Evasion

I have just read still another article on poverty, economics, the rich and the needs of society.  It continues the old observations we have often heard that may exaggerate or evade some factors, shifts obligations, makes issues a bit too simple, follows common logics that may not apply fully – and the complications deepen.  Like many articles it carries along in comparisons that are like apples to grapes.  To carry sound analogies one must relate apples to apples, and in the next context may need to compare grapes to grapes. The most common of these may be the comparison of past performance (old context) to current (modern context).  There were poor people in ancient times, cared for or neglected by family and community.  Governments offered striking entertainments like gladiators killing each other, or perhaps lions eating Christians.  The poor were on their own for the most part assisting each other as they could, surviving on any largesse of their neighbors and compassionate community (close in small circumferences) efforts.  Troubled poor in sickness were cordoned off and left for caring persons (family) to attend them.  Other poor persons joined armies or marauders, became slaves or indentures, begged along busy intersections, married into harems or became concubines.  Poverty and warfare likely introduced the system of multiple wives in a family.  The poor scratched out their lives and sometimes starved.  All that occurred before modern systems of identity: middle class emergence in mass populations, sophistication, systems social awareness, medical science, developed expectations, and new supportive programs of states or institutions.  The Church has been one of those institutions, perhaps the oldest of all those that address all needs of human beings in the ongoing course of daily life.  Modernity has reduced family solidarity and care.

Jesus made clear that poverty was an ongoing issue for mankind, and needed to be addressed.  He went to the poor and the sick, identified with them and offered hope.  He did not blame their plight on the rich, or the government, or any evasion of responsibility on their part.  They were in their plight because of the imperfection of mankind which needed to be addressed, and alleviated through trust in God, his message was first to them.  He cast his compassionate concern to the matter in the home of Simon the Leper, while eating at Simon’s table.  His message was that the problem related to an order couched in the caring family and trusting in God for attitudes to effective life and generations.  In the 2,000 years since Jesus that has been the program to address the needs of human beings, even the needs of persons who have nothing to do with God in their own context of life.  God has compassion for them, and expects his people to act for him in helping to provide for their needs in family context.  That has followed for biblical Christians through the church (of formal and informal groupings), through organizations (like the Salvation Army), through private and public foundations, and through individuals who care enough to offer time and resources for the needs noted in such movements as by Samaritan’s Purse.  There are others, and there were some in the past that succumbed to the pressures of the secular society so dropped the identity of Christian sponsorship but continue to serve human needs. (Even so, it feels like the child may have denied the parent as Cain did.)

Wealthy persons, like all other persons, have their faults that misguide them if they permit the negatives. They must address their hearts about what they do with their wealth.  Governments may help in making proper laws, or entering into agreements that address social problems.  It will not be done in the negative spirit of soak the rich.  (It is likely that the excesses of some wealthy persons are equated by some clever persons who use charitable systems to cover their own avoidance of responsibility for themselves.  I have met both and wonder about their models for others.)  The comparisons or contrasts for this age and means with some other have limited value in meeting solutions.  Service does not begin with the size of a bank account, but the concern for God’s care for troubled society.  God is served when human beings, bearing something of the image of God are served.  Any failing is our own.  Some wealthy persons, some poor, and some in between may be out of touch with what they were meant to be and do – for self and others.