Back when I was still a Mormon, I was considered something of a rebel. No, not because I drank coffee or had an earring. I was a rebel, because I (duh-duh-duhhhh) voted Democrat.

During the Obama campaign, I had an elderly gentleman in the church approach me.“Don’t you know you can’t be a good Mormon if you vote Democrat?” he teased.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I know, I’m odd – actually wanting to do the thing that Jesus said to do about the poor and the sick.”

Even though I was an “in closet atheist” for a decade, I still felt the ideas of Jesus were powerful ones that could change the world. It just makes sense: if you took care of the “least of these”, then the entire society would have a safety net for its citizens. Which meant that if I or someone I cared about was in trouble, we’d get support. If some of my income went to support someone else, that was fine – it was just the decent thing to do.  I saw the results in Canada, England, France, Germany – it seemed that every nation that did the “Christian thing” (ironically having higher number of atheists than the United States[1]) did well economically, socially, financially, so on and so forth.

During the last year, as I’ve been going from one church to another, I’ve interviewed ministers and imams and swamis about their religion. One of the question I’ve asked is:

I’ve gone to each church and asked: “What are the important things people should be doing?” If I go to an Islamic service, they say “Help the poor, the sick, and the needy.” If I go to the Catholics, I get the same answer. If I go to the humanists, the same answer. I don’t think that anyone so far has told me much otherwise. But when I look at our society at large, we do a really bad job at all of those.

If everyone really believed we should be helping the homeless, we wouldn’t have any. If we really believed we should be helping the sick, I wouldn’t encounter people who have cancer and can’t pay for it.

We spend our time arguing about whether we should put the Ten Commandments in a courthouse or not, or whether gay people should get married or not. We spend so much time arguing about our differences, instead of doing the thing we all agree we should be doing. Why is that?

 At the core of this question is usually regarding the status of health care in the United States. Why can’t we get religions to work in establishing universal health care in the United States? Heck, even if they don’t want to turn it over to the government, how many times do we see mega-churches built over hospitals? Which would make God happier – another gold plated roof, or seeing that money go to provide medical care for humanity?

When I interviewed Larry Hillman of the Tampa Faith Life Church and asked why we couldn’t seem to do what Jesus said, his reply was:

Well, if you notice when Jesus was here, he never had a fund raiser for the poor. He never went around telling slaves they should be set free. Jesus never told the Roman government how they treated the Jewish people.

 Now, that being said, Jesus didn’t like that people were poor, Jesus didn’t think people should be slaves, Jesus thought government should be a good government and not treat people poorly. But Jesus focused on the most important thing you can do for a person: change the inside of that person.

 I keep thinking about this statement. I read the New Testament, and yes, Jesus did tell people to be nice to each other. Yet, he also spent much of his time healing without any preaching or reward. When he healed the 10 lepers, there was no preaching first:

Luke 17:11-19 (King James Version)

 ¹¹And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

 ¹²And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off:

 ¹³And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.

 ¹⁴And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.

 Or what of the woman with the “issue of blood”? Again, no preaching – just healing:

Mark 5:25-34 (King James Version):

 ²⁵And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

 ²⁶And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse,

 ²⁷When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.

 ²⁸For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

 ²⁹And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

 ³⁰And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

 ³¹And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?

 ³²And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

 ³³But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

 ³⁴And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

 There were no lectures before the healing, no discouragements of her actions. Just being healed.

I encountered  the same attitude when I interviewed Mr. J. T. Smith of the Tampa Church of Christ when I asked the same question. First he acknowledged that part of the problem were number of mentally ill people who were homeless. Then he said this:

Just a lot of people on the street who are just bums. And when we hand out to them and hand out to them, we just encourage them in what they’re doing. And so, we ought to talk to them about a job, how to get a job…

I agree with you say and what the Lord said, that … “you did it not unto the least of these my brethren you do it not unto me.” So we should do good, as I think the fact that he said “brethren” there – I think that involves something other than just a common ordinary people…

The best thing we can do for a person is teach a person the Gospel and get him to accept the teachings of the Bible, he’ll work…rather than trying to depend on someone else.

 Later on, Mr. Smith mentioned that it used to be that when you gave someone charity, they’d get a sermon to go along with it. Now, when you have the government do it, they could get the benefits without the moral lesson. I don’t want to paint either of these men as bad men. I respected both of them for their dedication. As I sat in Pastor Hillman’s office, I saw him taking care of his grandson and fielding calls from people addicted to drugs looking for help. Mr. Smith was very pleasant – but both of them (and other ministers I’ve run into) seemed to feel that the solution to the problem with hunger and sickness was “Teach Jesus, and people will fix themselves.”

Again, it’s an answer that I don’t see from Jesus’s teachings. When I interviewed Reverend Roy W. Williams of College Hill Mennonite Church, the attitude was different. As I’ll write later in detail about his church, they are into service. They started in Tampa to serve the community, to work to reduce crime and provide services to the population.

Yet at the same time, there’s an air of hopelessness about their work. An attitude that since the world is broken, you know your work is in vain. Reverend Williams brought up that his religious belief that the world will only be fixed when the events in Revelations comes true and God fixes the world. It doesn’t matter what humans do, it’s going to come to naught. Though he believed that it is through service that one will enter Heaven– in the end, it’s just not going to work.

This same attitude came from other churches, such as my visit to the Jehovah’s Witnesses where I heard this:

Here’s the whole thing about it. We see the limitations of men, even good men. You mentioned the health care problem. How many times does something that might benefit someone… get hung up in politics. Well meaning people try to do something, but then even if its done – look at the great advances we’ve had in health care, but is it available to the world. See, we look at it this way. 1st John, the 5^th chapter tells us the whole world is under the power of the wicked one… No matter what goes on in this system of things, it’s only going to get so good.

 So we have plenty of reasons for churches not to support health care reform, or the government taking over providing services for people. Either because “the world is evil so you can’t fix it if you try”, or “if you can’t deliver a sermon along with the service, then it’s just not good enough.”

I can’t stress enough that these people I met were hard working people who put their hearts into their service. And yet – I couldn’t help but feel the hopelessness.  Rather than trying to fix the structures that kept people poor and sick, they would just apply Band-Aids to the problems.

Sure, you could feed a homeless person here, maybe rally enough funds to treat a sick person there. But try to fix the fundamental problems that allow 1% of the population to have as much income as the other 90% of the population? It's not like we're asking that everyone have a gold plated toilet - just a place to sleep for the night, some food, a doctor to treat them when they're sick.

That’s not to say that every religion I interviewed felt the same way. Reverend Moss of Unity Church, or Swami Ishtananda of the Vedanta Center of St. Petersburg, Humanists all believed that that things could and will get better.

It seems that religions with an apocalyptic view of the world would serve people, but they felt that their efforts would be in vain. In the end, from their view, since the world was broken, you just can’t fix the problems. So in the end, why even try. It's like when Jesus said "the poor will always be with you", they took that as not a sad state of the world, but a mandate that could never be overcome.

It just strikes me funny, because if Christian ministers look at their own scriptures in Matthew 25, the message is clear:

Matthew 25:34-40 (King James Version)

 ³⁴Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

 ³⁵For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

 ³⁶Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

 ³⁷Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

 ³⁸When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

 ³⁹Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

 ⁴⁰And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

 It’s not “you preached unto them”, it’s not “you waited for me to come fix it”, it’s not “you told people to use their bootstraps”. It’s “you feed people, you clothed people, you tended to people’s hurts. That is what good people do.”

Plenty of countries seem to have solved this problem. It strikes me as more than a little sad that the United States, for all of its proclaimed religious beliefs, can’t seem to do more than “Well, it just can’t be solved.” And that their religious beliefs are the reason why they can’t seem to make a Heaven on Earth.