Jonathan LeMaster-Smith

This was originally published on Facebook July 3, 2025. The day the bill passed the House.

We are doing the very thing the prophets warned us against and failing to heed the warning of Christ’s prophecy of the “sheep and the goats.”

This is sin.

The pedestal of the statue of Liberty has a plaque that has the sonnet “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus on it.

The closing section reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
With the passing of the *Big Beautiful Bill* this signals that the light of the statue may be going out.
As a nation we are about to see what happens when we begin the systematic dismantling of caring for, as scripture says, “the least of these”.

I don’t doubt this is the beginning of the cuts. Congress has dealt a mighty blow to Medicaid, SNAP, and the Affordable Care Act. My fear is that more are on the horizon with no actual savings for the government.

We will see more need than we have seen in generations, and we will see whether we as a nation can sustain this. The churches (and other religious groups) and nonprofits, which are already struggling to care for the community are going to be strained further. Rural communities, particularly, will face even more hardships. There is a hope and relentlessness in rural communities, and I don’t doubt they will survive, but I fear that we don’t truly know the cost of any of this yet.

I leave you with a few verses from the first chapter of the prophet Isaiah, warning of the fall of the temple and the nation if the people do not change:

11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls
or of lambs or of goats.

12 When you come to appear before me,
who asked this from your hand?
Trample my courts no more!

13 Bringing offerings is futile;
incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation—
I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you stretch out your hands,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove your evil deeds
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil;

17 learn to do good;
seek justice;
rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
plead for the widow.