The Right to be Dissolute

Unbelief Always Increases Poverty

Poverty is back in the news again.  Maori and Polynesian poverty to be exact.  It would appear that it is finally dawning on some that poverty--persistent intergenerational poverty--will not be overcome by throwing gummint money at the problem.  It turns out that the problems are far "thicker" than those which can be solved by throwing (not-a-few) taxpayer dollars around.  Poverty has now become institutionalised; it has become a culture all of its own--self-affirming and self-perpetuating and relentlessly powerful.   The Borg is assimilating the ship.

. . .  of the 200,000 New Zealand children living below the poverty line, more than half are Maori or Pacific.  A combination of high dependency on benefits, high rates of single parenthood and a concentration of workers in the manufacturing industries keeps families trapped in poverty, says the report released this morning.

Trapped in poverty.  But here is the all important question: does poverty lead to high dependency on benefits and high rates of single parenthood, or does benefit dependency and single parenthood lead to perpetual inter-generational poverty?  The overwhelming answer from our secularist religion is that poverty causes social disintegration.  This position represents, at root, a Marxist idea--people are the product of externalities, of material conditions.

Now those who work at the coal face with the Underclass see evidence on every hand of destructive cultural patterns that lead to dissolution, dependency, and poverty.  The cause-effect relationship is too strong, too overt to deny.  They realise in time that unless the cultural patterns are changed first, the poverty will inevitably continue. 

But they run into a brick wall of tacit implacable opposition.  Why?  Well, in order to change a culture you have to confront the wrong, condemn it, and challenge people to repent.  You have to make moral judgments.  You have to say, for example, "conceiving a child out of wedlock is wrong.  Don't do it."  You have to be able to declare and teach that such things are, wait for it, sinful. You have to use ethical categories for human thoughts, words and actions such as "evil", "wrongdoing", "rebellion", "cursed" and "wickedness", as well as labelling other words and deed "righteous", "good", "holy" and "blessed". 

You also have to be able to offer a comprehensive cleansing and a genuine redemption from past sins, so that people can make a final break with their former culture and be truly liberated from the past.  They need to be able to declare (and experience), "I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see."

Such notions are anathema to the inquisitors of our established secular culture.  Everywhere people are catechized into believing they have rights.  They have a right to an abortion.  They have a right to conceive and raise children as solo parents.  They have a right to live perpetually on a benefit.  They have a right to conceive children to multiple partners.  They have a right to the latest wide-screen gadget.  They have a right to perpetual inebriation. These dissolutions, of course, foster institutional, enslaving poverty.

We make a mild prediction: as long as people are told they have an entitlement to live in whatever dissolution they please and that the state will happily fund them for it and in it, our society will never, ever change the culture of poverty amongst the Underclass.  Why?  Because our secular culture will never succeed in persuading anyone that such dissolute behaviours are evil.  How can they be evil when the state is happy to subsidize them and constantly frames and presents such dissolutions as amoral rights.

Here is Archdeacon Dr Hone Kaa, speaking for the lobby group, Every Child Counts: 

Spokesman Hone Kaa, who is an Anglican priest, said the levels of children in poverty were unsustainable.  "The report confirms what I have witnessed during more than 50 years of ministry and advocacy on behalf of our whanau. Maori and Pasifika children do not share in the success and prosperity enjoyed by other populations of Aotearoa.  "There is no level playing field and our children are subjected, disproportionately, to the malaise that emerges out of poverty."

With all due respect, Dr Kaa is simply perpetuating the secularist established religion: poverty causes the malaise (which, in turn, causes more poverty).  If you believe this, then you will inevitably grasp at the only solution which can be on offer: more showers of money.  It is the "pump-priming" principle.  Bestow enough money on the Underclass, and hey presto, they will no longer live dissolute lifestyles, and therefore will escape poverty.

Wait a minute.  All the evidence we have overwhelmingly tells us that they will take the money and become more dissolute.  The money merely gives them greater opportunities and incentives for ever more dissolution.  "I get child support.  If I have another child--don't care who with--my income will rise. Ergo . . ."  If bestowing taxpayer money upon Polynesian and Maori people was effective in making a difference, then long ago Maori and Polynesian people would have moved up the socio-economic income and wealth scales.  Instead, the reverse has been the case: the more money bestowed, the more poverty.  It is what you do with the money that makes all the difference--and that gets back to culture, religion, belief, ethics, one's view of the future, one's view of the past, sin, judgment, and the life to come.  All of this bears directly on what you do with the money you garner. 

Secular humanism, which controls New Zealand in almost every place, will continue to do two things.  It will relentlessly propound that one has a right to be dissolute.  Secondly, it will ceaselessly fund the dissolute in their dissolution.  Therefore, poverty and the poor we will not only always have with us--poverty will grow and eventually rule our society. 

It's know as the curse of breaking God's Covenant.