“If you can’t afford to eat, you need to get off your ass and get a job!”
I’ve heard this preached from the pulpit so many times. Maybe without the expletive.
The rich are getting richer and richer in the USA. They’re hoarding billions and billions of dollars, and the amount of people below the poverty line continues to grow.
During the government shutdown last fall, over 40 million Americans were at risk of losing their food stamp benefits.
Also last year, Tesla, famously led by Elon Musk, paid zero dollars in taxes.
But we’re supposed to believe that the people who can’t afford food are the problem?
It’s incredible to me how well the wealthy have done at shifting the burden off of themselves and onto the poor.
Calling the poor the problem while supporting the wealthy is a backwards theology.
God’s heart for the poor has been evident from the beginning. You can find numerous examples of this heart throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. I won’t take the space to list out the verses here, but this link provides a good overview of many of those passages.
The New Testament is also littered with commands to serve the poor. James 1:15-17 even tie providing for the poor directly to one’s faith, “Imagine a brother or sister who is naked and never has enough food to eat. What if one of you said, “Go in peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually give them what their body needs? In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t result in faithful activity.”
Jesus has harsh words for the rich, however. Simply look at Matthew 19:24, “In fact, it’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”
In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the rich young ruler, “You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.”
I’ve heard the story of driving out the money changers in the temple brought up as a defense for the righteous indignation evangelical Christians seem to have against immigrants or the poor or homosexuals, etc. They say, “Even Jesus used a whip and overturned the tables in the temple!”
But they even get this wrong. Why did Jesus do this? He tells us himself: “Get those doves out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace.”
Yet here we are, doing the exact same thing the sellers in the temple were doing. We’ve lost our way.
The church has become a marketplace, a place for sale to the highest bidder. What would Jesus say if he were here now?
I think a lot of people would be surprised. A lot of people would be angry. A lot of people would try to crucify him.
Why?
Not because he tells you not to be on government benefits, not because he tells you not to be gay.
But because of the same things he said to the religious leaders in his own day:
“You Pharisees and teachers are show-offs, and you’re in for trouble! You give God a tenth of the spices from your garden, such as mint, dill, and cumin. Yet you neglect the more important matters of the Law, such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These are the important things you should have done, though you should not have left the others undone either.”
So to end my rambling here, being a Christian does not mean condemning the poor for being poor. It means calling out the hoarding of wealth among the ruling class and fighting the systems that make their hoarding possible.
So rather than worry about our taxes going to pay for food stamps, let’s increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
This is keeping in line with the gospel of Jesus.
Because Jesus was sent “to tell the good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).
Let’s look for ways to carry out the words of our Savior, being “doers of the Words and not hearers only” (James 1:22).
Coffee & Theology 