaningful way.
Why does the individual
giving need to benefit?
Screw religious ideals, and screw personal fulfillment. The only thing that matters is that a needy person recieves what he/she needs to make it through the day, and the tools needed to build a better life for him/herself.
Liberal Christians (an ilk of which I formerly belonged) realize that many people are selfish and/or ignorant to the sufferings of others. Therefore, we
force them to give.
Jesus remarked that when giving, "never let your right hand know what your left hand does" (or something along those lines). Jesus did not care if someone lost the chance to get that warm fuzzy feeling from doing good- all he cared about was whether 'poor family A' has enough food to make it through the week.
Jesus was perfect; he did not need to prove his righteousness by taking time out of his busy schedule to heal the sick. But he did it anyway, and in complete secrecy whenever possible.
By not directly working with the misfortunate, you are missing out on a religious experience.
When you are a typical Christian, living in a typical middle class suburban neighborhood, your chances to work
with the misfortunate are few and far between.
Few people have the means to carry out a campaign in a poor American neighborhood. Few people have the time to travel to Africa and hand out bag lunches.
That's why there are institutionalized charities and government welfare.
Liberal is a Right-Wing code word for many things, just one of which is impersonal charity -- the so-called hand-out for those who don't have to do very much to prove that they're in need of it. For those who don't trust government as far as they can throw it, they wouldn't trust that a government agency could reliably make that call.
I don't trust independant citizens to make the call
at all.
