It is common for those in power to use the Bible to justify their greed and hatred. The lust of the GOP to throw people off of their benefits while raiding the treasury is disheartening to me and it needs to be addressed.
I do not believe that the Bible is meant to be a guide for modern political discussions, since that is not what it was written for, but since our opponents have chosen to quote the Bible in order to oppress and condemn others, I believe I should correct a few things.
First, when the Bible says, “If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat”, Paul wasn’t teaching Thessalonians about how to avoid their responsibilities for the poor. The poor didn’t have an option about working and there were no SNAP benefits, or anything like that in the Roman Empire.
The church community had set up “food banks” to feed the poor. The “man who would not work” was the idle rich man who refused to contribute anything of value, but just sponged off of others.
Paul is giving advice on the best way to manage their stores of food and advising that maybe allowing a wealthy man who refuses to contribute to raid the pantry isn’t the best way to run a community.
And I don’t know about you, but forcing a single mom, a disabled person, a homeless person, or anyone else to jump yet another hurdle in order to eat, and using this verse to justify it, really pisses me off.
I know that the cult will just call me a communist and a ignorant heretic, so this isn’t to change anyone’s mind. It is to alleviate guilt.
If you are compassionate towards those who need help, the bible is on your side. Not the side of the oppressor.
We can change the narrative and make the community better for everyone.
My name is Sam Powell, and I am running as a DFL candidate for Senate District 19 in Minnesota. I am seeking your endorsement.
Please allow me to introduce myself. I was born and raised in California in an extremely conservative environment. My father was a pastor of a congregation that was Christian Nationalist, before it became a household word. In that congregation, the seeds were sown which eventually gave birth to the Heritage Foundation and project 2025. My father learned it at Bob Jones University and it was in the environment that I swam in every day.
(My father with Bob Jones Sr., 1961)
None of the platforms of Project 2025 are a surprise to me, because this is what I heard and what I was taught from a very young age.I was wrong, though, in thinking that these ideas were fringe, as I would soon find out.
I eventually became a pastor in that denomination, thinking that I would be able to slowly turn them away from their politics of distrust and separatism towards a more open and accepting love as Jesus taught us.
The congregation were having none of it, and when Covid hit, a large faction tore my congregation apart.
My wife and I moved to Faribault in 2023, looking for a fresh start.
Before I pastored, I worked in Food Service so I put my management background to work. I worked Human Resources for Hy-vee before moving to Walmart, where I am currently serving as their People Lead (Human Resources Manager).
At my job, I work with many from various cultures – Somali, Hispanic, white, disabled, deaf – and see so many hurting and desperate people.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
But somebody needs to step up. So here I am. Brand-new to politics, but not brand new to compassion, community and courage.
I believe that we don’t have to be divided and distrustful. We can listen to our communities. We can honor cultures and religions as well as common humanity. It is what our country was founded upon.
We can mutually make our communities stronger – first by listening and finding our common ground.
We all need healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us. We all need to be able to have preventative care and mental health care, whether we are trying to scrape pennies together to make ends meet, or whether we have cushion in our bank accounts.
I’ve sat in enough hospital rooms to know that when our loved ones are sick, desperation and fear of the unknown are universal. Illness doesn’t discriminate. But together we should be able to take away the fear of one choosing health care or housing, or health care and food.
And I’ve worked with enough people to know that those are very real choices that our communities have to make daily. Should I buy groceries, or should I get my baby to urgent care?
This is not the way that healthy communities should operate.
A woman should be free to make the best choice for her health with her doctor, without fear.
We should not have to fear being tackled in the streets and tased because of the color of our skin.
Together we can keep Minnesota beautiful, strong and welcoming. But we can’t just sit by and wait for someone else to do it.
For this reason, I am seeking your endorsement. I don’t know everything and I am relatively new to Minnesota. But this is my home. We loved it the second we drove in on that snowy day in 2023. The community called to us and we are here.
It’s our home. Our safe place.
I want to work with you all to bring that safety and belonging and peace to EVERYONE, because, as Maya Angelou said, …”if we aren’t ALL free, then none of us are free.”
We spend so much time and attention on the movers and shakers, the money people and the builders and the leaders. And yes, every community needs them.
But in the corners are those that are left behind, forgotten, left without a voice.
They are the ones who are too busy trying to eat today and tomorrow; they are the disabled, the outcasts, the strange, the lonely, the poor.
You walk past them and don’t notice. You don’t see the fears. The diagnoses that they can’t afford the treatments for; you don’t see the single mom that loses her job because her childcare canceled at the last minute one too many times.
The desperation and the rejection are painful to see, so people ignore it. And if they are forced to look and see the hopelessness and the dying, they will convince themselves that there must be some moral failing.
If you can blame the sufferer, maybe you can make better choices so that the same thing doesn’t happen to you…
I have a better way.
Let’s look right at it and solve it.
Let’s take on hunger and housing and healthcare. Let’s quit looking away.
Let’s stop pretending that there is some moral failing, or some reason that the fringes deserve to be the fringes.
Let’s quit giving billionaires more dollars, and more corrupt contracts, and actually make some hard choices.
No one should ever avoid healthcare because they can’t afford it.
No one should ever lose their job because of childcare.
No one should ever go hungry because some billionaire isn’t raking in enough.
No one should ever be tackled in the streets or tased because of the color of their skin.
Sam Powell for Senate 