A lack of caring

“I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor.”

                                            Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

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We hear the flurry of words

Justifying the unjustifiable

They are lazy

Moochers

If they are sick it is their own fault

They should just live better lives

They should just get a job

Meanwhile, back at the high rise office building

Back at the tower

The rich sit in $1000 suits

Sipping their bottle water

Or their wine

And figuring out what they can do

To become richer than they already are

Mansions

Luxury cars

Vacation home

More money they could spend in a life time is not enough

More, more, they must have more

And to get it?

They will leave those they do not value behind

They will strip healthcare from the vulnerable

The disabled

The elderly

All for the sake of another $33,000 for people who are worth millions, even billions

This is the shame of America

This is the shame of those who think others are expendible

Who walk the walk of essential selfishness

This is the sin of America

That we not only do not understand the poor

The pain they go through

What it is like to live every day, on the edge of not enough

What it is like to be homeless

Dinnerless

Car less

These rich, do not know, they do not understand

They think the pittance these people get, is a motivation

Not to work

Perhaps they think these people lie around eating bon bons

Many of the work, one job, two jobs, three jobs

Trying to scrabble a living for themselves and their families

Yes that is hard to understand when you make $178,000 and barely work any days at all

And charge most of your expenses to a bottomless expense account

That is hard to understand when you are a CEO and make $5,859 an hour

And drive a car that costs $70 or $80,000 (that’s around 5 years gross salary for a poor person)

Yep, hard to understand

But what really hurts is that in America

The rich (Koch) the powerful (Trump and the GOP Congress)

Not only don’t know

They don’t care.