Maybe this sounds good in theory. Maybe. But I can tell you from experience that making such a distinction can get really muddy really quickly in practice. It's not always easy to judge who is needy and who is simply lazy.
For example, hopelessness often presents itself as laziness.
And there's this: when we put so many barriers into place in our attempt to make sure that the undeserving don't get something they don't deserve, we often fail in our goal to help people when they really need it.
Who are we to judge who is lazy? For instance, my husband has a chronic illness. Some days he feels "good," good being a relative term because he's rarely without pain somewhere in his body. Other days are spent in bed or just resting because he is in so much pain or is so fatigued from his illness that he can't even hold his head up or stay awake.
ReplyDeleteWhen people see him out in the yard or at church, they can't reconcile what they see--an apparently healthy man--with the idea that he's on disability because his illness prevents him from holding a job.
Does the fact that sometimes he has good days, or more likely, good parts of days, mean he's lazy? He worked for almost 25 years with this devastating illness that would have knocked most people out of the race a long, long time ago.
If you haven't experienced living with a chronic illness, you have no idea what it can be like. That's what a lot of people are calling "lazy." Really, they have no idea. I'd like to see them spend a day or two in my husband's shoes.