Complaining about Complainers

What worries me is the number of people going hungry. The prolonged COVID quarantine is starting to make people uneasy and we're not even on the fourth month. What if this drags on for a year or two? I'm tired of religious people saying it just takes faith. That's exactly the problem--not all have faith. [Picture above by Richard Horne, Unsplash].

And people who insist on simplifying everything by faith are mostly those who are comfortable now with their material "blessings." I wonder how they'd feel when the hunger pangs start really bothering them and their loved ones and the COVID death comes knocking closer to home. Money alone will not save you when looting and chaos start rampaging around and there's nothing you can buy.

It's so easy to talk about faith when you have money and material comfort. And anyway, don't mistake faith to be that.

There are those who just blame and find fault and make trouble, but I understand hungry people who protest and ask or demand. It's easy to say that "no one dies of hunger" because we haven't got a clue what being hungry and near death is about. Has it actually happened to you? We even point to street bums (taong grasa) who we think remain hungry for months and still live.

But they do eat daily. They don't go hungry "for months." They scavenge what smells and looks like food from trash heaps and eat that. Or beg. But they eat daily. And most of them lose their minds. Nothing's good about starving to death. We can't simply tell poor folks that they won't die of hunger.

I don't agree with people going out to make some money or complaining about things or defying authority during a deadly crisis. Or idiots grouping for street cock fighting, gambling or drinking. That's a different story. But we need to understand other people with legit needs, see their side of the argument and listen to their grievances, not just get angry with or make fun of them. If we can't do that then we should just shut up.

Or we can help them solve their problems. In the Old Testament, they solved this by leaving something for the poor from their blessings. I'd say, a tenth of our every blessing. Tithes then were used for the needs of the priests, the poor and strangers. We can leave the goods in front of our gates and let some barangay staff get them and distribute to the poor.

This is better than complaining about the complainers.