Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Donald Trump, now, incredibly, the president of the United States, printed a Bible with his name on the cover.

I imagine that all he has read – his own name.

At least, he is not practicing any of the principles in the Bible, which, when the pastor of a church I attend in La Quinta, California, reads from it, he always says this:  “I have just read from the greatest book every written and I attest that all of its words are true.”

For Trump, he is reported to have Mein Kamp closer than the Bible and his early actions in his second run as president don’t bode well for anyone who treasures what the Bible says about how we should act.

Consider these “Top 10 Bible Verses About Helping the Poor:”

First, this general principle:  The Bible teaches that helping the poor is not just a good thing to do, but is also a command from God.  When we help the poor, we are not only helping them, we are also honoring God.

• Proverbs 19:17 – Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed.  [My quick postscript here is that when we do “good works” for God, the purpose is not to get credit, it is to do good works based on our relationship to God.]
• Proverbs 22:9 – Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor.
• Proverbs 14:31 – Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.
• Deuteronomy 15:11 – For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’
• Proverbs 28:27 – Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse.
• Galatians 2:10 – Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
• Proverbs 14:21 – Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor.
• Acts 20:35 – In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

The fact is that there are more than 300 verses in the Bible that talk about helping the poor.

I also remember one of the major lessons I learned as I grew up in a Christian family in Portland, Oregon. It was important, my mother and father said, to help those in distress, widows, or others in need.

But, beyond the great verses above, my wife and I just read the last chapters of the book of Job in the Old Testament.  As we purpose to read through the Bible in this year, there were good words in Job about the power of God as he spoke to Job, who had suffered so much.

Good to remember with Job that, in fact, that God is in charge of all things. 

No matter what Trump thinks without any knowledge of what the Bible really says.  For him, it is something to sell.

For us, it is something to treasure and to know that we are “children of God,” as are, at least potentially, ALL people.