Scrolling through TikTok or Instagram lately reveals a disturbing new trend of self-styled “influencers” proudly declaring that if their EBT cards stop working, they’ll simply “go take what they need” from stores like Walmart and Kroger.
Many of these videos feature women sporting fresh manicures, eyelash extensions, and designer handbags—symbols of comfort and consumerism, not crisis. Yet their message is the same: if government handouts dry up, theft is justified.
This isn’t poverty. It’s moral decay.
Once upon a time, the American poor were the humblest, hardest-working members of their communities. Churches organized food drives, neighbors helped one another, and gratitude was the default attitude for charity. Now, generations raised on federal assistance are taught that they are owed. They feel entitled. When dependence replaces responsibility, and envy replaces effort, society itself begins to rot.
This is what happens when government forgets its biblical boundaries. Scripture never commands civil authorities to provide a lifestyle. Government’s God-ordained duty is to protect rights—not to provide instead of require work. Romans 13 defines the magistrate’s role: to punish evil and reward good. Feeding the hungry and clothing the poor are noble duties, but they belong to the church and the individual, not the state.
When people casually talk about “taking from Walmart,” they’re not rebelling against injustice, they’re rebelling against God’s moral law.
The Eighth Commandment is clear: “You shall not steal.” Private property is a sacred right because it flows from human stewardship. What a man earns and builds belongs to him, and when that is stripped away, civilization itself unravels.
A government that encourages envy or dependency undermines that very order. By training citizens to expect redistribution, it teaches them that theft—so long as it’s bureaucratic—is acceptable.
The jump from bureaucratic theft to physical looting is small. These EBT riots are not spontaneous—they are the fruit of decades of moral erosion sown by the welfare state and theft and redistribution by taxation.
In Scripture, charity is always relational and accountable. The Apostle Paul wrote that if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). That principle preserves dignity and ensures that help reaches the truly needy—not those who trade moral duty for manicure appointments. The church, motivated by compassion and truth, knows the difference between need and negligence. Government programs do not.
When Washington replaces the local church, compassion becomes coercion. Taxes become tithes to a secular god of entitlement. Instead of gratitude, we get grievance; instead of humility, pride.
The viral entitlement on display in these “EBT riot” videos is a mirror reflecting what America has become: a people more eager to demand benefits than to defend virtue. If we continue down this path, we will lose not only our stores—but our souls.
America must decide: will we remain a nation of free citizens governed by moral law, or descend into a mob of dependents demanding redistribution by force?
The choice is not just economic. It is spiritual.
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