What is Charity?
Where bureaucracy is concerned, how many layers are too many? Is it when the sheer number of civil service employees becomes so bloated that accountability evaporates? When unrestrained rogue ideologues ignore statutes in favor of personal agendas? When the crushing weight of financing federal programs threatens the survival of a nation?
In 2015, when I left for a short sojourn in Texas, my home state of Minnesota was dealing with a massive case of daycare fraud. This bogus operation had run afoul for several years before anyone investigated irregularities. Good, I thought when I heard the revelation. Finally, they will put a stop to this outrage. Yet when I returned in 2018 the "investigation" had sputtered to a standstill.
During the COVID shutdown, another extremely costly scam involving feeding hungry children went uninvestigated, even though a simple site visit at the onset of the hoax could have put an immediate stop to it. No word on resolution there either.
When I was a naïve youngster, back in the War on Poverty days, I thought the nice-sounding idea of doling out money to those who were down-and-out was a reasonable strategy to encourage society's haves to share with its have-nots. Government channels, we were told, were the right conduits for this transfer of wealth, because how were individual citizens to know who needed help? And did people really want to deal with the bothersome details of such charitable efforts anyway when they were busy with the nitty-gritty of their own lives?
Never mind the inevitable waste of processing funds through multiple departments and agencies, each of which require compensation for their part in the transaction, before a reduced percentage of the largesse reaches the intended beneficiary.
Never mind that nationalized programs collecting pots of money by skimming off the working man's paycheck invite greed, graft, and deception by con artists enticed by the lure of easy cash.
And never mind that countless adults and their unwitting progeny might be slowly shaped by job-security-seeking politicos to fit nicely into dependency roles by the implied message that they can't survive on their own. That not only are they defined by their hardship, but even destined for it.
There are of course cases in which assistance is legitimately needed, and these should be noted. Within an inflated system, the problem lies in sifting these out from the deluge of applications that flood in wherever there is a spigot of "government money" to be tapped into.
Isn't it fair to ask how society in each of its individualized units (human beings) and its congregates (families and churches) addressed the special needs of the truly destitute before the overreaching arm of Big Brother muscled its way in?
Our forebears followed their hearts. They allowed a compassionate connection between donor and donee. They applied common-sense scrutiny to how gifts were being used. And they kept folks—both benefactors and recipients—accountable by proximity, both answerable to their consciences.
Is there any turning back?