Who Would Have Thought?

What can I say? If thinking that as a follower of Jesus I should be concerned about the poor, even to the point of being willing to invest my own resources in making a poor person’s life better – if that makes me a socialist – count me in! And while you are counting, don’t forget Jesus.
The uncomfortable reality is that for many of the followers of Jesus in the world of American Christianity, we have far more than we need. I don’t say that in the sense that if you have more than one suit, or you are a two-car family, or you actually own a Kindle and buy books to read, etc. that you are somehow beyond redemption. I’m all of that and more, but will gladly say I follow Jesus. I have friends who whose possessions make mine look meager, and I gladly describe them as followers of Jesus.
But it seems to me that thoughtful Christians will always wonder about not only the more appropriate use of our resources, but also about how we might help alleviate the awful circumstances into which some children are born, grow up, and die. For the sake of eliminating some of the protests I hear, let’s forget about the adults who are lazy, the adults who are criminals, the adults who have babies as single mothers, and all the other road blocks that seem to be placed in the way of helping the poor. Let’s just think about the innocent children who are born in that world and have little or no chance of becoming anything but lazy, criminal, unwed mothers who will repeat the cycle over and over.
What are we doing about them? How can we do something that would make it less likely that such children will grow up in what seems to be the destiny of futility? Only the most casual of glances at statistics will inform us that “once in poverty, always in poverty” is more often than not true. Not unlike “once in prison, always in prison.”
It seems to me worth noting that in the earliest picture of the church in Acts, Luke says things like “there were no needy people among them.” Remember, we aren’t talking about a little country church with 13 people as members, all of whom are cousins. The first number Luke uses is 3000, and that is followed by 2000 – and most likely in both cases he is only counting the men. The preaching of the gospel at Pentecost created a mega-church in one day and their taking seriously the gospel created a community of faith where there were no needy people.
It makes me wonder, especially when you read stories like that of Barnabas at the end of Acts 4, if perhaps they didn’t take that story from Jesus’ life where He tells the rich young ruler to sell all and give to the poor more seriously than we do! Words like “having all things in common,” again found in the earliest picture of the church in Acts, would suggest a kind of commitment to the gospel that saw that story as one to implement.
If suggesting that concern for the poor at a level that makes my resources available makes me a socialist, then what will those people call the apostles and early Christians who managed to create a community of faith in which there were no needy people?
Who would have thought we would become so entrenched in our own capitalist world that to dare call the church out for not caring for the poor as we should might move us to attach pejorative labels to those who call us out? That might be the best reason in the world for us to reject all labels – and simply say, as Luke does so often in Luke, we are simply disciples of Christ.
Whenever it actually happened in American culture, the day we gave the government the responsibility to do the job of the church in caring for the poor was permission to be taxed in ways we now complain about. We can continue to complain – but the only real solution is that we become so committed to being Jesus to the world – the poor included – that the government has nothing to do! We could solve the deficit and lower taxes at the same time!
If being concerned about the poor, even to the point of being willing to invest our own resources in making a poor person’s life better makes you a socialist, then we ought to welcome the term. Of course those who throw it around in such pejorative fashion are most often thinking American politics more than biblical theology. But that’s a blog for another day!