After reading Grumblings From Fundamentalists over on Josh Claybourn's Blog I posted in the comments section regarding Bush's handling of the AIDS crisis in Africa and it quickly became an interesting debate. I'd like to post here my thoughts on that and how it relates to Christians and conservative politicians. Responses are more than welcome, of course.

I was stunned that a conservative would question Bush for signing the bill to send AIDS relief to Africa. I wondered if they realized how many people are dying there each year? How many children are born infected through no fault of their own and then end up orphans because their parents couldn't get the medications to stay alive? In my mind, Christians should absolutely be rallying around the initiatives to help out the AIDS crisis. "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these..." Some Christians, it seems, believe that someone who contracts AIDS through sexual behaviour is simply getting the natural consequence of their immorality. And while that is true in some cases, I think it is a much more complicated issue. I find it callous to write it off simply as the consequence of their sins and imply that we shouldn't do anything to help them because of the disease's correlation to sexual sin. I do not believe that Christ would refuse someone with AIDS who asked for healing if He!
were walking through Africa today. None of us are without sin. Just because we as American Christians tend to make a hierarchy of sins, with sex being at or near the top, is no excuse to ignore this tragedy. "If you have broken one point of the law, you have broken them all." Furthermore, because we are dealing with different cultures, they may not be taught the same things about sex and when it is or isn't morally right. I'm not advocating relativism, just making the point that we can't be too harsh in holding people to a standard they may not even be aware of. In fact, there are tribes in Africa that believe a man can be cured of AIDS by having sex with a virgin, which has led to many women and young girls being raped and infected.

For the political side of the issue, it is argued that conservatives hold as a base value that smaller government is better government. I agree with that - in general. I see this issue as a special case worthy of an exception. On a purely theoretical level, I can understand how $15 billion in tax dollars being spent on social programs isn't politically conservative, but I think it is simply to important to ignore. Also, in the grand scheme of the federal budget, $15 billion isn't even that much. I would be willing to speculate that if we investigated we could find more money being spent on less worthy causes overseas. I'm definitely more supportive of our tax dollars going to aid the African peoples than being spent on a war with Iraq. It is also argued that humanitarian causes are better handled by private charities. I also agree with that - in general. However, there has been no private charity that has been able to serve this need on the scale needed. Maybe if our governm!
ent was truly conservative -- much smaller and with much lower taxes -- there would be more support from private citizens and charities to address this great need. However, that is simply not the case, and a much smaller government and much lower taxes are not close enough to being a reality to justify putting off this crisis on those idealistic grounds.

For more information on the AIDS crisis in Africa, and why we should give our full support, visit www.datadata.org