Poverty is a disease, and those who live in poverty are usually blamed for their conditions. While it is true that some people cause their own poverty through bad investments, addiction, environmental destruction, and other ills, the vast majority through history have been injured by systems that give welfare to the rich and limited assistance to the poor. In the Jewish faith, a year of Jubilee was supposed to happen every seventh 7th year – Jesus proclaimed this when He let people know of His mission in Luke 4. Jesus was constantly warning people that it is incredibly hard for rich people to get into the Kingdom of Heaven – Woe to the rich, for you have your reward! 1 Timothy 6 – the love of money is the root of all evil. The Book of James, chapter 2 – You have dishonored the poor – Is it not the rich who oppress you and drag you into court? The list is quite long, so I hope you see my point.
And yet, we human beings continue to slobber over and idolize rich people; so much that we have allowed our tax system to give them benefits that the rest of us don’t have. They have safety nets that would be called welfare if the rest of us had them. And America is riddled with examples of poor communities – especially those of color – who had highways constructed through their towns and cities, creating poverty and destroying civic life. Poverty is an affliction mostly of the elderly and the young, and those who suffer from it are often trapped in it for life. It is not a sin to be poor; it is iniquity that purposely creates systems that perpetuate poverty.
If a person of faith is rich, it is no sin. God doesn’t decide who is or isn’t rich or poor. How we make our money, though, and more importantly, how we use it – this is what matters. This is why Jews and Christians and Muslims are expected to give a percentage of their income to help others. For the first two groups, it is called a tithe – 10% – and for Muslims it is called Zakat and is the 4th of 5 pillars of religious obligation. Why? There are lots of reasons, but for me, I think that God and/or the founders of these faiths understood human nature. They saw that people are often selfish, and that, faithful as we are, we will not always do the right thing. If people of faith gave their proper amount, I doubt poverty could exist. But it does. Draw your own conclusions. We could do better; we just choose not to.
Prayer – Holy God, forgive us for allowing poverty to run rampant through our communities, and call us to faithfulness. Amen.
Today’s art is “Holding a Bowl of Dust” by Ashley Cecil.