HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
AMERICAN WEALTH AND A WORLD OF POVERTY
We all have blind spots—areas of our lives that need to be uncovered so we can see correctly and adjust our lives accordingly. But they are hard to identify. Others can often see them in us, and we rely on friends to point them out. But the reality is, even then we have a hard time recognizing them. We don’t want to admit they exist… often until it’s too late. We discover them in hindsight, but we struggle to see them in the present.
I can think of at least one glaring blind spot in American Christian history. Slavery. How could Christians who supposedly believed the gospel so easily rationalize the enslavement of other human beings? Churchgoers with good intentions worshiping God together every Sunday and reading the Bible religiously all week long, all the while using God’s Word to justify treating men, women, and children as property to be used or abused. They actually thought they were generous when they gave their slaves an extra chicken at Christmas.
This frightens me. Good intentions, regular worship, and even study of the Bible do not prevent blindness in us. Part of our sinful nature instinctively chooses to see what we want to see and to ignore what we want to ignore. I can live my Christian life and even lead the church while unknowingly overlooking evil.
Not long ago God began uncovering a blind spot in my life. An area of disobedience. A reality in God’s Word that I had pretended did not exist. More aptly put, I had lived as if it did not exist. But God brought me to a place of confession before him, before my family, and before the faith family I lead.
Today more than a billion people in the world live and die in desperate poverty. They attempt to survive on less than a dollar per day. Close to two billion others live on less than two dollars per day. That’s nearly half the world struggling today to find food, water, and shelter with the same amount of money I spend on french fries for lunch.
More than twenty-six thousand children today will breathe their last breath due to starvation or a preventable disease. To put it in perspective for me, that’s twenty-six thousand Joshuas and Calebs (my two sons). To put it in perspective for the church I pastor, if this were happening among the children in my community, then every child eighteen years or younger in our county would be dead within the next two days.
Suddenly I began to realize that if I have been commanded to make disciples of all nations, and if poverty is rampant in the world to which God has called me, then I cannot ignore these realities. Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so many are urgently hungry. If I am going to address urgent spiritual need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process.
Frighteningly, though, I have turned a blind eye to these realities. I have practically ignored these people, and I have been successful in my ignorance because they are not only poor but also powerless. Literally millions of them are dying in obscurity, and I have enjoyed my affluence while pretending they don’t exist.
But they do exist. Not only do they exist, but God takes very seriously how I respond to them. The book of Proverbs warns about curses that come upon those who ignore the poor. The prophets warn of God’s judgment and devastation for those who neglect the poor. Jesus pronounces woes upon the wealthy who trust in their riches, and James tells those who hoard their money and live in self-indulgence to “weep and wail because of the misery that is coming” upon them.1 In a humbling passage, Jesus says to those who turn away from him by ignoring the physical needs of his people, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”2
Now, I immediately want to guard against a potentially serious misunderstanding in this chapter. The Bible nowhere teaches that caring for the poor is a means by which we earn salvation. The means of our salvation is faith in Christ alone, and the basis of our salvation is the work of Christ alone. We are not saved by caring for the poor, and one of the worst possible responses to this chapter would be to strive to care for the poor in order to earn salvation or standing before God.
Yet, while caring for the poor is not the basis of our salvation, this does not mean that our use of wealth is totally disconnected from our salvation. Indeed, caring for the poor (among other things) is evidence of our salvation. The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications. According to Jesus, you can tell someone is a follower of Christ by the fruit of his or her life, and the writers of the New Testament show us that the fruit of faith in Christ involves material concern for the poor.3 Caring for the poor is one natural overflow and a necessary evidence of the presence of Christ in our hearts. If there is no sign of caring for the poor in our lives, then there is reason to at least question whether Christ is in our hearts.4
Some might think this is taking things too far, but consider another scenario. Imagine a man who claims to have Christ in his heart but indulges in sexual activity with multiple partners every week. When he is confronted by Scripture about his sin, he nevertheless continues in willful sexual immorality. He disobeys Christ persistently with no sign of remorse, contrition, or conviction. So is he really a Christian?
Of course, we are not this man’s ultimate judge. But when we look at 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 and it says, “Neither the sexually immoral… nor adulterers… will inherit the kingdom of God,” we would certainly question whether this man is really a child of God. It is not that he needs to stop his sexual immorality to be saved. That would mean he would need to earn his salvation. No, he needs to trust in Christ, which will result in a changed heart with a desire to obey Christ in this area of his life.
So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church.5
We look back on slave-owning churchgoers of 150 years ago and ask, “How could they have treated their fellow human beings that way?” I wonder if followers of Christ 150 years from now will look back at Christians in America today and ask, “How could they live in such big houses? How could they drive such nice cars and wear such nice clothes? How could they live in such affluence while thousands of children were dying because they didn’t have food and water? How could they go on with their lives as though the billions of poor didn’t even exist?”
Is materialism a blind spot in American Christianity today? More specifically, is materialism a blind spot in your Christianity today? Surely this is something we must uncover, for if our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to question just how effective we will be in declaring the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth. More pointedly, if our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is really in us at all.