Rich or Poor: Charity Begins in the Heart

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by Dennis Townsend, Contributing Writer

Where would you be if your life was different than it is right now? Life itself is the programmer that dictates our mental and moral attitudes while circumstance is a constant wild card. If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth so to speak,then your views of the world differs slightly than those who fight every day to survive. As a poor person you try to imagine what it would be like to be able to feed your family a healthy meal three times a day. Those who live on “food stamps” have a very hard time surviving and the well to do seem to have trouble understanding that. But as a poor person you are the first to understand the burdens of those in line at the food pantries. Strange, no one ever does a story on the day in the life of a person trying to get enough food for a family meal.

The false assumption that everybody on welfare is either a drug addict or alcoholic or both, with a lazy streak running down their spine is light years from the truth. The politicians like to talk that rhetoric to ease their conscience’s when they cut funding for the poor. They talk about saving the taxpayers money but they forget that 79 percent of the people on welfare had a job once in their lifetime that was taxed in which some went into the same fund that goes to social programs. These programs are suppose to be the safety nets when those same workers fall on hard times themselves. But instead of those nets being there, we find that mismanagement by politicians has caused these safety nets to have numerous holes in them. In the scheme of life our destinies are pre-determined and how we define ourselves is a constant work in progress. The man down the street may not have much food, but he is willing to share because  his heart tells him that this is the right thing to do. Would his heart tell him the same thing if he was well off? Can money change the real you inside?

Yes, there are those who give all they can to help those less fortunate, and yes they do include some very well to do individuals such as Bill Gates. But can you imagine the impact in the world if all the millionaires got together to wipe out hunger? Or how about a collaboration to bring clean drinking water to every remote village where the men and women now have to walk miles just to get non-clean, contaminated water. There are countless organizations who do what they can for those without, but they can only do so much with what they have. They have plenty of heart, but not enough money and it’s sad to say that there are those who have plenty of money and no heart. I do not begrudge the wealthy because they are rich, I’m just saying that there are a lot of unfortunate people around the world who could be saved if more of the wealthy would realize that we are our brothers' keepers. Just sayin'.
  
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