March 21, 2006
Taxes
H & R Block may be a private enterprise paradigm of compassionate conservatism. Every year about this time, their ads assure us little guys how they can save taxes for us. How they can help keep our money in our own pockets and away from any further collateral damage being done by the U S Department of Defense.
It was with some considerable surprise then and, indeed, shock, when I learned the other day that those Worthy Helpers are in trouble for being something less than efficient with the very thing they claim so much skill about — the fees we pay them. But even more ironic, the IRS is also after them for, of all things, being megabucks behind in the payment of their own income taxes.
Not just to let this pass, maybe there’s a new ministry here for the church. Let alone that the tax behemoths themselves need a lot of TLC, what about our own? Might we gain some confidence by simply extending more pastoral concern to our own congregations by helping them save their money rather than always asking them for more for this project or that?
One way of looking at it is that we’re already anyway a sort of Spiritual Health Maintenance Organization (aka SHMO). So now, this would only be to extend that kind of holistic care one more step. We could even keep it comforting and familiar and simply call it H & R Flock.