The local paper has a column called "Speak Out" which is the published results of a phone-in message center where readers can call in and express their opinions, concerns and views on various going's on.

Given the local population, it gets pretty hairy sometimes. For example, a year or so back there was an actual ongoing debate on whether or not we could change a local resevoir-created lake (all of 12 feet deep in some places) into a body of salt water (by the addition of a lot of cattle salt blocks) for the purposes of importing humbacked whales to pick up tourist money. I shit you not. There was also one guy who called in to complain about the birds in the park who had buzzed him and apparently disturbed his toupee. Not only did he want something done about these dangerous and obnoxious creatures, he made it quite clear that if nothing was done by the city, one day Jesus was coming back and then we'd see about those birds. Needless to say, it's an interesting column.

Recently, there has been a lot of back and forth over welfare, medicaid and so on - mainly along the lines of "they're all just lazy slackers trying to get all they can for free, and they should just keep their legs shut, get a job and quit whining." How very...enlightened.

Anywho, I got all het up and wrote a bona-fide letter to the editor lambasting this petty-mindedness and referencing several religious tenets that are shared by a near unanimity of the population (the midwest is not exactly reknown for its diversity and religious variety). Took a week, but they actually ran it yesterday. I even got a nice call from some happy reader who really liked it. Cool.

I'm including the letter below, if you're interested. I'd link to an online copy, but they don't put editorials in their archives. Note in my signature at the bottom that I whipped out the rev on them (yeah, I'm an ordained minister - I just don't make a big deal about it for most occasions). Here in the Bible Belt, that sort of title confers some degree of credibility over the general rabble and I was unabashedly out to boot rear and take names.

It's not my best work (reading over it, I can see a little disjointedness in the argument and some places I could have made a stronger case) but it got the job done. Anyway, I feel better. :-D

Now if we could just do something about those damn birds.

Dear editor

It is with dismay and frustration that I have been reading the exchanges in the local Speak Out column regarding use and abuse of the social services systems. In many of the responses there has been a grasping, brutish and almost gleefully taunting attitude of "touch noogies" that I find hard to reconcile with the fact that many people in this community, and in this country in general, claim to be Christians and follow the teachings of that elevated soul.

In a country this resource-rich, this technologically advanced, and this heavily populated with purportedly deeply spiritual people committed to bringing the reign of God down onto the earth, why shouldn't there be free and easy access to health care, child care and basic life support for anyone who needs it? Why shouldn't anyone who wants to pursue higher education to enrich themselves and the world around them be able to do so as a matter of course? Why do we balk at providing the members of our society with the very things that we know make a society stronger, richer and saner?

It can't be a matter of belief. Perhaps I wasn't paying as much attention in Sunday School as I should have been, but at what point in the Bible did Jesus require the leper to 'earn'� his cure, or the blind to prove their right to their sight before healing them? How did I miss the part of the story of the adulteress where he picks up a stone and joins in with her persecutors, enlightening her with the righteous insight that if she didn't want to suffer the consequences of her actions, she should have kept her legs together? And I'm afraid I must have slept through the part of the loaves and fishes story where the disciples set up a checkout stand to make sure that everyone paid for their meal before getting their sticky fingers on any of the grub. I mean, sheesh - if those slackers wanted to eat, they should have brought something from home, right?

Of course, the objection is often made that although someone may be a Christian, we cannot expect them to be as perfect as Christ in their actions. And this is quite true. But it is also quite true that this is often trotted out as an excuse to go with our first knee-jerk attitudes of superiority, discrimination and fear of loss rather than facing up to the challenge of leaving these destructive habits behind for a better way. Let's face it - doing the right thing is hard work. Especially when it's so danged easy to just forsake and forget.

And surely we cant be objecting to the cost, since the investment to savings ratio is so high. One recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in Nov. 2004, showed that certain basic nutritional deficiencies (a situation that food stamps help prevent) can result in a 51% increase in antisocial and violent behavior in children by age 17. And it's not just intangible rewards we reap. In fact, a study quoted in the October 1998 issue of National Geographic pointed out that for every $400.00 invested in a single mother, the state of Utah discovered that it saved $400,000.00 over the lifetime of her child in other social service expenditures. Of course, those are 7-year-old figures and no doubt the numbers themselves have changed since then. But I doubt the ratio between them has wandered far too off the mark.

That's a thousand-fold return, folks. If there was a stock out there that was quoted as bringing in even a quarter of that, the same people who complain about 'wasting'� money on social services would be selling their grandmother's christening dress on eBay for the money to buy in. But why would they do that? After all, if we the people are expected to fair for ourselves in the cold, hard world shouldnt businesses be expected to do the same, without us hard-working folks carrying them around on our back by purchasing stock?

Of course, those stocks pay us back in cash dividends (if were lucky), and those quarterly checks make a substantially bigger impression on our attention than the 'invisible'� savings that increased social services would provide in lower taxes, less crime and cheaper health insurance (since uninsured patients often can't pay and wait until an injury or illness is serious before seeking care, hospitals raise rates all around to cover the gap, and that results in insurance providers raising premiums to cover their costs). Like the environmentalists say, there's no 'away'� to throw the trash; what you refuse to someone today will simply be taken out of your pocket tomorrow - with interest.

But if caring for each other is a basic tenet of our espoused beliefs, and the end result is to save us far more money than we invest upfront as well as providing ourselves and our children a safer and more peaceful community to enjoy those saving in, why is there still this undercurrent of anger, resentment and gnawing stinginess at the prospect of being our brother's keeper? I vote for fear. Fear that there won't be enough for everyone, that life is a zero-sum game - anything you get is less for me.

But generosity and compassion come from love, and love can only multiply our resources, not divide them (just ask any parent of more than one child). For our sake and the sake of the community we live in, we need to let go of our fear - the fear that says "anyone else's gain is your loss"� and that convinces us that other people deserve to suffer for their mistakes or flaws, perhaps because we've had to suffer so much for ours. We also need to wake up to the stark reality that if God hasn't pulled the plug on someone else's oxygen supply yet, maybe that's a hint that He views their life as somehow valuable or even vital to His grand work. And that the quality of their life and their future might just end up affecting the quality of our own.

As the Missouri Department of Social Services says on their web site, "A true measure of a society is the extent of its concern for those less fortunate - its intent of keeping families together, preventing abuse and neglect, and encouraging self-sufficiency and independence." By this measure, I think we are falling far, far short of the mark.

Of course, it's your life - if you want to fill it with fear, mean-spiritedness and parsimony that's your choice. But just remember that the world you create today is the one you have to live in tomorrow. And that doesn't exactly sound like heaven on earth to me.

The Rev. Soni Pitts

Edit: Ack - sorry for the MS Word crap-code random character generator effect. I think I got them all.