Joy Bennett: “Five Ways Christians Must Stop Failing the Poor”
God never tells us to help only those who deserve it. God commands us to help (see the above verses if you question that). Before you whine “That isn’t fair,” remember this: God poured grace on us before we deserved it, before we knew better, and even now when we defy clear commands and do what we want to do. God keeps forgiving, keeps loving, keeps helping us get back up on our feet and try again. We are to be imitators of God. Therefore, we ought to pour out God’s vulgar grace on everyone, especially those who don’t deserve it. They are just like us.They may not deserve it, they may not respond the way we want them to, but we do it anyway because that’s what God did for us. As God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, we are to be God’s hands and feet.
Craig M. Watts: “Robbing the Rich: Biblical Concern or Political Preoccupation?”
In fact private property is not the first principle of biblical economics. Rather it is found in the words God spoke to Job, “Everything under heaven belongs to me” (Job 41:11) and in the declaration of the Psalmist, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers” (Psalm 24:1-2). Everything else scripture teaches about ownership follows from this claim. Unqualified, unlimited private ownership finds no support in the Bible. It is subject to divine constraints and purposes.
Leonard Pitts Jr.: “Brutish goals of Jim Crow never died”
We have seen these shenanigans before: grandfather clauses; poll taxes, literacy tests. Yet African Americans — heck, Americans in general — seem remarkably quiescent about seeing it all come around again, same old garbage in a different can.
“If you want to vote, show it,” trilled a TV commercial in support of Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law before a judge blocked its implementation. The tenor of the ad was telling, though, implicitly suggesting that voting is a privilege for which one should be happy to jump through arbitrary hoops.
But voting is emphatically not a privilege. It is a right. By definition, then, it must be broadly accessible. These laws ensure that it is not.
Jamie L. Manson: “Why do so many Catholics support marriage equality? Blame the Catholic imagination”
Those who possess a sacramental view of the world often realize that any human person or relationship that brings love, mercy, forgiveness, kindness, generosity or faithfulness into the world is a sign of God’s grace. Perhaps this is the reason so many Catholics defend marriage equality: They have recognized these graces can come forth as much through same-sex couples as heterosexual couples. Those who have a Catholic imagination recognize that a couple’s ability to enter into a marriage commitment is not contingent on their anatomies, but on the depth, strength and fruitfulness of their bond.
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