Society & Culture

If the cultural indicators are to be believed, the plight of world’s poor has become a topic of great interest in the west and America in particular. Advertising by non-profits abounds, rivaled only by the conspicuous relief efforts of major corporations. Even our fashion trends reveal a fascination with poverty.¹ Wealthy celebrities and middle income Americans alike pay extra money for clothes that appear to already be worn out. Young pastors sport bed-head hairdos² and preach in outfits carefully engineered to look like they’ve been slept in for a couple of days. Faux poverty is in.

So do we Americans want to relieve poverty or just imitate it? One thing is clear: we do not really understand it, and evangelicals seem to be about as confused as the general population. Efforts to help can only go so far if we’re unclear about poverty’s true nature and causes, so we need a deeper understanding.

Part 1 of this series focused on the question, What is poverty? That essay stopped well short of fully answering its title question but emphasized the importance of distinguishing between relative poverty and absolute poverty. Here we’ll focus on another question. But since this question is so intertwined with the first, we’ll chip away a bit more at the “what” along with the “why.”

Why, then, are the poor poor? Or, more precisely, what causes the poor to be poor?³

A biblical survey

Scripture reveals a great deal about the causes of poverty. A brief survey is possible here. I’ll group the causes of poverty under three headings, disaster, oppression and character, then draw some concluding observations.

Every year in January pulpits across America come alive with political preaching. Some churches emphasize the importance (as they see it) of social justice in the tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Other churches decry the injustice (as they see it) of legalized abortion. At opposite ends of the political spectrum, both sorts of churches seem to agree that they have a right—and perhaps a duty—to address certain kinds of political issues.

Political involvement on the part of churches is not the same thing as political involvement on the part of individual Christians. Granted, Christians have their primary citizenship in the Kingdom of God, and that citizenship relativizes all earthly loyalties. Nevertheless, Christians also remain citizens of the nations that they inhabit. They may, and sometimes should, choose to become involved in the political process. They may campaign, vote, and even hold office without necessarily violating their commitment to Christ and His Kingdom. As they have opportunity to participate in shaping the politics of their nations, they may help to advance a relative and proximate degree of righteousness.

Churches, however, find themselves in a different situation. A church that is rightly ordered will rely upon the explicit teachings of the New Testament in order to define its mission and ministry. While this insistence upon the New Testament may sound suspiciously Dispensationalist to some, it is not. Covenant Theologians find the church in the Old Testament, but they also recognize that the present form and order of the church commences with the death and resurrection of Jesus.

A search of the New Testament yields no indication at all that churches ought to be involved in the political process. On the contrary, the New Testament sees churches as spiritual entities whose ministries focus upon spiritual concerns. Consequently, political preaching and campaigning constitute a distraction from the most important affairs of the church, a renunciation of the church’s commission, and a betrayal of its privileged position in Christ Jesus. Political preaching per se has no place at all in the church of Jesus Christ.

Why are the poor poor?

It seems few are asking this question anymore—just when we need most to be asking it, just when interest in helping the poor has apparently reached an all time high.

I don’t recall ever hearing and seeing so many radio and TV ads for charitable causes, donation displays at retailers’ cash registers, or businesses prominently displaying how they’re helping the needy (or how they’re saving the world from environmental catastrophe—or both).

Evangelicals seem to be giving poverty more attention as well—in increasingly passionate terms and from quarters not historically known for that emphasis. Witness this observation from Southern Baptist, David Platt:

Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate. And he is hungry…. 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….

This is not what the people of God do. Regardless of what we say or sing or study on Sunday morning, rich people who neglect the poor are not the people of God. (Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, p.115)