Quote:
that the government should leave much of its social programs to the people


This would be more impressive if the people actually did the work.

Now, the flipside is I won't tell you the government is the answer either. But look around a city and see how many homeless people you see. There's not a chance they all "want" to be homeless. We have shelters, but when the weather is extreme, they fill, and people are turned away. It's not the same as a home, either.

Now, you could get me to believe that many of them have mental problems. I've seen precious little from the non-government sectors to help there. But even the government wasn't really able to do anything; With advances in rights for the mentally ill, asylums were closed. Well, the flipside is we failed to deal with the people who have no one to fall back on. So at one extreme we "abused" people by locking them away, and at the other we leave (some of) them to rot.

I won't disagree with you about Christ's teachings; I will admit that I am not the best Christian, but I would be less disillusioned with the people I share the holy Trinity with if the walk matched the talk more than it generally does.

I don't know the details of your life, and I'm not looking to; This is a very sweeping generalization, and not a personal slam. I can't look at people and say "you're not following the teachings of Christ"; It's much easier to look at people whose needs are unmet and say "we can do better. we must do better."