God Will Judge Us on How We Treated the Poor
Deuteronomy 15:1-11 (NLT)
“At the end of every seventh year you must cancel the debts of everyone who owes you money . . . . .4 “There should be no poor among you, for the LORD your God will greatly bless you in the land he is giving you as a special possession. . . . “But if there are any poor Israelites in your towns when you arrive in the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward them. 8 Instead, be generous and lend them whatever they need. 9 Do not be mean-spirited and refuse someone a loan because the year for canceling debts is close at hand. If you refuse to make the loan and the needy person cries out to the LORD, you will be considered guilty of sin. 10 Give generously to the poor, not grudgingly, for the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do. 11 There will always be some in the land who are poor. That is why I am commanding you to share freely with the poor and with other Israelites in need." Deuteronomy 15:1-11 (NLT)
Pastor’s Blog
Notice the words, “cancel debts”, “no poor”, “be generous”, “do not be heard hearted”, “Do not be mean-spirited”, “give generously”, “share freely”, “do not be tightfisted”. The Message is kind of hard to miss!!!
As a father of 5 (and 4 grandchildren!) I know that I would be very upset, even angry if 2 of my children were rich and 3 were living in poverty. There are many reasons for poverty of course, and among them is irresponsibility. But there are many, many more reasons for inequity and, all things being relatively equal, I would fully expect well of children to help the impoverished ones. They are “their brother’s keeper”. There’s simply no way around this.
It’s like there’s a really big “elephant in the room” of primarily white evangelical middle to upper middle class Americans. The “elephant” is our over the top, extraordinary material wealth contrasted with the extraordinarily impoverished state of most of the rest of the world. I think about this all the time. It’s not fair and it’s unjust. I just spent a bunch of money designing a new flower and vegetable garden for my back yard. Was that right? Should I have forgone that and instead sponsored another compassion child?
There’s much to be said about this quandary. But I suspect the one thing we must not do is to try to justify any immoderation in our lives. I think scripture demands that we face reality, deal with it, ask God what we should do and then do it.
God loveth a cheerful giver...in the middle of the last decade a Syracuse University professor, Arthur Brooks, did a study on charitable giving. He was surprised to learn that religious political conservatives, especially the working poor, gave the largest percentage of their incomes to charity. Their giving was to secular and non-secular charities. They were more apt to donate blood and volunteer.He learned that the middle class give less than the working poor and secular conservatives (a small fraction of conservatives) tend to give less.As a whole, religious conservatives give 30% more to charity than liberals (who also claim to be less religious). Welfare recipients with the same income as the working poor were very unlikely to give at all.I don't know why the disparity but am reminded of the widow's mite. The religious conservative working poor givers also claimed to be the happiest. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, if one has the Holy Spirit, and one is seeking God about his giving, one will give as directed.
ReplyDeleteThis is a tough position for us. We have a family member who is in severe financial need and has been since her husband committed suicide fifteen years ago. Basically, she allows her son and daughters to steal from her, write hot checks, manipulate her and free load off her. She works a minimum wage job and no one else works: the 31 year old son, his live in girl friend, their two kids, the 28 year old daughter or the 18 year old daughter. She is in constant danger of losing her house, losing the minor kids, etc. We could make a difference in her life financially and have told her so repeatedly but not to further this situation. Any money we contributed would go to the drug habits of the kids and not to help the mother. So, instead of helping, we just sit here, praying, watching her struggle and feeling helpless.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous #3, what an awful situation for you to have to watch. I join you in praying for everyone involved.
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Not sure where in the Bible the giving to anyone to continue in their sin I'd addressed. However , I believe it would be wrong to enable someone to continue in sin. You would have wisdom not to take a diabetic to the candy store to bless them would you? However, you could help buy perhaps helping to bring foods or some other service that would bless that person. Admittedly that is a hard situation and praying not just for those involved but maybe praying with her, or praying to ask how Jesus wants you to bless her. It would seem fruitless Even foolish to give her money, but if God directs you to do so, than can we assess God's ability to use even that somehow to turn things around? Only by God's impressive direction would I give money when it seemed to enable a threat to one's wellbeing because of the lack of wisdom to handle it. When such a situation is revealed to us, God no doubt wants us to join Him in His work. It would seem our first response would to ask how before engaging. I am sure you are listening hard to hear that direction. Hope you can share when God moves!
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