The point is this.  This article sees hope in a possible consensus among conservatives and liberals regarding what to do about the poor.  It’s good for conservatives and liberals to talk; I am all for it.  But as long as the talk always assumes that the government is the first responder to the needs of the poor, we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

“For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always.” (Matthew 26:11, NKJV)

The New York Times article by Eduardo Porter sets a hopeful but cautious tone.

It appears that a bi-partisan (Liberals/Conservatives) committee issued a report in December where some agreement was reached about things we can do to alleviate some of the poverty in these United States.  Mr. Porter calls the poverty problem “entrenched” and provides a link to a data base which supports his claim that it is deepest in America “among advanced industrialized nations.”

It is good to hear that thinkers are talking across ideological lines and I hope that some of the things that he reports are taken further in the discussion.  There are subjective caveats applied on the left and right but the willingness to find common ground is good.

Here, as always though, I wonder if the unspoken presuppositions that underlie the conclusions should give us pause.

For example, the idea that the US has the most entrenched poverty among all industrialized nations.  If we read the “small print,” the measure is against the poverty line for each individual country, not against a common standard.  It is “taken as half the median household income of the total population” (Read more).  Clearly that number would make the threshold for poverty in the United States at a significantly higher total value (in comparative purchasing power) than in other nations.  It comes out to about $23K for a family with two adults and four kids.  I agree that this is not a lot of money but given the social situation in this country, does it reflect the associated despair that a similar situation in another country might engender?  I am a bit uncomfortable with how “poverty” is defined.

But of far greater concern to me is the unspoken presupposition reported by Mr. Porter, that the government has the primary responsibility to “fix it.”  Here conservatives and liberals seem to be agreeing on the “who” and only differing on the “how.”  This is the crux of the issue.

As a Christian, before we start talking about “what to do about poverty”, I think we need to ask “why does poverty exist?”

This, of course, falls under the over-arching heading: “Why does God allow evil to exist?”  The only pious answer to that question is “because it serves His good purposes to do so.”  Once we get beyond that over-arching question and answer though, we recognize that each form of evil serves God’s good purposes in its own way.  “Poverty” is not a moral evil in the experience of it.  Inflicting poverty on others through unjust treatment certainly is a moral evil.  Bringing poverty on one’s self through laziness or through gambling addiction or something similar, certainly is a moral evil.  But, in and of itself, poverty is not a moral evil and therefore does not contaminate the individuals who are subjected to it.

Christians are prone to error here in assuming that, in a country like ours, if someone is poor it is because they are morally responsible for it.  This just ain’t so and we need to guard against it.

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