Jesus and the Poor by Dr Sam Amadi
A certain preacher stirred controversy because he seemed to suggest that Jesus the Christ does not like the poor because he never visited them. May be the preacher does not mean it in that stark sense. Probably, he meant that God disfavors poverty and would want people to be rich. Howsoever his words are interpreted, the suggestion that there is something in poverty that makes God to regard the poor less favorably, compared to the rich is false and unscriptural.
In controverting this false proposition, some people have argued as if poverty has a divine aura and acceptability. This is false too. Poverty is an aberration. The Bible is emphatic about it. There ought not be poverty in the land. Prosperity is the divine order. Poverty is an aberration. But earthly life is full of aberrations. In fact, the fact of sin has contaminated the original state and nature, aberrations become the order of things. Human redemption in its magnitude is about correcting these aberrations.
The Bible is emphatic that if humans live completely in line with divine prescriptions about the social order, none will be poor. This is not utopia. This is reality. In the Old Testament, God told the children of Isreal if they followed his commandments, which are essentially wisdom for personal and collective conducts, there would be no poor in the land. In the same vein, the Bible also declares rather ruefully that there will always be the poor in our midst. Is that a contradiction? Not at all. There should be no poor. But there will always be the poor because the rules would never be fully obeyed.
Primarily, poverty is a result of lack of wisdom, at a personal and collective levels. Poor people are either victims of their own folly for not working as hard and smart as they ought to, or the folly of society in not having the right kind of cultural and structural mechanisms for productivity and fair distribution. Occasionally, poverty results from the act of nature not triggered by human folly. This is rare and its effects are reversible though application of wisdom.
Jesus Christ accepted and affirmed the dual scriptural propositions about poverty: that poverty is a failure of wisdom but not a spiritual contamination. Because the poor are victims, usually of inequitable and wicked exercise of power, Jesus identifies with them in a special sense: as a just king. He intervenes on behalf of the poor because they are victims. He consoles and listens to their vioces. Hie affirms them as children and lifts their eyes above their miserable state to see how dignified they are despite their miserable earthly state. This is the essence of Jesus being a friend of the poor. He said that the kingdom of God belongs to them. It is not that the rich are excluded from the kingdom of God, although the seduction of wealth may make them not recognize their need for salvation. It is that the poor needs the consolation in view of their condition.
God loves the poor because they are his children who are often despised and disregarded. He professes love for them because they are suffering much and are often victims of injustice and oppression. But Jesus does not sanctify poverty. Not at all. When the poor encounter Jesus they can find the wisdom to break out of poverty, be rich as well as righteous.
Jesus was rich but became poor so that the poor can access the wisdom to be rich spiritually and materially.
