Africa - AIDS

Someone I know sent me this email

Hey,
I don't usually do things like this, but, this is mostly for South
Africa, and I sponser a child whose parents have died from this disease.
They are using the money they promised to fight A I D S to fatten the
wallets of thier war pimps, and kill our sons and daughters because of
thier dependance on foriegn oil. Maybe I'm conspiritorially minded, but
if they pursued energy alternatives as aggressivly as they are this war,
(Billions!) we wouldn't need to do this, we could take a CLUE from our
Amish brothers and sisters and forgive, be peacefull as a dove, and
shrewd as a snake, protect ouselves, but then, we'd really be a
Christian Nation.

Aside from the myriad of misspelled words, let's go through the issues on this ad infinitum;

First, I'm assuming the "they" he refers to is the Bush administration.

I'm not aware of any funding for the African AIDS crises that was spent by the military for use in the Iraq war or to fund the other "war pimps".

Second, the federal government already spends billions on alternative fuel sources, Ever heard of Ethanol, Shale, nuclear power, hydrogen power, solar power? Most of those came about as a outgrowth of federal government research.

Third, what exactly are the Amish doing about AIDS in Africa? To my knowledge, nothing. Yet the writer wants to use them as his Christian Nation example.

Fourth, no less than Bono complimented the Bushies for their work in Africa.

I get a little perturbed about justifying the theft of someone's money to give to someone else because it's the Christian thing to do. John Kerry pulled out Matthew 25:40 back in the campaign.

But I've read the Gospels 3-4 times and only one time does Jesus reference a government at all when he says "Render onto Caesar those things that are Caesar's, render to God those things that are God's" Matthew 22:21

The reason for this quote is to tell us that he was not here to save people from a persecuting government (which the Jews were hoping for at the time) but to save our individual relationship with God.

As Christians, we are commanded by God to be charitable and to do his work on earth regardless of what the government does but no where in the Bible does it instruct governments to take one's money to solve someone else's problem.

In fact, Jesus ran roughshod near a temple calling out the money changers who were selling sacrifices to pilgrims going to the temple. He never mentioned what the money changers were using the money for, good purposes or bad, but that it was a hindrance to worshipper's relationship to God; something that I would offer the government does today.

Look, the AIDS crises in Africa is horrible; no one should be dying there. But that's exactly the point, world health professionals believe that circumcisions alone would drop the AIDS cases exponentially. Couple that with eliminating unprotected sex and reusing of needles and dirty knives and we could eradicate AIDS worldwide. How many billions do we need to fund those programs?

But somehow I guess if a guy in the Congo has unprotected sex and contracts AIDS it's Bush's fault. Why not? everything else is.