It is often said that every modern welfare system, from the Roman grain dole to the SNAP card at the grocery store, carries the seeds of its own discontent. These systems promise that the collective will carry the burdens of the vulnerable. But they are haunted by a tension older than any bureaucracy: the uneasy craving to see helplessness displayed. To give freely feels good; but to give freely to someone who does not look sufficiently broken or scraping is to stir a resentment no modern slogan can cover.

The old village beggar knew this instinctively. He made himself legless, or at least seemed so, rolling on a pallet, bowl tapping his stick, eyes down. He knew to keep the ruined coat for the street and the decent tunic for home. We might call this fraud now, but it was a moral theatre everyone understood: visible ruin earned the coin; hidden dignity stayed private. If the village lost patience, there was no Caesar’s office to back him up. The beggar starved or found another corner.

What people forget is that even Jesus did not spin up an endless pity machine. He broke loaves and fishes — but He did not invoice Rome for it. When He healed, He did not say, “Stay here on the mat forever so they know you deserve your crust.” He said: “Get up. Take your mat and walk. Show yourself to the priest.” The mat was temporary. The pity was transitional. When the crowd showed contempt, He did not beg: “And He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” No forced miracle. No charity for the ungrateful. “Shake the dust from your feet. It will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah.”

The trouble now is that we pretend to want the poor whole — yet the system depends on them staying visibly needy. The taxpayer votes for the teat to keep flowing but wants the scraping to feel real. If the stumps turn out to be legs, if the mat rolls away too soon, the moral contract snaps. Oh SNAP. The same voice that funds endless foreign wars without flinching will rage at the sight of a welfare recipient standing too straight with a phone or fresh shoes. The sin is not the cost but the pride that threatens to make giver and receiver look too equal.

So the beggar learns to play his part. The system, ironically, rewards the subtle con: visible ruin, murmured gratitude, hidden dignities that never leak. But the internet complicates this fragile show — the double life is now broadcast and clipped. The mat is public. The hidden tunic leaks out. The bowl knocks the stick while the other hand posts a joke about scamming the system. The audience sees it and cries, “Fraud!” not because they think every poor man is faking, but because the script cracked on camera.

What Jesus knew — and the modern pity machine can’t grasp — is that mercy moves on when mocked. There is no endless subsidy for the willfully broken. He never asked Judas to keep the purse open forever. He never told Caesar to levy a tax for those who refuse to stand. “You received without charge; give without charge.” But once the bread is broken, you either stand up or you do not. There is no third option. The healed must leave the mat behind. If they will not — or worse, if they stand up and keep asking for scraps — they force the giver to choose: keep the teat open, or snap it shut.

The real disease is not fraud itself but the quiet demand that fraud become ritual. The mat must stay visible, the scraping performative, the healed must display sickness at the right moment to keep the teat alive. This is not Christian mercy. This is the Company Store with a halo, built on a moral economy that does not want the poor to disappear but to remain forever “almost healed.”

Jesus offered a harder gift: stand up, walk, or live with your ruin. If you spit on the bread, He will feed you no more. No SNAP card, no empire’s pity machine, no endless cost center. Just the Kingdom — or your mat.