THE POVERTY PROBLEM

Jesus said "the poor ye have always with you" (Jn. 12: 8). Our obligations to the poor are clear (Gal. 6:10), but Jesus statement indicates that there are definite qualifiers on this responsibility.

Poverty in the 1920's was exemplified by a family of Italian immigrants with seven children. The father, who could not read or write, held down a factory job ... before there was a minimum wage.
As the depression approached he moved the family to a farm stating: "we may not make any money, but at least we will have something to eat."

I worked for him thirty years later. He had long-since paid off the mortgage on the farm, but he still worked it every day. He never learned to read or write, but even in his 70's he could outwork anyone on the farm. He was my grandfather.

This story is not unique. We all have a relative, or maybe an acquaintance, who we have observed to "make it" on nothing but hard work. God has ordained that things will not come easy in this world (Gen. 3: 17-19). But to those who accept God's terms, he has promised the necessities of this life.

"If any will not work, neither let him eat" (2 Thes. 3: 10). "I have been young, and now am old: yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread" (Ps. 37: 25).

Our welfare-enslavement system is ample proof of what happens when those who do not want to work are allowed to eat. It is not a loving act for a parent to give a child everything that he asks for. Neither is it a loving act to reinforce laziness in those who do not want to work.

This leaves the "widows indeed" (1 Tim. 5: 16) for us to be primarily concerned -- those who have no way to make it on their own. Let us not rationalize our responsibility in this regard. When we see a true need, it is our responsibility to help in whatever way that we can.

So important is our individual responsibility in this regard that it is described as the essence of true religion (James 1: 27), and the measure by which we love God (1 Jn. 3; 17; 4: 20).