would be worth a carrot unless we also enact a Charter for Human Responsibility and neither of them would be much use unless underlying selfish attitudes are also challenged. 'My right' is usually at someone else's expense. Society should stand up for social justice, not because of claimed rights but because it is irresponsible and unloving to do otherwise.
Lazarus and Dives
People who say they stand up for the poor fall into two camps: those who campaign for an increase in standards of living, basic income, and housing conditions; and those who see poverty as a spiritual condition: yuppies have money but do they lead happy or contented lives? It's very easy to ignore one at the expense of the other. Yuppies, after all, are human too and frequently live and work in the same inner cities as many of the materially poor. Often the two camps become two armies of occupation. Instead of offering each other mutual support systems, and recognising each other's needs, they become new class groupings and treat each other as the enemy. Encouraging an ethic which places a premium on personal responsibility and generosity will help the least well-off. It will also address the spiritual poverty of people fed a diet of self-interest. Many of the New Right have argued that we should simply leave things to happen of their own accord. The 'trickle-down effect' assumes that as a matter of course the poor will receive some of the wealth. But what happens in practice? The story of Lazurus and Dives illustrates the problem for both the rich man and the poor man. Despite much pleading by Lazarus, the rich man refuses to part with a single crumb off his sumptuous table. Nothing trickles down. After enduring great bodily distress Lazarus dies. Jesus tells His audience that Lazarus was taken to His father's house. For the unreformed rich man eternity was Hades and hell-fire and Jesus says, 'That is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone, if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours, and to stop any crossing from your side to ours.'1 If we rely on the 'trickle-down' effect Lazarus may wait for ever for Dives to respond. Poverty doesn't heal itself. Surely it is the duty of governments to remind Dives of his responsibility towards Lazarus? Our failure to excite the generous and altruistic streaks in man's nature, and our reliance on 'trickle-down', encouraged Dives into his error.