NORTON META TAG

06 December 2013

HAS BILL O'REILLY JOINED THE WESTBORO CHURCH? Bill O'Reilly speaks on behalf of Jesus about the scourge of Food Stamps 4DEZ13

WHAT a sad perversion of the teachings of Jesus Christ. In the Beatitudes and other teachings of Jesus He doesn't tell us to care for the poor, the needy, the least among us but only if them meet certain conditions. He gave love, sustenance, support, grace, healing, resurrection, forgiveness to all who needed and would accept it, regardless of who they were and their lifestyle. His life was given the same way, and His offer of salvation is still offered the same way. bill o'reilly's Christianity isn't much different than that of the westboro church's. I just can't reconcile that with the Christianity of Jesus Christ.
It is no secret that Bill O'Reilly is an ass of gigantic proportions. However, in a segment on last night's O'Reilly Factor, Bill manages to outdo his own gigantic assiness. In response to recent Republican efforts to dismantle SNAP and the Vatican's new-found concern for the poor, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) made a comment in a conversation with Al Sharpton that when Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, “he didn’t charge food stamps.”
This made Bill O' ooh so mad and he simply wasn't going to stand for it. Letting his hatred for all things perceived as "nanny state" fly, he graciously acknowledged that Jesus would be just fine with feeding the poors so long as it didn't inconvenience anyone with actual money.
In a conversation with Pentecostal Pastor Joshua Dubois, Bill tries to school the good pastor on all those alcoholics and drug addicts picking his pocket for free food. In actuality, it was Pastor Dubois who schooled O'Reilly. The video and juicier bits of the conversation transcribed below.
http://youtu.be/9vTuEHX81Eo
O'Reilly: The problem I have, as I stated is that you’re helping one group by hurting another group and a bigger group, and so I don’t know if Jesus is going to be down with that. Dubois: Jesus would be down for the poor. He would want to make sure every single person in this country had enough food to eat. And the bottom line is if you add up every single private charitable dollar that feeds hungry people in this country, it’s only 10 percent of what we would need to make sure everyone has food in their stomachs. The rest comes from the federal government.
O'Reilly: You’re making a powerful argument, but there is one huge mistake in it. And that is that some of the people who don’t have enough to eat, it’s their fault they don’t have enough to eat. Particularly with their children.
If you’re an alcoholic or heroin addict or a drug addict and you can’t hold a job, alright, and you can’t support your children — and that’s a circumstance of millions and millions of people, not most, but a lot, a substantial minority — then it’s your fault, you’re bringing the havoc, that you’re asking people who may be struggling themselves to put food on the table to give their tax money to you. And then you’re not even going to buy food with it, you’re going to buy booze and drugs with it.
Dubois: With all due respect, there’s a lot of misconceptions in what you just said. The vast majority of that program goes to elderly people, people who are disabled, 46 percent are children and most people are working families.
O'Reilly: My parents didn’t make a lot of money and they were able to put food on the table. I give a lot of money — and you probably know this — to children’s charities, okay? Children who have derelict parents. And I say, it’s not the kids’ fault so I’m going to give the money to the kids. But I don’t give it to charities unless the charity hands it to the kids, gets it right to the kids. So, I’m circumventing the drugs and the alcohol and the other craziness, alright?
Dubois: I don’t live in a derelict country. There are some folks that have the problems that you described, but that is not the vast majority of food stamp recipients.
I have to applaud Pastor Dubois for standing up to O'Reilly so pointedly. O'Reilly only served to come off as the cruel, heartless Republican he is. In his mind and in the minds of so many Republicans, being poor is just exactly what you deserve for having the audacity to be poor. In order to expunge his putrid soul for these uncharitable thoughts, he must convince himself that these people are subhuman addicts not worthy of wiping his shoes on. I am not a Christian and I do not pretend to speak for Jesus and how he would have felt about food stamps, but having read a great deal what he was purported to have stood for, I'm pretty sure that Bill O'Reilly has this exactly wrong.

Originally posted to Steveningen on Wed Dec 04, 2013 at 09:31 AM PST.

Also republished by Hunger in America

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/04/1260075/-Bill-O-Reilly-speaks-on-behalf-of-Jesus-about-the-scourge-Food-Stamps?detail=email 

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