ShareThisMy vote for the most twisted interpretations of Jesus' sayings are about our responsibilities to the poor. "You have the poor with you always, but you will not always have me" (Matthew 16:9) has been used in every generation as an excuse to ignore the needs of the poor.
More insidious is the notion that those in want actually deserve their condition: "When a man has something, more is given to him until he has plenty. But if he has nothing even his nothing will be taken away from him" (Matthew 13:12).
Consult the context of Jesus' counsel. In the first instance he was only appreciating a personal kindness shown to him. In the second he was only acknowledging that ignorance of God is worse than material poverty.
It is only natural that people attempt to insulate themselves and their loved ones from poverty. Far from seeking riches, most of us aspire to little more than to pay our bills and save a little against an uncertain future.
Alarmingly, the worldwide economic meltdown is creating new poverty. That howling you hear in your community and neighborhood is the wolf at your neighbor's door. Many of us who were part of the middle class last year are without work in 2009. All of us have seen our savings disappear. To a degree unmatched since the Great Depression, many Americans no longer view poverty from a distance, but from inside.
The number of food stamp recipients is up 12 percent in New York. In Morristown, N.J., an interfaith center providing food to the poor reports a 24 percent increase in customers and a 45 percent increase in food distributed. "These are people who never really had to ask for help before," says the Salvation Army's Brenda Beavers of the new customers queuing for free food.
One of the newly needy told The New York Times, "It took me a long time to come here. I felt like a loser. I felt like a total lowlife."
In the mid-1990s Congress and President Bill Clinton reformed welfare to increase employment of the poor and discourage dependency, which robs people of responsibility and self-respect. Those reforms can no longer sustain an economy in which the working poor are among the first to lose their jobs. Columnist Michael Gerson, an evangelical Christian, argues against a wholesale program to bail out the newly poor. "We will not purchase economic stability with increased dependence," he writes in The Washington Post. "Even if we could, it is unwise to trade the character of citizens for an economic benefit."
Gerson has helped create the Poverty Forum, an interfaith group proposing ways for government to help the poor without pandering to them. Among Forum proposals are to reward individuals and families who save, provide help with personal finance and vouchers for housing in healthy communities, encourage marriage, and expand health and education services.
For a full list of Poverty Forum proposals, consult thepovertyforum.org.
(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)
AMAZING GRACE
