Do taxes equal love and compassion?
This image has been floating arount the facebook for the last few days. It seems embarrasingly superficial to me.
My problem with this statement has been that Jesus did not command Rome to force people to care for the poor and serve the needy. Jesus commanded us to care for one another as a part of our lives. This was something we were supposed to do as individuals, and in so doing, the understanding of the reality of the less fortunate will reinforce an appreciation of the blessings that we have.
Instead, by institutionalizing (incrementally, over time) the desired outcomes of compassion, the actual compassion has been removed from society. The truely needy and profoundly empoverished have been lost amongst the masses of the "assisted". And the individual mandate to love and care for one another has been replaced by the April 15th version of "I gave at the office."