The question of whether or not Christians should be engaged in alleviating poverty is mute. Both the New and Old Testaments bear witness to how believers are to act in kindness and generosity towards their peers who are in poverty. Timothy Keller in his book Generous Justice, in which he levels the Bible as a guide on having a more just society writes, “from ancient times, the God of the Bible stood out from the gods of all other religions as a God on the side of the powerless, and of justice for the poor.”[1]  The real question is, “how should the church respond to poverty?”

David Platt in his book Radical levels serious criticisms of the American church and its affluence compared to the poverty present in developing nations. In one place he comments on a parable found in Luke 16 concerning the rich man and Lazarus:

I am much like the rich man, and the church I lead looks a lot like him too. Every Sunday we gather in a multimillion-dollar building with millions of dollars in vehicles parked outside. We leave worship to spend thousands of dollars on lunch before we return to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of homes. We live in luxury.Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate. And he is hungry. In the time we gather for worship on a Sunday morning, almost a thousand children elsewhere die because they have no food. If it were our kids starving, they would all be gone by the time we said our closing prayer. We certainly wouldn’t ignore our kids while we sang songs and entertained ourselves, but we are content with ignoring other parents’ kids. Many of them are our spiritual brothers and sisters in developing nations. They are suffering from malnutrition, deformed bodies and brains, and preventable diseases. At most, we are throwing our scraps to them while we indulge in our pleasures here. Kind of like an extra chicken for the slaves at Christmas.[2]

While Dr. Platt’s statements are full of rhetorical flare, he does lay serious criticism at the doorstep of his church. In essence he notes that the extravagant lifestyle that invests millions of dollars in church buildings, homes and cars is responsible for the poverty and death of children on the other side of the planet.  This is serious criticism. It is one thing to be unaware of poverty on the other side of the globe and it is another thing to be actively keeping people in poverty. It is one thing to note people are starving in India and another thing to note people are starving on the drive into worship. Platt equates the two when he says, “the poor man is outside our gate… almost a thousand children elsewhere die because they have no food.”[3]

My questions go like this: Am I morally responsible for poverty in India? Should I feel guilty for buying my children nice things while other children on this globe starve? What are your thoughts? Is David Platt right?

I’ll be blogging more on this subject tomorrow.

[3] Ibid.

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One of the greatest reasons for needing a lose term such as “need” to help conceive of poverty is the radical differences in standard of living that occur between the continents and even among the poor themselves. D. L. Mundy in his ground breaking book, Christianity and Economic Problems wrote:

Even ‘the poorest he’ in the highly industrialized countries expects a standard of living unprecedented in earlier ages. He lives longer, he has access to educational and medical facilities, he has better clothes, a more solid and warmer house (even if it be a slum), more leisure from work, less sheerly [sic] back-breaking labor when at work, a dependable food supply, and opportunities to enjoy those luxuries of modern civilization in the form of tobacco, films and daily papers, which tend to be regarded as necessities, and no longer luxuries, though the mass of human kind have managed to live fairly satisfactory lives without knowing them or caring for them.[1]

The 2012 Poverty Guidelines Federal Register Notice from the United States Department of Health and Human Services based on the Census Bureau’s official poverty thresholds records the poverty line for a family consisting of four people, presumably two adults and two children, living in the lower forty-eight states to be at $23,050; higher in both Alaska and Hawaii.[2] This breaks down to roughly $15.80 per person, per day to live at the poverty line in the United States. The breakdown is higher for single adults living on their own assuming they are not able to share the expenses of shelter and basic utilities. The World Bank standard for the world poverty line around $1.25 per person per day.[3] The poverty line for the United States is roughly twelve times higher than the world poverty line. Incidentally the world poverty line put forth by the World Bank does not take into account large industrialized nations such as the United States, Canada, and Australia in its findings.  The conclusion is that the cost of living or at least the standard of living is higher in the United States and other industrialized nations than it is in third world countries.

D. L. Munby stated; luxuries of modern civilization have come to be counted on as necessities.[4]  Some such luxuries would include processed foods which increase the cost of food in the super market, stricter food laws that prevent markets from selling out of date products, utilities such as electricity, water and the sewer/ septic systems that are standard in America,  rigorous building codes, the cost of transportation, child care, etc.  All of these factors indicate a higher standard and therefore cost of living in the United States.

Though the United States Census Bureau attempts to put a figure on the cost of living it is difficult for any national organization to really address the specific issues of poverty in a region. Individual issues often complicate the poverty issue. Attitudes such as depression or culturally ingrained mindsets prevent people from reaching their full economic potential. Issues such as a gambling addiction, drug addiction, alcohol addiction and others are localized situations that keep individuals poor and cannot be addressed or even fully realized through suggesting  a poverty line. Ultimately the matter of poverty has to be addressed on a local and individualized level.[5]

[5] Jay Wesley Richards. Money, Greed, and God, (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 50-51.

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Deriving a standard definition for poverty in absolute terms is problematic.  Poverty or being poor encompasses many things such as mindset, income level, management, ability, injustice, economic policy, joblessness, childcare, land laws, etc. Many attempts have been made to devise economic margins by which poverty may be measured. The most common way to measure poverty is according to a scale of ability to provide for yourself. So if an individual lacks “the financial resources to satisfy their basic needs and/or reach a minimum standard of living,”[1] they are considered poor.  “According to the World Bank (2000), ‘poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being.’ This of course begs the questions of what is meant by well-being and of what is the reference point against which to measure deprivation.”[2]

There is tension when using artificial margins to understand poverty.  Artificial margins are helpful in understanding poverty on a large scale such as a national or global level.  However, poverty is an issue centered on the state of specific individuals. The more specific you get when examining poverty, the less relevant the artificial margins are. There are different ways for poverty to be expressed; someone may be house poor, food poor, or health poor.[3] Ultimately though, poverty has to be dealt with on an individual level.[4]

Poverty has many faces.  Poverty can be an expression of culture such as in the case of low cast Indian Hindu’s who are born into poverty and kept in poverty by their society.[5] Poverty can be temporary as in the case of someone between jobs. Poverty can be derived from poor choices such as gambling, alcohol addiction or it can be derived from other factors like a lack of education or disability. To be poor is “to be in need.” The term “need” may seem vague, but vague is what you arrive at when the definition requires generalization to the lowest common denominator. A loose definition of poverty allows for discussion of poverty in general that can be developed into a discussion of specific cases of poverty without demeaning all the other instances of poverty.

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You have seen their faces on the television. You have heard their pleas come through the voice of a spokesperson pleading with you that for just around a dollar a day you can make a difference for a child in a third world country. You see them standing in the major intersections of the city, holding their signs up and their hands out. You may even have members of your own family who come by for financial help and assistance from time to time. They are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and they are the poor. This week we will be exploring the issue of poverty and the gospel.

The ancient Israelites were fully informed by Old Testament law on how to deal with poverty.  Special instructions were given to make sure the widow, orphans and aliens who lacked economic power were to have their needs met with their dignity intact (Deuteronomy 14:29).  Property laws were established in such a way that would ensure a families economic viability from generation to generation via a special lease program (Leviticus 25:18-55).  Farmers were to leave the corners of their field un-harvested so the community’s poor could glean enough food to fill their empty stomachs (Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22).

In a similar way the New Testament contains many teachings of Jesus and direct application from the Apostles on how to deal with poverty.  Jesus indicated that the poor, lame and crippled were to be the honored guests in the homes of his followers (Luke 14:12-13). Jesus spent considerable time healing those with handicaps that would have by nature been economically disadvantaged (Matthew 11:4-5). The Apostle Paul unashamedly laid out the measures by which an offering was to be taken to help the poor saints in the Jerusalem church (1 Corinthians 8-9). The epistle writer James was especially stringent on noting that no partiality was to be given to the rich over the poor (James 2:1-9) and proclaimed a dead faith to anyone who saw his brother in need and turned him away (James 2:14-17).

While the culture has changed one thing remains clear, God has a heart for the poor. The task left before us is to discern how the American church both as an institution and as individuals should set about to alleviate poverty.  Join us as for the next few days as we explore the issue of poverty and the gospel.

What are your thoughts on the gospel and alleviating poverty? Are they related? Are they unrelated but both are necessary? Who is responsible to alleviate poverty? The Church, individual Christians, the government? Feel free to weigh in and share your thoughts and opinions in the comment section below.

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