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The learned man knows that he is ignorant - Victor Hugo

The church often forgets that God said alot of things like "my good and acceptable worship is that you help the poor and widows". As christians we have a duty before God to help our fellow man. The church down through history (despite its bed press) has done alot of this. It seems in recent years though that we've divorced charity from church.. people start groups seperate from church to do charities, which is good, but we also need to keep our churches and ourselves involved.

From the perspective of political philosophy it is very bad for a free society to have a welfare program, as it exists today. There are a couple of reasons for this, but most of them center around the fact that welfare, rather than helping people, tends to simply make them dependant on the government. The farming community in the US is a good example. years ago government subsidies (welfare) were put in place to help farmers.. now the entire farming community is dependant on government money and can no longer live independantly of it, even if they wanted to.

The same thing happens with people. This creates two great problems... first of all it destroyes the economy bit by bit. Because it overburdens those who work to pay for those who are on government assistance. The percentage of population on government assistance never goes down significantly, it only increases. In the US right now we are approaching 50% of the population on some kind of government entitlement program (not quie 50% yet but getting there fast). Combined with the population demagraphic getting top heavy in the age catagory (ie more people are at retirement than are working) this will only increase pressure on the workers (and this is also a major reason why social security is failing).

The second major problem this creates is that when you have 50% of the populace dependant on government money, those people's votes can basicly be baught with promises (or threats) which touch their entitlement money. This undermines and eventually destroys democratic government. One of the founders said "a democracy can last only until the people discover that they can vote themselves largess (ie money) from the public treasury". Once people start voting in the interest of the government giving them money, it will soon bankrupt the state, but it also makes the people easy to control and manipulate. This is the classic technique used in both ancient greece and rome to gain control over the people.

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-- All that is gold does not glitter,
Deep roots are not touched by the frost,
The old that is strong does not wither,
Not all those who wander are lost.