In Response
I'm giving up facebook for Lent. I waste way too much time on it. Time that could be better spent elsewhere. Lent is like New Year's though. Unless you are giving things up for the right reasons, then it is a rather meaningless gesture. But, I try to give things up at Lent that are a regular, but unnecessary, part of my life so that when I want to partake of that thing, I am reminded of why I gave that thing up in the first place.
Here's a link to the Hunger in America 2006 study (it's conducted every 4 years and surveys people from all over the country that are visiting food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc.)
http://www.hungerinamerica.org/key_findings/
According to the survey, only 6.7% of those surveyed at food pantries hadn't had income in the past month. 37.3% of households surveyed had at least one adult employed when the survey was conducted. 20.2% of the people surveyed were over the age of 65. 43% of households had children under the age of 18. 47.9% of the people surveyed were from suburban or rural areas. 26.3% owned the house they were living in. 36.6% had completed college and 15.4% had completed some college or a 2 year degree.
Only 10% of the people that received emergency food assistance in 2006 were homeless.
As for where my beliefs and ideas on poverty and "serving" come from? That's simple:
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 1 John 3:11
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:17
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
Now to address some of the comments from the previous entry. I'll probably miss some things. Forgive me. There were a lot of comments.
Yes, I am whiny sometimes in my posts, but this is my journal and I choose to use it as an outlet for my emotions at times. I'm not a very expressive person most of the time, but I have found that LJ is a great stress reliever. I type an entry when I'm feeling a strong emotion, and I usually feel much better when I am done, and often forget what it is I have written the next day.
When I said I couldn't wait to get home and serve, I didn't even mean at a soup kitchen, although I can see how that might have been implied. What I really want to do is use my strengths and degree and teach or help with GRE prep courses and lead a middle school age Bible study.
Credit cards would buy food. They probably wouldn't buy drugs. All of those crimes were committed by groups of young males. Not by families. None of the articles mention anything about the perpetrators stealing for food.
God helps those who help themselves? Rubbish. Thank you, Noah, for the scripture.
I make no apologies for my God and how I serve Him and I don't need to defend Him either. He stands just fine on His own. I know my heart is with Him and that's what matters. Not what anyone else thinks of my relationship with Him.
Just because I write about something in my LJ, that doesn't mean I'm not doing something about it. I think my job search was referenced? I have been actively looking for a job since Christmas. And before I started the internship I'm at now, I was actively looking for a job about eight months. (Before that I was in school). But I am also actively trying to decided what it is I want to do - researching career options, talking o and shadowing people in careers I'm interested in, looking into grad school programs, etc. But the bottom line is that I want to be where God wants me - no matter what my plans turn out to be.
$5 an hour isn't enough to live on. If you work 40 hrs a week, that's only $200 a week before taxes. If you work 60 hrs a week, that's only $300 a week before taxes. I make about $200 a week now and I don't pay utilites, rent and I get most of my meals during the week free, and I sometimes have trouble making ends meet...especially the couple of months I was going to the doctor every other week (and paying for prescriptions) for my asthma. If I didn't have the perks that go with my job, I would be standing in line at a food pantry and applying for government assistance to keep a roof over my head. ANd what if I had kids? Where would their childcare come from? Would I be able to buy them a Christmas present? Could they go to the doctor when they got sick? I doubt it.
I haven't researched this like you have, Ryan, but I have experienced the necessity of it on a personal level as a child. And I stand by my support of it. I have found that people often change their tune about labor laws when it becomes something more personal instead of a theory or something to think about. So, I encourage you to start looking at things like this from the point of view of the people being most affected by these policies, instead of the point of view of a politician or Republican or intellectual or scholar or somebody comfortably in the middle class.
Teachers are, unfortunately, often only one voice in a crowd in a child's life. I speak from experience on this. I could rehash the stories of my students at Withrow, but I'm not going to right now because I'm getting tired of typing and I want to wrap up and go home. Maybe later.
I completely agree that we should be teaching people to fish. But, according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (and common sense) - until a person's basic needs of food and shelter are met, they aren't going to respond to much else. So, the two things need to go hand in hand.
Which is why I love the Vineyard and their ministry so much and why I'm looking forward to being back there - they do what they can to meet people's basic needs and then they focus on "teaching them to fish." But they do both. Foodbanks in a Christian setting may be the only time a lot of people ever see Jesus and it may be the only time in their lives that they are served and seen as a child of God in the eyes of someone else. God loves all His children, and it's important that we show love to all of them.
Teachers are, unfortunately, often only one voice in a crowd in a child's life. I speak from experience on this. I could rehash the stories of my students at Withrow, but I'm not going to right now because I'm getting tired of typing and I want to wrap up and go home. Maybe later.
Let's be honest - none of this arguing on lj is going to make any of us change our minds. i think it's the experiences we have and the way we come to understand God and His word that are going to shape our ideas and opinions. So how about instead of writing out responses on lj to defend our positions, we spend that tiem doing whatever we think is the right way to help these people - because I hope we can all agree that there are people that need help.
Also, read Same Kind of Different as Me if you want an inside perspective on homelessness. It's a powerful true story and it helps you start to see the homeless and poor as individuals instead of just a group of people or a statistics on a piece of paper. It's a quick read.
Here's a link to the Hunger in America 2006 study (it's conducted every 4 years and surveys people from all over the country that are visiting food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc.)
http://www.hungerinamerica.org/key_findings/
According to the survey, only 6.7% of those surveyed at food pantries hadn't had income in the past month. 37.3% of households surveyed had at least one adult employed when the survey was conducted. 20.2% of the people surveyed were over the age of 65. 43% of households had children under the age of 18. 47.9% of the people surveyed were from suburban or rural areas. 26.3% owned the house they were living in. 36.6% had completed college and 15.4% had completed some college or a 2 year degree.
Only 10% of the people that received emergency food assistance in 2006 were homeless.
As for where my beliefs and ideas on poverty and "serving" come from? That's simple:
This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 1 John 3:11
If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 1 John 3:17
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
Now to address some of the comments from the previous entry. I'll probably miss some things. Forgive me. There were a lot of comments.
Yes, I am whiny sometimes in my posts, but this is my journal and I choose to use it as an outlet for my emotions at times. I'm not a very expressive person most of the time, but I have found that LJ is a great stress reliever. I type an entry when I'm feeling a strong emotion, and I usually feel much better when I am done, and often forget what it is I have written the next day.
When I said I couldn't wait to get home and serve, I didn't even mean at a soup kitchen, although I can see how that might have been implied. What I really want to do is use my strengths and degree and teach or help with GRE prep courses and lead a middle school age Bible study.
Credit cards would buy food. They probably wouldn't buy drugs. All of those crimes were committed by groups of young males. Not by families. None of the articles mention anything about the perpetrators stealing for food.
God helps those who help themselves? Rubbish. Thank you, Noah, for the scripture.
I make no apologies for my God and how I serve Him and I don't need to defend Him either. He stands just fine on His own. I know my heart is with Him and that's what matters. Not what anyone else thinks of my relationship with Him.
Just because I write about something in my LJ, that doesn't mean I'm not doing something about it. I think my job search was referenced? I have been actively looking for a job since Christmas. And before I started the internship I'm at now, I was actively looking for a job about eight months. (Before that I was in school). But I am also actively trying to decided what it is I want to do - researching career options, talking o and shadowing people in careers I'm interested in, looking into grad school programs, etc. But the bottom line is that I want to be where God wants me - no matter what my plans turn out to be.
$5 an hour isn't enough to live on. If you work 40 hrs a week, that's only $200 a week before taxes. If you work 60 hrs a week, that's only $300 a week before taxes. I make about $200 a week now and I don't pay utilites, rent and I get most of my meals during the week free, and I sometimes have trouble making ends meet...especially the couple of months I was going to the doctor every other week (and paying for prescriptions) for my asthma. If I didn't have the perks that go with my job, I would be standing in line at a food pantry and applying for government assistance to keep a roof over my head. ANd what if I had kids? Where would their childcare come from? Would I be able to buy them a Christmas present? Could they go to the doctor when they got sick? I doubt it.
I haven't researched this like you have, Ryan, but I have experienced the necessity of it on a personal level as a child. And I stand by my support of it. I have found that people often change their tune about labor laws when it becomes something more personal instead of a theory or something to think about. So, I encourage you to start looking at things like this from the point of view of the people being most affected by these policies, instead of the point of view of a politician or Republican or intellectual or scholar or somebody comfortably in the middle class.
Teachers are, unfortunately, often only one voice in a crowd in a child's life. I speak from experience on this. I could rehash the stories of my students at Withrow, but I'm not going to right now because I'm getting tired of typing and I want to wrap up and go home. Maybe later.
I completely agree that we should be teaching people to fish. But, according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (and common sense) - until a person's basic needs of food and shelter are met, they aren't going to respond to much else. So, the two things need to go hand in hand.
Which is why I love the Vineyard and their ministry so much and why I'm looking forward to being back there - they do what they can to meet people's basic needs and then they focus on "teaching them to fish." But they do both. Foodbanks in a Christian setting may be the only time a lot of people ever see Jesus and it may be the only time in their lives that they are served and seen as a child of God in the eyes of someone else. God loves all His children, and it's important that we show love to all of them.
Teachers are, unfortunately, often only one voice in a crowd in a child's life. I speak from experience on this. I could rehash the stories of my students at Withrow, but I'm not going to right now because I'm getting tired of typing and I want to wrap up and go home. Maybe later.
Let's be honest - none of this arguing on lj is going to make any of us change our minds. i think it's the experiences we have and the way we come to understand God and His word that are going to shape our ideas and opinions. So how about instead of writing out responses on lj to defend our positions, we spend that tiem doing whatever we think is the right way to help these people - because I hope we can all agree that there are people that need help.
Also, read Same Kind of Different as Me if you want an inside perspective on homelessness. It's a powerful true story and it helps you start to see the homeless and poor as individuals instead of just a group of people or a statistics on a piece of paper. It's a quick read.