Let’s talk about Wealth
January 16I originally posted this note in the Connexion Online forum.
I’m reposting it here - feel free to discuss!
Part of my celebration of MLK Day involved listening to a sermon delivered by the Reverend King about the role of the church as an advocate of creative non-violence and advocate for Justice (as opposed to a neutered pacifism).
Dr. King:
“A true revolution of values will soon look easily upon the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.”
One dollar can provide clean water for an African for a year, yet Americans alone consume 26 billion containers of bottled water each year (most of which cost about a buck). In the time that it’s taken you to read this far, someone in the world has died of hunger - yet 2/3 of Americans are considered overweight. In a bit of damning irony: Americans spend more
annually on trash bags than nearly half the world does on all goods.
Finally, just one percent of people in the world have a college education. Indeed, most of us are among the top one percent.
As a Christ-follower, how do you feel about the global disparity between the rich and the poor? Is it right? Is it consistent with Kingdom principles? And if not, what can we do about it?
Suffering under the oppression of the Roman empire, early churches would often fast as a community until they had enough food for all to share. The emperor Julian once said of these Christians, “They feed not only their own poor, but ours as well.”
Yet what concrete steps can we take to end this systemic injustice today? As comforting as it is to relax on my couch and watch my Tivo, I cannot escape the fact that the presence of Christ in our world is deeply disturbed. The Kingdom of God belongs to the hungry, the thirsty, and the homeless - indeed, it was “prepared for [them] since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25:31-46). Speaking of those who refused to serve “the least of these,” Jesus taught that they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
In the Kingdom of Heaven, the tables are turned. What sort of hells are people living in today, and how might God work through us to subvert these forces of injustice?
A quick note: I don’t think that a conversation about “salvation by faith” would be productive right now - most of us agree on the orthodox perspective affirmed by scripture. I’m interested in practicalities at the moment.
What sort of prophetic fire does this ignite within you? What are some imaginative ways we can respond? And how can we make a difference?
Some ideas:
- http://www.bloodwatermission.com
- http://www.cpt.org
- http://www.thesimpleway.org
- http://go.sojo.net/campaign/evangelicalsfordarfur
January 16th, 2007 at 2:39 am
“How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked? Defend the cause of the weak and the fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” -Psalm 82:2-4
“He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.” -Proverbs 14:31
In the verse from Psalm 82 in particular, I feel we are called to do more than just feed the poor. Feeding the poor is necessary; we must provide for their basic human needs so that we can then consider their spiritual ones. But if we support the corporations that force the poor deeper into poverty, if we ignore the huge problems in our public school systems, if we turn a blind eye to the ways in which many of our government’s policies keep the poor from prospering, we are defending the unjust and showing partiality towards the wicked. I don’t believe we can just feed the poor and feel we have done enough. In ways that we are too blind and comfortable to realize, we keep the poor in poverty, and this is not kindness. We keep the poor in pain and prevent them from imagining a better future, a luxury we likely take for granted.
What do we do? I don’t know. I think that the church (like, the big worldwide church) has become really comfortable with feeding people. It’s not hard. You feel as though you have done a tremendous service afterwards, and you have. But I think there is more that the church must do. They must be willing to be–and I am reluctant to believe it, but I believe it–political. I don’t think this means the church should endorse particular candidates, but I think it means they should recognize their role in the creation of a greater and more just social order. The problem of poverty, rather than its symptoms, must be addressed by the church and its members. Poverty is a social problem, not an economic one. For the first time in this country’s history, we have enough resources to keep everyone fed, with proper healthcare, housed, etc. There is enough to go around. But our attitudes and misunderstandings nature of poverty, and particularly our own greed, keep people without hope or resources.
“Love for the unlovely is part of the Christian ethic. Nothing short of a nation-wide surge of love for persons who are poor, not because they are poor but because they are persons; nothing short of a tremendous, nation-wide emergence of deep love between prosperous and poor will save the poor and the prosperous. In the final analysis we are not engaged in a war on poverty. Poverty is not the enemy. The enemy is the socially structured pattern of attitudes in the larger community of the prosperous. The attitudes of the prosperous, more than anything else, make people in poverty stay there as outcasts, ranked as indecent, hostile in deeply sullen ways, hopeless and without high dreams. These are the unlovely, whose redemption waits for love generated in the hearts of the prosperous.” -J. Edward Carothers, Keepers of the Poor
The love we must have for the poor is not the kind of love that will necessarily give us immediate, feel-good rewards in return.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.