North Star Writers Group

I am sitting in a quaint little Italian Café in Walnut Creek, California, next to a public fountain of sorts. You might not know much about East Bay, but if you have heard of it, you have also heard it is considered by many to be one of the most pleasant areas of the country in which to live, and that, on an unrelated note, people around here are not allowed to drive vehicles worth less than an average house in Jackson, Mississippi.

In this particular East Bay public fountain, there are coins, of course, and I swear, as the Reverend Jesse Jackson is my witness, they’re all pennies. And all this time I figured it was an electric fence that guarded this charming suburb from homeless people.

Before you start picking up stones, bear in mind that Walnut Creek’s residents contribute more aid to the welfare system than everyone else. The thing about rich people is that they are all, without a choice, the most generous demographic in the country.

The world is a big, convoluted place, and this is the only way my confounded understanding can cope with mandated charity. While most humans are fully capable of both logic and sympathy, what we seem to disagree about are the statistics. This is what leads to the rampant misperception, and perhaps even the occasional reality, of both the calloused, apathetic rich and those who appear thoroughly blinded by sloppy sympathy.

One of the primary concerns with welfare is this. What if some people are taking advantage of the welfare system and aren’t doing everything they can to support themselves? What if handouts are too freely handed out? Obviously, the problem lies in the impossible task of knowing who really needs welfare, because this would require a lot more time and effort than any government of any size could ever handle. Perhaps the problem is that the world is too big.

If we all lived on self-governed farms, I doubt anyone would go hungry. However, to those who live in a large country, poverty means little more than a blurred statistic. In a culture in which most people don’t know their own neighbors, how would we know if those around us needed help? As many of us have learned, impersonal giving is far less emotionally and physically taxing than charity attached to a human relationship.

I’ve gone to church ever since I was a baby, and I remember telling my Dad when I was about 11 years old that tithing is a really good idea, because even if I ever got rich, I wouldn’t have to feel guilty as long as I contributed my ten percent. Ironically, this idea seems to resonate with church-goers of all ages. I have always assumed that the Church ought to give hope to the poor and an example to those who have but do not give. But in reality, few church-goers do more than their weekly or monthly tithing, and carrying on the same type of life as everyone else.

Essentially, much of the Church and its constituents operate quite similarly to the US welfare system, under the mentality that states, “Take this money and fix it yourself.” It is good to choose to give monetarily, but once you get used to it, it really isn’t that costly. It is much more expensive to relate to those who are in need, seeking them out and demonstrating what charity really is – time, a currency with a far greater capacity for fixing people than money.

Interestingly, I don’t think poverty has as much to do with human negligence as it does with our world becoming increasingly small. Nowadays, we appear to be carrying on fewer meaningful relationships than before we were able to talk to anyone we wanted within seconds, or travel anywhere in the world within 24 hours. The age of convenience and speed appears to have chipped away at the human tendency to co-relate.

An economic system designed to, ideally, force everyone to contribute, but more realistically, weed out those who simply can’t or won’t, has been forcefully combined with a welfare system. The result: We’ve managed to weed out somewhere between one and five million homeless Americans.

The solution demands more than offering loose change to strangers from the inside of our vehicles, government checks, or even generously donating to public fountains.

Charity requires a different sort of awareness than the type we’re used to. It is good to be aware of world events, but an awareness of the goings-on in our respective zip codes has much greater potential to yield actual change. Tithing, or paying your taxes, is not really charity. Charity is willing to loosen a schedule and fill it with a relationship.

Welfare is yet another way we rely on the government to fix human problems, but what we fail to acknowledge is that, while a government may help keep things in order, it will never claim the capacity to heal. Healing requires a human’s touch, listening ears and caring eyes. Those of us concerned for the welfare of our countrymen should start by concentrating firstly on our families and secondly on our communities.

Universal welfare will never be achieved by alienating the very people who need human relationships the most, dumping cash over an endless desert from helicopter windows.

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This is Column # NS20. Request permission to publish here.