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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Why is poverty good?
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the Pookah
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# 9186
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Posted
I've read that Pope Francis is close to the poor and frankly as a long term Buddhist and someone who is ethnically Jewish I cannot understand the Christian culture and attitudes to poverty and suffering.
To me they are unaccountable as if being uneducated is good too.. It just doesn't make sense to me religiously and culturally; poverty and illness etc are things to be overcome not embraced. Can you explain this to me please?
[ 27. March 2013, 14:37: Message edited by: Ancient Mariner ]
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Porridge
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# 15405
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Posted
Admittedly not an expert here, but my limited understanding of some Liberation theology is that, by consciously and deliberately embracing poverty (which so many cannot escape), people develop a better understanding of how poverty works, what its causes and effects are, and may also be better able to assist those imprisoned in their poverty to begin creating collective approaches to ameliorating their misery.
I will say this from experience: the simple fact is that poverty comes at high cost.
Poverty means late charge on various bills, so basic services end up costing the poor more.
Poverty often means having no personal transport, while finding public transport both unaffordable or unavailable or extremely costly in terms of time. This in turn means having no ability to take advantage of sales, or of being unable to stock up on some staple when you've got cash (you can't get large quantities home).
Poverty means living in undesirable and poorly-maintained shelter, so you spend more on heat, electricity, etc (using the stove to heat the kitchen, while the heat escapes cracked windows and uninsulated walls, etc.)
Poverty is expensive -- and that's well before we get to all the other costs -- social, nutritional, emotional, and on and on.
Those capable of embracing both the poor and the poverty they struggle with may be admirable -- I don't know. What I do know is that few people really "grasp" what poverty is like until or unless they find themselves trapped in it.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
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Zach82
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# 3208
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Posted
Humanity's relationship to God is ultimately one of poverty. God is everything, we are nothing without him. Therefore it is in the poor that one sees the most fundamentally human, and to the poor that the grace of God is most liberal. The Kingdom of God is the hope of the poor, because they are the least invested in the sinful course of human events.
On the other hand, God is the God that hears the poor. It goes back to the identity of the Hebrews- God hears the cry of oppression of an enslaved nation and acts to deliver them.
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
As a Franciscan tertiary, I guess I ought to be able to answer this.* Francis, il poverello, took Lady Poverty as his bride. He gave up the family wealth, very publicly, and went about preaching the Gospel. The
*Though I am reminded of the banner some of the first order had on Jubilee 2000 marches proclaiming "Franciscans against Poverty". website of the European province of the Anglican third order gives a life of St Francis.
Biblically, key texts are the story of the rich young ruler where Jesus calls him to sell all he has and give the money to the poor; the beatitudes (blessed are the poor in spirit), the rich man and Lazarus and perhaps the parade of the Pharisee and the tax collector.
We all are dependent on God for all we have and riches can actually get in the way of our seeing that. Also the world's resources need to be shared. Though there is a difference between forced poverty and chosen poverty
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
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HCH
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# 14313
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Posted
Is the problem really not that poverty is good but that the desire for wealth is bad?
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the Pookah
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# 9186
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Posted
HCH; I understand about 'desire' in Buddhism we call that attachment and yes it's a source of misery to be attached to things.
So if I've understood correctly according to what Carys and the rest are saying, poverty is good as it reinforces this idea of total dependence on a deity?
But doesn't this kind of mental passivity and sense of total dependence reinfoce material poverty? Who will rescue you if not you?
As a Buddhist I see my circumstances as a result of past karma, but I can overcome them if I practice hard and apply myself to the teachings of the Buddha. I'm grateful but it's more like a teacher-student relationship where someday I'll be the teacher. I wonder if our pov's are just too radically different....
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Macrina
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# 8807
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Posted
I think some of my take on this has been tinged by my encounters with Buddhism as I think what it says about attachment is valuable and applies to life.
For me poverty in the Christian sense isn't about deliberately putting oneself in a position where you will need ask God to rescue you. It's more about 'stuff' being a distraction and a cause of temptation and stress as in the more you have the more you want. Someone (and I am not this holy) might earn a decent professional salary but cut back their living expenses and live very simply and donate the rest.
I think for me poverty equates with simplicity and living life with the least material possessions that you can manage with as it reminds you that this life is transient and encourages focus on God rather than on accumulating wealth and being focussed on preserving or increasing that.
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Adeodatus
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# 4992
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Posted
For poverty to be a blessing, it has to be taken on voluntarily. There's no blessing in enforced poverty, either for those who endure it or those who enforce it. It destroys community, and breeds resentment of the rich and disrespect of the poor.
But we are encouraged to become poor, for the reasons others have said: attachment to wealth is a dangerous thing. A key gospel text is, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also".
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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SvitlanaV2
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# 16967
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Posted
I don't know how the Pope sees it, but to me, the point isn't that poverty is 'good', but that the most effective way of serving people is to be where they are, living as they live, experiencing what they experience.
The Church often seems like a group of middle class people claiming to stand alongside and to speak on behalf of the poor, rather than actually belonging to the poor (as well as to everyone else in the community), and being the place where the poor can speak out for themselves. This is problematic.
On the other hand, I often reflect on these verses from Proverbs 30:
7 Two things I ask of you, Lord;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
This suggests that to be utterly destitute can be destructive to faith. A person in that situation needs someone (or an organisation) with more money to help them with the basics of life.
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Evangeline
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# 7002
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Posted
I think at the heart of the Christian message on poverty is not that poverty in and of itself is good but that accumulating riches is bad. If you hoard material goods and/or overindulge yourself when other people don't have enough to eat or drink then you're not being Christlike. You need to be able to give away your worldly wealth so as to help others. THe virtue of embracing poverty is that you have given away your wealth to help others. There is no virtue in simply being poor, but neither is there disgrace in being poor.
In biblical times it was often thought that if you were poor(or sick) it was because God was punishing you for sin. Jesus' message of love and compassion was trying to teach people that this isn't so and that we should do all we can to help alleviate poverty and to share with justice the resources of the world. The Kingdom of God, which Christians should be trying to bring about on Earth is that there will be no poverty because everyone will share resources equally.
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the Pookah
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# 9186
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Posted
Okay, so then would Christians espouse socialism and communism, ideally as they believe that that's the most Christian way to be, to share resources? I know a buddhist philanthropist whose funded orphanages and factories in India and teaches people to be self-reliant.But that's so different...
I think wealth is great as you can support printing Buddhist texts, sharing the teachings, building temples all kinds of good things which result in good karma. Wealth itself isn't good or bad, it's your attitude to it.
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Latchkey Kid
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# 12444
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Posted
I like that, Evangeline.
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Mika; in Hello? Is Anybody There?, Jostein Gaardner
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I think wealth is great as you can support printing Buddhist texts, sharing the teachings, building temples all kinds of good things which result in good karma. Wealth itself isn't good or bad, it's your attitude to it.
That's a common Christian perspective, too - wealth is a premoral good. The actual biblical phrase is that "the love of money is the root of all evil," because the love of money is a disordered affection. We behave according to what we love, so to love something that is properly not an end in itself but a means to other ends is a messed-up approach to life, from a spiritual perspective, anyway.
Giving things up, as one does in a vow of poverty, is never meant to be seen as the good in itself, but rather a means to something more desirable. As others have said, you might give up wealth because it can be a distraction, or because it creates a burden, or because the pursuit of wealth can involve you in systems of oppression and you want to, as the saying goes, "live simply so others may simply live."
But the idea of being close to the poor is one of siding with the people who are poor, not of admiring or celebrating poverty. One who is close to the poor is pretty much the opposite of one who is so wealthy they are out of touch with ordinary people - definitely one of the charges leveled at many past Popes. In order to get to be Pope, one has to be well-educated, among other things; anyone who gets to be Pope is in some way a person of privilege. People admire Pope Francis because he's willing to lay aside his own privilege to the extent he can - such as eschewing limo drivers or paid cooks - in order to basically stay grounded and accountable to the people. It at least shows he doesn't love money more than people.
Liberation Theologians have made the idea of "God's preferential option for the poor" nearly a household phrase. It is a Christian understanding that God is deeply concerned with the poor, but, as others have said here, the point is to liberate them, not perpetuate their state of poverty as a good in itself.
Don't some Buddhist monks essentially do the same? The Buddha certainly did - he gave up his status as a prince, and relied on the generosity of others as he sought enlightenment; he gave up worldly goods - and they are goods - in order to attain something even better. Then he continued in that path in order to help others attain that something better. As I understand it, anyway.
And even with Christians, doing that sort of thing is seen as a saintly thing, something only a few people seem to succeed in doing. It also seems to be a calling - something not everyone should attempt, but definitely something we can all learn something from and at least emulate on some small level. It's not supposed to be the norm.
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
There is a famous "so that" associated with poverty that we can find in the New Testament.
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich."
There is material poverty, which we see Jesus joining in the manner of his birth. And Porridge is right. It comes at a high price.
There is material wealth, which we also see pictured in the gospels. That also exacts a high price when it is accompanied by indifference to the suffering of the poor. "Give it up" says Jesus to the rich man" come and follow me, and you will have an eternal treasure as a result". And he also tells us the story of Lazarus and the beggar, pointing to eternal consequences of materialism and indifference to suffering. Material wealth brings a different kind of poverty. A different "lack", if you like. We get a reminder of it in the letter to the church in Laodicea.
"17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked."
The message of the incarnation in Christianity, the "God with us", the "becoming flesh and moving into the neighbourhood" which Francis of Assissi took on board, is that people need to be helped away from both the crushing power of material poverty and the destructive power of material wealth. I think we are, rather, encouraged to share and be generous. It is good for us, good for others, to live this way.
[ 18. March 2013, 07:21: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
People admire Pope Francis because he's willing to lay aside his own privilege to the extent he can - such as eschewing limo drivers or paid cooks - in order to basically stay grounded and accountable to the people. It at least shows he doesn't love money more than people.
One wonders what the drivers and cooks who have just lost their jobs because of his desire to stay grounded would say about it...
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Hail Gallaxhar
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
Think I identify this as the "Downton Abbey" defence.
It has a point of course. However, this current pope seems set on being demonstrably "incarnational". I doubt whether he is personally a wealthy man. If he wishes to change the trappings of the office to reflect that rather more than current custom and practice do, then I think he's right.
The disappearance of a job does not prevent the employer from looking after the job holder, either by employment elsewhere, or generous settlement etc. There can be "both/and" solutions.
[ 18. March 2013, 09:59: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
Okay, so then would Christians espouse socialism and communism, ideally as they believe that that's the most Christian way to be, to share resources? I know a buddhist philanthropist whose funded orphanages and factories in India and teaches people to be self-reliant.But that's so different...
I think wealth is great as you can support printing Buddhist texts, sharing the teachings, building temples all kinds of good things which result in good karma. Wealth itself isn't good or bad, it's your attitude to it.
Not all Christians are socialists, obviously. They ought to be in my opinion, but they aren't.
I don't really see what's so different about your indian philanthropist. Christians have funded orphanages too. But generally, the world economy is not set up so that everyone can become self-reliant. Just because the system works in a way to let ten people out of a thousand work their way out doesn't mean that it's fair for the other nine hundred and ninety.
In general, the rich are more likely to have false and harmful ideas about the common good than the poor are. That's because it's in the self-interest of the rich to believe that their wealth is deserved or earned and that the poor aren't doing so badly really.
Wealth may not be good or bad in itself. But it's much harder to be non-attached to wealth that you actually have.
As other people have said, Christianity doesn't think being poor is a good thing in itself. Yes, there is a history of rich Christians saying that the poor are better off poor, and therefore oughtn't to improve the situation, but that's an abuse. Christianity is, or ought to be, more than a bit suspicious of the self-justifications of the rich.
[ 18. March 2013, 09:55: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
My son lives a very simple life. He works as a carer for disabled adults and gets a very low wage. So he lives in a one bedroom flat with shared showers and kitchen (pretty much student accommodation - he's 27). He never buys clothes and only has one pair of shoes. When I offer to buy him new shoes he says 'no thanks, I have a pair'. He always gets around by bike and has no computer/TV/gadgets of any kind. His mobile phone is twelve years old and he rarely uses it.
He's an atheist and passionate about keeping his environmental footprint small. His MSc is in ecology, though he's never worked in that field - he prefers to care for people. He is due to begin training as a nurse in October.
But he's not poor! I have worked in The Kibera, Kenya (so has he) THEY are poor.
No one who has enough food, clean water and shelter is poor.
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Garden. Room. Walk
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Trickydicky
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# 16550
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Posted
Jesus said, 'You'll always have the poor with you'. But that is a call to action to act to relieve poverty, not a weary giving up and saying we just have to accept it. Quite a few churches I know of in the UK either run or support Food Banks. Then there are christian Developement Charities such as Christian Aid and CAFOD. The Joint Public Issues Team (of the Methodist, URC, baptist and C of S) have produced an excellent report 'Truth and Lies About Poverty'. Link here (I hope) http://www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/truthandliesaboutpoverty/
The original post by the Pookah musunderstands the Christian attitude to poverty. It isn't good. We try to work to relieve it.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trickydicky:
The original post by the Pookah musunderstands the Christian attitude to poverty. It isn't good. We try to work to relieve it.
This.
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Garden. Room. Walk
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Ricardus
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# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I think wealth is great as you can support printing Buddhist texts, sharing the teachings, building temples all kinds of good things which result in good karma. Wealth itself isn't good or bad, it's your attitude to it.
I think you are failing to distinguish between personal wealth and wealth in general.
AIUI, those religious orders whose members are sworn to poverty may still handle large volumes of wealth, but that wealth is supposed to go towards charitable endeavours rather than to be used as personal pocket money by the members of the order.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
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Gextvedde
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# 11084
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
I think for me poverty equates with simplicity and living life with the least material possessions that you can manage with as it reminds you that this life is transient and encourages focus on God rather than on accumulating wealth and being focussed on preserving or increasing that.
I think there's something in that and perhaps simplicity would be a better way of talking about it. ISTM that simplicity is a chosen way of life which can be lived joyfully (see Boogie's comment above) whereas poverty is being forced to go without basics because of your circumstances.
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"We must learn to see that our temperament is a gift of God, a talent with which we must trade until he comes" Thomas Merton
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gextvedde:
quote:
Originally posted by Macrina:
I think for me poverty equates with simplicity and living life with the least material possessions that you can manage with as it reminds you that this life is transient and encourages focus on God rather than on accumulating wealth and being focussed on preserving or increasing that.
I think there's something in that and perhaps simplicity would be a better way of talking about it. ISTM that simplicity is a chosen way of life which can be lived joyfully (see Boogie's comment above) whereas poverty is being forced to go without basics because of your circumstances.
Yes - and my point was also that you don't need religion to do this.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
Some interesting points. I am a small business owner and unreconstructed capitalist “in tooth and claw”.
On reflecting upon many of the posts I do wonder how many people who “give away” their wealth, or deliberately live in a low-income manner, have families to support.
I earn a decent salary and I make no apologies for that. It provides for a good lifestyle for my family.
Were it just me I could get away with far less, but what right do I have to force poverty on my wife and children. It would be selfish. I work hard for them, so deliberately reducing the income that goes along with my efforts and God-granted good fortune for some self-righteous “principle” is just not realistic.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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hatless
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# 3365
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Posted
Another factor is that being rich changes you. By rich, I mean richer than the people around you, because wealth and poverty are mainly relative matters. It is hard to become rich and not start to justify it to yourself or others. It is hard not to develop attitudes that distance yourself from poorer people. Many who are rich go on to justify the poverty of others.
I think it's mainly because money is power, and power is power over others.
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My crazy theology in novel form
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Gextvedde
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# 11084
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
Some interesting points. I am a small business owner and unreconstructed capitalist “in tooth and claw”.
On reflecting upon many of the posts I do wonder how many people who “give away” their wealth, or deliberately live in a low-income manner, have families to support.
I earn a decent salary and I make no apologies for that. It provides for a good lifestyle for my family.
Were it just me I could get away with far less, but what right do I have to force poverty on my wife and children. It would be selfish. I work hard for them, so deliberately reducing the income that goes along with my efforts and God-granted good fortune for some self-righteous “principle” is just not realistic.
I think that's very honest & raises a point of genuine tension namely the impact of our choices on others near to us. I can't make any claim to live in poverty or simplicity (I earn below the Btitish national average but easily enough to be comfortable) but a cursory glance around the world shows a desparate lack of equality between my standard of living and people in real poverty. So do I sell the house & give the money away? (and face the wrath of Mrs Gextvedde?)
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"We must learn to see that our temperament is a gift of God, a talent with which we must trade until he comes" Thomas Merton
Posts: 293 | From: The Twilight Zone, near the M25 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I've read that Pope Francis is close to the poor and frankly as a long term Buddhist and someone who is ethnically Jewish I cannot understand the Christian culture and attitudes to poverty and suffering.
To me they are unaccountable as if being uneducated is good too. It just doesn't make sense to me religiously and culturally; poverty and illness etc are things to be overcome not embraced. Can you explain this to me please?
As said, it's simplicity that is "embraced," by Christians not poverty. We think it's good that Pope Francis is close to the poor, because we think that means he cares about them and understands their problems. That could mean, like the Buddhists you mentioned, that he understands that a village may need a well more than bags of rice. He might understand that a poor family, living in an expensive hotel room may need a lump sum that would enable them to pay two months rent plus deposit on an apartment, rather than weekly help with the hotel bill.
It all comes back to Jesus' command to his disciples to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we have a freezer full of steaks and 4000 sq ft house while another family is hungry and living in a shack then we should love them enough to want to share. One of the last things Jesus said to his followers was, "Feed the poor." We can barely call ourselves Christian if we don't do a thing about poverty.
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Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
On the other hand, I often reflect on these verses from Proverbs 30:
7 Two things I ask of you, Lord;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
I was thinking of the same passage and it has reminded me that I've been wanting to read Neither Poverty nor Riches by Criag Blomberg for a while now. (Some sections of the book found here apparently)
It seems to me that there is a distinction to be made between the abject poverty that is cultivated throughout much of the world and a deliberate choice to avoid the material trappings of the world or at least not be controlled by them. In this regard, Pookah, I respectfully suggest that perhaps you are not understanding what Christianity says about poverty. Indeed, even if we only had the OT one of its themes is protecting the poor.
All this aside, I guess the theory is that out of privation and suffering can come good. Such a view would stand in contradistinction to somebody like Rabbi Kushner who sees suffering as meaningless, without any redeeming consequences and God as a helpless bystander.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
The early Church wasn't quite so equivocal about wealth and poverty as the contemporary Church tends to be. This blog entry contains a selection of texts.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
If I may say so, Adeodatus, "rich" pickings!
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
If I may say so, Adeodatus, "rich" pickings!
Bloody hell. What a load of pinko commie bastards!
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
There are three kinds of material lack that I can think of;
One is good: the voluntary relinquishing of things one doesn't need in order to live a simple life, to give to others, for companionship, for prayer or any other positive reason.
Two is bad: the involuntary deprivation of things one needs such as education, clean water, or family time.
Three is bad but insidious: the belief that one is being deprived of a need which is in fact a want. For instance, the belief that one is being deprived by an inability to afford a larger plasma-screen TV.
(By the way I thought Buddhist monks took various vows of renouncing material wealth? Also the latter sentiment strikes me as in line with the Buddhist view about suffering being relieved by freedom from desire)
[ 18. March 2013, 14:22: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Another factor is that being rich changes you. By rich, I mean richer than the people around you, because wealth and poverty are mainly relative matters. It is hard to become rich and not start to justify it to yourself or others. It is hard not to develop attitudes that distance yourself from poorer people. Many who are rich go on to justify the poverty of others.
I think it's mainly because money is power, and power is power over others.
Aren’t you begging the question there? How do you know wealth changes you?
Even if there are changes in someone from when they were poor to when they are rich, you cannot put any or all of those changes down to their increased wealth. We all change as we grow older and in most cases, becoming wealthy is a long process.
I also find fault with your conclusion that wealth isolates people from the poor. I suspect that Bill Gates has more contact with the issues that affect the world’s poorest people now than when he was a student working out of a garage.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Originally posted by churchgeek:
quote:
Don't some Buddhist monks essentially do the same? The Buddha certainly did - he gave up his status as a prince, and relied on the generosity of others as he sought enlightenment; he gave up worldly goods - and they are goods - in order to attain something even better. Then he continued in that path in order to help others attain that something better. As I understand it, anyway.
Initially he was searching. In so he did try austerity to the point of extreme. However, the middle way avoids extremes. As the Pookah stated; it is not wealth or poverty, but how one lives with these conditions.
The problem with wealth is that it is too easy to become enamored of its comforts. The problem with poverty is the pain can be too much a distraction. Neither is inherently a bar to enlightenment, but both can cause difficulty.
ISTM, the Buddha and Jesus agree muchly on this.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Poverty isn't good. That's why some good people get involved in it, to help get people out of it.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
The early Church wasn't quite so equivocal about wealth and poverty as the contemporary Church tends to be. This blog entry contains a selection of texts.
ISTM that if one is going to take all those quotes seriously, one certainly shouldn't be retaining enough private wealth to be able to afford expensive trivialities like a personal computer.
Of course, in global terms anyone who shits into a bowl of perfectly drinkable water every single day while other people are dying for the lack of it is rich...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
The early Church wasn't quite so equivocal about wealth and poverty as the contemporary Church tends to be. This blog entry contains a selection of texts.
ISTM that if one is going to take all those quotes seriously, one certainly shouldn't be retaining enough private wealth to be able to afford expensive trivialities like a personal computer.
Of course, in global terms anyone who shits into a bowl of perfectly drinkable water every single day while other people are dying for the lack of it is rich...
Did I say I was good?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Another factor is that being rich changes you. By rich, I mean richer than the people around you, because wealth and poverty are mainly relative matters. It is hard to become rich and not start to justify it to yourself or others. It is hard not to develop attitudes that distance yourself from poorer people. Many who are rich go on to justify the poverty of others.
I think it's mainly because money is power, and power is power over others.
Aren’t you begging the question there? How do you know wealth changes you?
Even if there are changes in someone from when they were poor to when they are rich, you cannot put any or all of those changes down to their increased wealth. We all change as we grow older and in most cases, becoming wealthy is a long process.
I also find fault with your conclusion that wealth isolates people from the poor. I suspect that Bill Gates has more contact with the issues that affect the world’s poorest people now than when he was a student working out of a garage.
Sure, everything is complicated where we humans are concerned. Single, simple cause and effect relationships are rare.
I suppose I know that wealth changes us partly from introspection. I know that I simply forget the realities I lived with when I was poor(ish). I can, with an effort, remember the facts, but I no longer feel what it was like, I no longer think that way. When I spend time with someone who is poor, it reminds me of what I once knew.
Then there's observation. I can think of examples of people who moved onwards and upwards in their careers and who changed, who left their colleagues behind in more sense than one. There are attitudes that we all associate with the rich, and you can sometimes see someone acquire them when they get rich. Not everyone, I must admit, but I think the general observation is supported by the fact that there are people I know who have become rich and not changed and who often speak of the great effort it takes to keep their feet on the ground.
Finally, you can deduce some of it. If you are rich enough to afford private education and health, it not only changes your options, it affects how you receive news about the NHS or the local school. It certainly makes a difference when you speak to your neighbour whose children attend the local school about the change of headteacher there. One of you is stuck with the new head, the other has options. You will almost inevitably feel differently, and that will tend to change your thinking in all sorts of subtle ways.
Bill Gates is not a very typical rich man. It looks to me as if he has a pretty good idea of how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
If I may say so, Adeodatus, "rich" pickings!
Bloody hell. What a load of pinko commie bastards!
I always knew Marx was a plagiarist; I just didn't know his sources included St John Chrystostom.
Seriously, Karl, that's a pretty impressive set of quotes. Revolutionary, really ..
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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the Pookah
Shipmate
# 9186
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Posted
Those quotes were what I was talking about; the voluntary embrace of poverty as a good thing. I guess I don't see how Christianity or even Jesus empowers the poor person.
As to the Buddha & Buddhist monks, he actually had tons of lay followers and early buddhism wasn't dominated by monks. Western scholarship has focused on things in buddhism that seem familiar and equivalent to Christianity. The latest scholarship focuses on lay Buddhists and there is evidence from the earliest times.
If buddhists become monks feeling that they have to give up things to practice, that's what suits, them, I don't. And I don't respect them more than a householder with many responsabilities....
Posts: 926 | From: the Northern colonies | Registered: Mar 2005
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Squibs
Shipmate
# 14408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I don't see how Christianity or even Jesus empowers the poor person...
Probably because you don't believe that Jesus was God and therefore have no particular reason to trust anything that he said.
Anyway, quotes from church fathers aside, Proverbs 30 comes back to me.
Posts: 1124 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Dec 2008
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I understand about 'desire' in Buddhism we call that attachment and yes it's a source of misery to be attached to things.
John Climacus speaks of Poverty later in his Ladder, but right off the jump, in step 2, he has this to say: quote:
If you truly love God and long to reach the kingdom that is to come, if you are truly pained by your failings and are mindful of punishment and of the eternal judgment, if you are truly afraid to die, then it will not be possible to have an attachment, or anxiety, or concern for money, for possessions, for family relationships, for worldly glory, for love and brotherhood, indeed for anything of earth. All worry about one’s condition, even for one’s body, will be pushed aside as hateful. Stripped of all thought of these, caring nothing about them, one will turn freely to Christ. One will look to heaven and to the help coming from there, as in the scriptural sayings: “I will cling close to you” (Ps. 62:9) and “I have not grown tired of following you nor have I longed for the day or the rest that man gives” ( Jer. 17:16).
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
Those quotes were what I was talking about; the voluntary embrace of poverty as a good thing. I guess I don't see how Christianity or even Jesus empowers the poor person.
As to the Buddha & Buddhist monks, he actually had tons of lay followers and early buddhism wasn't dominated by monks. Western scholarship has focused on things in buddhism that seem familiar and equivalent to Christianity. The latest scholarship focuses on lay Buddhists and there is evidence from the earliest times.
If buddhists become monks feeling that they have to give up things to practice, that's what suits, them, I don't. And I don't respect them more than a householder with many responsabilities....
Jesus empowers the poor person because He is God Almighty, walking beside them in poverty.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by the Pookah:
I guess I don't see how Christianity or even Jesus empowers the poor person.
What keeps people poor is indifference to their worth as people. There is, very often, a lack of self-worth.
There are various aspects of the Christian message which speak to that. I suppose if you want a modern illustration of how that works, there is no better example than this.
There is power to uplift and change the plight of those trapped by poverty (and the injustice which goes hand with it) in a righteous proclamation. Everyone knows the climax to this speech, but it is worth listening to the remarks which set the scene for that. And reflecting on the struggles and confrontations which preceded the whole speech - and followed it.
The Civil Rights movement was led by a Christian. Here you have a statement of the values and beliefs which drove him on.
It is a proclamation by a Christian who was not just a great wordsmith (though he certainly was that). It was a proclamation by a man incarnationally engaged in the struggle, using his profound understanding of how the Christian message speaks to poverty and injustice. He didn't "move into the neighbourhood". He was born there. Like Jesus before him, the poor heard him gladly.
We say of Jesus that he came to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. Martin Luther King was following in those steps. We say doing that can make a difference to the plight of the poor and oppressed. Do you believe we are mistaken in that?
Anyway, if MLK is insufficent evidence for you, I could say very similar things about Desmond Tutu.
[ 19. March 2013, 08:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
From Rev William Booth, Founder and first General of The Salvation Army:
quote:
"While there is no doubt that extreme poverty is an evil...it is also evident that to be poor, when there is not actual want of the necessities of life, is not an unmixed evil."
In some cases, to some people, and in the context of the definition of 'poverty' in the UK, it seems that what is publicised as poverty is actually envy or at least the perceived 'right' to own and possess and enjoy non-essential goods and services that have not been worked for.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
From Rev William Booth, Founder and first General of The Salvation Army:
quote:
"While there is no doubt that extreme poverty is an evil...it is also evident that to be poor, when there is not actual want of the necessities of life, is not an unmixed evil."
In some cases, to some people, and in the context of the definition of 'poverty' in the UK, it seems that what is publicised as poverty is actually envy or at least the perceived 'right' to own and possess and enjoy non-essential goods and services that have not been worked for.
People need more than the essentials to live life to the full. The idea that poor people should get bread and water and be grateful for it is hugely patronising and classist. That's why it's right for employers to pay a living wage and not a minimum wage - people should be able to live, not just survive. As it stands, people currently not working and in receipt of benefits (whether unemployment or disability benefit or other benefits such as carer's allowance) do not even get the equivalent of minimum wage. The problem with your statement is framing things around worked for v not worked for - but when there are people who CANNOT work, that comparison is not fair.
Why not share joy equally, as well as wealth?
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Mudfrog
Shipmate
# 8116
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Posted
It's also patronising and 'classist' to make a list of all those nice things that 'we' who are middle-class enjoy and tell those who don't earn enough that they are deficient in life if they don't have what we have. There is nothing wrong with saying 'We can't afford that so we'll not have it.'
A question: Have you ever been 'poor' yourself?
I speak from personal experience of poverty as a teenager.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
In some cases, to some people, and in the context of the definition of 'poverty' in the UK, it seems that what is publicised as poverty is actually envy or at least the perceived 'right' to own and possess and enjoy non-essential goods and services that have not been worked for.
How about those who inherit and enjoy non-essential goods and services that they never work for?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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