Because if this is gonna be a Christian nation that DOESN’T help the poor, either we’ve got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition—and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.
I would argue that we aren’t a Christian nation, and that the Church does a really terrible job most of the time when it comes to serving the poor. One thing that makes my job at the Salvation Army so attractive to me is the group’s passion in this very area.