is God just the God of the rich?

The Department of Services for the Blind, Seattle Office, is located in the Southeast end of Seattle in beautiful Rainier Valley.  This is a section of Seattle that is fast becoming a war zone.  In my youth it had been dubbed "Garlic Gulch" because of the heavy Italian population.  Coal miners, truck farmers and small shop owners, mostly first generation.  It is now an international district made up mostly of very poor disenfranchised people.  Gangs roam at night.  Drugs are the main product sold in the alleys and street corners.  But scattered throughout this down-at-the-heels district are many elderly folks who have lived in their homes for most of their lives.  They paid for them but can't get enough money from their sale to move to a "safer" neighborhood.  Many of these folks keep neat, trim yards and clean, tidy homes.  They guard their meager income carefully and are pretty much debt free.  Of course they are one health disaster away from the poor house.  When I walked those streets during daylight hours these folks would come to their gates and chat with me.  At night they triple locked their doors and pulled heavy blinds over barred windows.  And the wild ones took charge of the streets. 

These citizens would like nothing better than to have all the crazies rounded up and sent to the Moon.  But the police protection is stretched thin at best.  Many of the homes around these long time residents are falling in on themselves.  They are owned by Slum Lords.  And the local grocery stores have raised their prices because they know most of their customers cannot travel easily to another store. 

There are some folks who have no idea of what happens to people trapped and cut off from all hope of ever bettering themselves.  These people honestly believe that all of us are free moral agents, capable of pulling ourselves up by our own boot straps.  They have been fed this pap their entire lives and really believe it.  For their sakes I hope they never feel the fear of living in a dirty one room hole in the wall, listening to the screams and howls of the night people and wondering if each time there is a bump, that someone is going to kick in their door and beat the living crap out of them in order to grab what little there is to take. 

Children lying on filthy bare mats on the floor wondering where their mothers have gone.  Feeling the hands of older siblings on their little butts and knowing it's going to be another Hellish Night. 

Young boys and girls working at the fast food joints, leaving the late shift with their meager pay, only to be grabbed and kicked to the ground and robbed by the very kids who just bought a burger from them. 

In all of this great land is there no one who can lead us to a better place?  The few who have tried have been shouted down or murdered for their efforts. 

Has God turned our planet over to Satan?  He certainly is not watching over those who need Him most. 

Perhaps He is just the God of the rich. 

 

Curious Carl