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When the Dane County Board in Wisconsin proposed giving a $231,005 grant to Porchlight, a non-profit organization that provides homeless people such things as shelter, food, access to telehealth, one board member, Jeff Weigand, stood in opposition to the idea. 

Although he did not disagree with the need to address homelessness, he was against the piecemeal approach that addressed the conditions that exist while not what needed to be done to address the root cause.

He was correct in explaining,

“For every dollar that we invest in providing someone a temporary place to sleep, we should be investing an equal amount, or putting an equal amount of energy, towards finding solutions towards the root cause.”

Few would disagree with this if it involved addressing the results of systemic racism, low wages, artificially created inflation due to corporate greed, and eliminating both the overt, but clever, and not so obvious forms of employment discrimination. 

However, when asked for specifics, Mr. Weigland summarized all the root causes of homelessness to one thing, the single syllable word 

 “Sin.”

As he said when voicing his opposition to the proposal, 

“When God created this world, there was no sin. He created a perfect world. Man ruined that by sinning, and we’ve seen the depravity and the decline of our world ever since then. So when we talk about the root cause, if you really want to go back to why we have mental health issues, to why we have greed, to why we have people being mean to other people, it’s sin.

And until we address that issue, we’re going to continue to see this issue of homelessness and a whole slate of other issues in our society. “

And just like that, what should be done can be avoided in the name of Jesus by giving a complicated problem through the ages a simple label without definition allowing sufficient wiggle-room to dance around anything even in a crowded room.

It is like calling a Drag Queen reading a book to children in a public library and not some Bible Study group in a private home or a church basement “evil” without defining what the evil actually is so it can be whatever you want as you need to use it.

Who determines the controlling sin and how will we recognize which of the many of the major culprits  as one man’s floor being another man’s ceiling, there will be degrees of sin and we may end up allowing the problem of homelessness to continue since we have yet to address the correct sin.

He certainly cannot mean all the possible sins committable by humanity.

How simplistic is it to reduce the problems that create homelessness to its being as simple as because of sin the homeless brought their condition upon themselves and no one else had anything to do with it. 

Helping the homeless in any state, country, or municipality should be based on the resources they have to help the people who need it with their decisions based on data. 

The basis of the board member’s decision is that his own church helps the poor while addressing sin because  no one the church helps has to believe in God, but they do have to attend a Bible study.

“That’s the model that I think works the best because the church individuals, people one on one, can determine the difference between someone that wants to continue to make poor decisions, and someone that doesn’t, someone that truly wants to turn their life around. If we’re going to physically give you help, we’re going to do a Bible study with you. You don’t have to believe it, you can sit there and check the box. But we are going to because we believe that that’s the true solution. We’re also not going to turn someone away if they have a physical need. If you have a physical need, come on in. We just ask you sit through this Bible study. If you don’t want to listen, that’s fine.”

So if you are hungry, but don’t want to get a Bible lesson and be told it is all your fault and yours alone since you are such a sinner in the eyes of God, there is no county public help for you because you just will not repent.

The provision passed in spite of the one vote in opposition in Jesus’s name.

So, if you weren’t happy with just looking at the homeless as lazy people who choose not to work, you can now also judge them as sinners in the holding tank until they die and can burn in hell.

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