Week 31 2013 Smiling Faces

“Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend

Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within

I'm telling you beware, beware of the handshake
That hides the snake
Listen to me now, beware
Beware of that pat on the back
It just might hold you back”

These are words from an old song demonstrating the truth of racial discrimination.  Very often those who are pretending to be a friend have a hidden agenda.  There are those who offer handouts only to keep one from advancing themselves.  Some of these are devious.  Others are acting in ignorance.  Our national welfare system is a prime example.  By providing unlimited welfare we have developed a group of people who no longer have any incentive to better themselves.  They are being held back, having become dependent upon their master, the government.  Instead of limiting welfare and helping its recipients get job training and jobs, the system actually rewards those who choose to remain on welfare by making it more financially lucrative than an entry level job.  With food stamps many of them are able to eat better than a working family.  Even though history has proven the failure of these types of social programs our politicians continue to fund and promote them.

Back in the early nineties Una and I lived in Tulare, California.  We bought a tract home in a new housing development.  The total cost for building the home was $64,000.  Soon after we moved in there was an article in the local paper about a proposal for low-income housing.  It was to be an apartment complex at a cost of $68,000 per unit.  Since I had been involved in local politics, I knew all of our city council people and the mayor.  So, I called each one to make a case against this development.  My argument went as follows: If you build an apartment complex, filling it with low income people, it will turn into a slum because they will have no respect for the property.  However, if you take that same money and use it to build single-family houses and then subsidize the payments for low-income families, giving them a stake in the property with the hope and possibility of one day owning their own home, you will have provided them a hand up, helping them to become productive citizens instead of dependent citizens.  The cost would be the same, but the outcome would yield greater benefits for everyone concerned.  My argument fell on deaf ears.  They went ahead and built the apartment complex and it stands today as a slum filled with people who have been robbed of their honor and self-respect, becoming dependent upon those “smiling faces.”

For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”  1 Thessalonians 3:10 NIV