Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220122
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The evening chill is a reminder that it won't be long before some of his neighbors have to face winter without any certain prospects of fuel to fight the cold. As he does every winter, he'll help round up people to cut and split firewood for needy folks who get left out of the government-run fuel-assistance program.
Shirley spends a day every week helping run a food pantry in her rural community. All year round, the pantry is open to people referred from the local social services department and regular patrons who simply cannot afford enough to eat.
Joe volunteers several weekends a year to help fix up the homes of elderly people who cannot afford even routine maintenance. He helps find donors for the materials that he and other volunteers need to replace leaky roofs, shore up sagging porches, seal drippy plumbing, restart balky furnaces.
When Gov. Allen started promoting his plan to have volunteers take on more of the responsibilities of caring for the needy among us, I couldn't help but think of these people.
All of them are real people in real situations - people I've talked to about their commitments to their fellow human beings. All of them are involved in the lives of their neighbors because they were taught that God requires such service of them.
When I hear people say religious congregations have to take a greater role in the community, I want to take them by the ear and lead them on a little tour of the Roanoke Valley.
I want to take them to the RAM House day shelter for the homeless, the Presbyterian Community Center in Southeast, the two Baptist community centers, or any one of dozens of individual religious congregations in this valley who reach out with their time, their money, their talents to help others.
I don't have to go out on a limb to admit that there are congregations that could do more. I'd bet on it. Individually, I know I could do more through my own church.
But I'm not sure that the contributions from religious congregations are fully appreciated by those who court votes by suggesting that government should do less for the less fortunate. And I'm not convinced volunteers can take over much more of the welfare system.
All of us know about some of the contributions congregations make. Many have sponsored Habitat for Humanity homes, some have run their own soup kitchens, others operate day-care for children or adults.
But there are countless others that are rarely heard of. Tiny congregations that keep a poor member in food and clothes; large congregations that keep several families afloat in hard times; middle-size congregations that help pay the medical bills of critically ill members.
Every day, dozens of congregations are fulfilling a self-imposed duty to care for their neighbors.
The problem is, a system of volunteers - no matter how well-intentioned - just isn't going to be able to meet the need.
Somewhere along the line, we realized as a nation that to effectively help the needy, those of us with resources were going to have to be required to share a little bit of those resources with those who don't have as much. We pay that assessment through our taxes.
What worries me is that what may begin as a spirit of minor reform could end up being a campaign to eliminate most or all of our national welfare system. I worry that we can get caught up in the meanness that often accompanies the debate over welfare.
It becomes easy to characterize everyone who receives public assistance as a deadbeat con artist intent on stealing money straight from the pockets of the hard-working, God-fearing, flag-waving majority.
Anybody who takes the trouble to look into the system knows better than that. There are some people conning the system. But there are more people who have genuine needs - children who don't get enough to eat, elderly people without medicines, disabled people with no decent place to live.
We may believe the system needs modifying or streamlining, that the rules need changing. Let's do that.
But I don't believe we can ask George and Shirley and Joe to do much more than they are already doing. The rest of us cannot shirk our corporate or governmental responsibility to help those in need and pass it on to those few of our neighbors who already go the extra mile to fulfill that responsibility.
by CNB