A Christmas Reminder - The Curse of Ignorance and Want

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.  Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

Not much has changed since the London of Charles Dickens, December 19, 1843, when he was forced to self-publish A Christmas Carol.  His novella was a statement on the times in this city during a period witnessing the birth of an industrial revolution.  As with any revolution this one was not without victims, in this case he noted the dire effects it was visiting upon children of the poor.

There are still poor that suffer greatly; still in want of common necessaries and common comforts.  I think the two most obvious differences are that the hundreds of thousands are now, also, in the United States, and our government uses our taxes to encourage these poor to never look for honest work.  It is a lifestyle that is passed down from one generation to the next like a gift that just keeps on giving; a free ride on the merry go round that never stops.

There are still poor that suffer greatly, in want of common necessaries and common comforts.  I think the two most obvious differences are that the hundreds of thousands are now, also, in the United States; our government uses our taxes to encourage them to never look for honest work.  It makes one consider if Scrooge isn't correct in his own assessment.

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?"  demanded Scrooge.  "Are they still in operation?"

"They are.  Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?"  said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh!  I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge.  "I'm very glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.  We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.  What shall I put you down for?"

Yes, this is that time of year when all of the bleeding hearts organizations try to insert their hands deep into the hidden recesses of your pockets looking for that odd penny or so; the incessant phone calls and mail boxes full of recyclable charity flyers ever hoping to entice you to fall for the oft recommended $5, $10, $15, or $20 donation.  And don't forget, you may now give monthly if you allow them to rip it from your greedy grasp through credit card or automatic withdrawal.

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge.  "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.  I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry.  I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

And so Scrooge has unwittingly steered the conversation to the comment that will haunt him.  It is a comment quite a few make under their breath, hoping no one hears.  It is a comment that is ill suited for our nation today, as there is no fear of welfare recipients dying anytime soon.  Welfare pays better than some jobs, and those that have a job keep it due the pride having a job brings.  They are still poor, but they are working.  The comment, however, is ill-suited for any robust nation.

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.  Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."

"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It's not my business," Scrooge returned.  "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.  Mine occupies me constantly.  Good afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew.

"If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."   This would seem a pointed opinion; a sharp retort and biting commentary from someone that knows hard work, the value of his money.  Commentary from someone that has never slept on the streets or eaten discarded food out of a restaurant dumpster.  This from a bitter man that, in all ignorance, never thought once of working a soup kitchen or handing out food and blankets on the street to those wanting for sustenance and warmth.

It has been said of the times that [carnal activity] was the only affordable pleasure for the poor; the result was thousands of children living in unimaginable poverty, filth, and disease. 

In 1839 it was estimated that nearly half of all funerals in London were for children under the age of ten. Those who survived grew up without education or resource and virtually no chance to escape the cycle of poverty.

David Perdue's Charles Dickens Page 

Children are the real victims of this ignorance.  It seems like this too has not changed since the time of Dickens.  The poor in this country seem rife with fatherless homes and children without guidance.  Schools in these inner-city neighborhoods are jokes and offer no escape from poverty and circumstance for the majority of young.  They are the truly helpless that are left wanting and at peril of abuse from predatory animals and gangs on the street; becoming one of these seems the only path to survival, yet it most certainly leads to early death for many.  For these children, Dickens' quote becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." 

His comments come back to haunt him and lead to a warning for us, as well.

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here." exclaimed the Ghost. 

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. 

"Spirit. are they yours." Scrooge could say no more. 

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it." cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."  

"Have they no refuge or resource." cried Scrooge.

 

"Are there no prisons." said the Spirit, turning on him

for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses."

We have a subculture of entitlement in this country which we have nurtured until they outnumber those that can provide.  We seek to blame those that take advantage of what is offered.  Why are we blaming those for whom we create the programs to assist?  Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but he will be back with his hand out tomorrow because the fish is free!  Who can truly fault them?  We seek to shift the blame to them because the true perpetrators of this nightmare - is us.  We give incentives for people not to find jobs, and we even give incentives and bonuses for directors of these entitlement programs to bring more people onboard.  Don't look for work!  Come get the freebies, so I can get my bonus!  We have even sent all of the menial labor jobs overseas just to ensure we have a robust supply of poor to dust off and parade out at Christmas time and during elections.

We created the poor among us, and then we ignore them, and why not?  We pay for the right, don't we?  But these people really aren't poor; they are what they want to be.  They are, for the most part, working the system, and they are content to go on doing so.  So, suck it up, and quit complaining about them, we developed the program, coaxed them onboard, nurtured them to stay, and allow the insanity of it to continue feeding on itself until it implodes.

But, what if we didn't?  What if we said enough is enough and stopped the welfare, for all but the truly mentally and physically handicapped?  What then?  Well, all the jobs are overseas.  If a man wants to cut your lawn and gets injured, he owns your house.  Part time work around the house becomes an insurance nightmare for a homeowner.  Comprehensive changes will need to be made so the work program can be robust enough to involve all citizens at all levels.  The outsourced overseas jobs will all have to come home and, as in Mexico, if a citizen is available for the job they get first dibs on it.  If you want to work and live in Mexico, you better bring a job they need, don't have, and one no one there can do, or you will find yourself in court for taking jobs from Mexicans.

We have a country full of poor that are capable of work and yet we demand nothing of them.  We have a percentage of these poor that would love to work but cannot; there are no jobs for them.  And we have another percentage that has dropped through the cracks; these homeless men and women who sleep in their cars or in the woods, and under bridges and overpasses.  You can see their blue poly-tarp tents along Interstate 5 as you enter Seattle and other large cities in America.  For the most part these are the handicapped, elderly, or mentally infirm that can no longer hold down a job, or never have.  We have determined they are not bad off enough to be institutionalized; unfortunately they are bad off enough to be unemployable. These are our country's cast offs.  We have thrown them out with the garbage and forgotten them.  The last percentage are the homeless families, the parents with no address to offer when applying for work, hence no job.  And swirling around the periphery of all this, ever tugging at our heartstrings, are the innocent children. 

"And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it."

Can we deny the innocent?  We grind our teeth and scream foul when ISIS cuts a child in half, and yet we have children in our own country that walk a fine line between health and malady.  We have other children alone on the streets, many of their own accord, and just as many for reason and cause.  They scream that they don't want us.  Every time they are raped, molested, mugged, or shoot up, they scream they don't want us.  They are screaming because need us.  They need us to want them.  Many have never enjoyed the feeling of being wanted, or are too young to understand the trials and tribulations of their parents, whom they blame for everything, including their birth.  But they need us.  

Can we deny them?  We do it every day on the street.  "Deny it."

"Spirit!'' he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?'' 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit,'' he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!''

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!''

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

 Are the poor tolling the bells of our doom?  Have we, by accident or design, brought about the beginning of our own fall from grace; the decline and fall of our own empire; the destruction of our own Sodom and Gomorrah?  If we recognize the issues and take steps to correct it, are we past all hope?

Scrooge is very much like all of us - thick.  With all he has learned from the spirits through this night, he has one more lesson to learn, as his greed speaks to when he asks the spirit to, "Assure me..."  And, with that, he experiences a much overdue epiphany.

How we feel about the poor is of little consequence.  Like Jacob Marley, we too are captive, bound, and double ironed by the chain we forge in life, and one of those heavy iron links are the poor.  We drag ours behind us for allowing the strife to continue, the poor drag theirs for the same reason.

The poor will be with us always.  What we do about the poor is the question that should preoccupy our every waking moment, because there, but for the grace of God, goes us.  Scrooge made his pact to be more than he has been, in his heart, and, in doing so, will make a difference in at least one family's life, if not two.

I will be bringing food to the local church again for Christmas, assisting them in feeding those that have little, especially the children.  I will endeavor to make some small donation each month, as I can, and to volunteer in the kitchen as I have been invited to do.

Do not let ignorance and want define us as a people, as a nation.  We can all start by finding some small way to end the hunger and the homelessness in our country.  We can start there, then move on to bringing the jobs back to where they are needed so we can allow those that want to, to be proud, working citizens, once more.

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Excerpts are provided with many thanks to Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870), from his classic novella, A Christmas Carol (1843).  It ranks as one of my favorite of Christmas stories seconded only by the black & white film, Miracle of 34th Street (1947).  I have tried to keep Christmas through an annual reading of this timeless classic, though relegated, of late, to doing so via internet.  My search for a nicely bound volume, suitable to replace my lost tome, has yielded no joy as yet.  I continue my search.

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Note from Pastor Tony, the founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance, as well as the author and editor of "The Path," the Congregation's official blogsite:  

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion.  It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other.  An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so.

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion and debate in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth.  After over twenty years as a military intelligence analyst, planner, and briefer, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human.  God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.
  

Frank Anthony Villari, Pastor