It is a well-known fact that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles from the very beginning. The founding fathers had a deep faith in the Christian religion and based all their laws and moral codes on the principles taught in the Bible.
Christ summarized the law given in the Old Testament in two simple but profound commandments - Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. We see these qualities being passed on through successive generations of people in America. Much of American philanthropy and altruism came from these principles based on scripture.
It is important to understand that it is not possible for someone to give something that they do not possess. Only when they receive something from someone and have an awareness about what they had received, they can then turn around and share it with others. Likewise, unless someone has received true love from God, they cannot reciprocate that love to God, or show true love towards their fellow-humans.
A clear understanding of the Bible would reveal that God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to die for us so that we can forever live in splendor in heaven. When we understand the kind of love that God has shown towards us in sacrificing His Son for us, we will automatically be compelled to love Him and our fellow-humans. Therefore, we first need to receive God's love individually, and only then can we truly love our neighbors. We cannot give what we do not possess. To show selfless love, we need to receive it from the Author of selfless love.
This is precisely what motivated the early people who practiced the Christian religion in America to care for the underprivileged. They built schools, colleges and universities and established foundations so that people would never have to give up education for lack of funds.
This is not to mean that people who are not Christians can never love. There are so many good people of other faiths who have shown a great deal of compassion and sympathy towards the needy. It is just that the core values of American philanthropy and altruism has its roots in Christianity.
But now that America has almost become a post-Christian nation, people wonder whether America has become insensitive to the plight of the poor? Although politicians are making efforts at the government level to help people below the poverty line, is the average American as sensitive to the needy in his or her own community and neighborhood as their forefathers were in the early days?
If Americans lose their Christian values, they could well be on their way to becoming insensitive to the plight of the needy in their own land, let alone being bothered about people in other nations. Only time will tell whether the citizens of this mighty nation will hold fast to their virtues which made them a successful nation in the first place, or throw them away in the name of freedom and suffer the consequences mentioned in Biblical prophecy.
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