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Recent Christian thinking on wealth and poverty

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Historically, Christians have often distinguished themselves from their surrounding cultures by championing the cause of the poor.

Since the Second World War, Western countries have experienced very considerable economic growth and corresponding affluence.  At the same time, the general population of the world has expanded hugely, leading to an alarming increase in poverty.

Christian thinking and action has not always kept pace with these global changes.

One response to these trends began in the late 1960s with liberation theology. …

What Westerners spend their money on

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‘It is astonishing,’ writes Craig Blomberg, ‘to see what Westerners spend their money on.’  Compared with what Americans spend on overseas Protestant ministries, they spend approximately

  • one and a half times as much on chewing gum
  • twice as much on cut flowers
  • five times as much on pets
  • seven times as much on sweets
  • seventeen times as much on dieting
  • twenty times as much on sporting activities
  • twenty-six times as much on soft drinks
  • 140 times as much on legalised gambling

Neither Poverty Nor Riches, IVP, 1999, p19

[Although these figures date back to the 1980s and early 90s, there is no reason to suppose that the general trend has reversed.]…

Three approaches to poverty

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1. The rational approach. Of the world’s nearly 6 billion inhabitants, ¼ live in severe poverty. An estimated 1.3 billion people survive on less than the equivalent of $1 per day. Nearly a billion are illiterate. About 840 million go hungry or face food insecurity.

a) We take for granted our access to clean tapped water. But in the developing world only 68% of the population have access to safe drinking water; in the leaste developed countries this drops to 38%.…

Conquering the dark side of money

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Richard Foster offers some practical suggestions of how we can get to grips with what he calls ‘the dark side of money’:-

1.  Let’s get in touch with our feelings about money.  Let’s acknowledge our fear, our insecurity, our guilt about it.  Let’s realise that we often feel threatened by the whole subject of money.  We may be afraid that we have too little, or afraid that we have too much.  If we have been raised with little we may develop a hoarding attitude; if we have been raised in affluence notions of frugality may seems like vices rather than virtues.…

McGrath vs Dawkins: faith and evidence

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Richard Dawkins is no philosopher, nor theologian, nor biblical scholar.  None of which automatically disqualifies him from expressing his opinions on religion, but all of which should make him exercise a little more care and caution in expressing those opinions.

For a man so committed to evidence and reason, it is remarkable that Dawkins pays so little attention to both in certain sections of The God Delusion.  It is clear that before he wrote that book, he had read Alister McGrath’s Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (2005).  …

The Bible a Human Book

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We do not affirm the divine inspiration of the Bible in such as way as to deny or to minimise its human authorship.  Geisler (Baker Encylopedia of Christian Apologetics) outlines this as follows:-

First, every book in the Bible was the composition of human writers.

Second, the Bible manifests different human literary styles, from the mournful meter of lamentations to the exalted poetry of Isaiah, from the simple grammar of John to the complex Greek of Hebrews.

…

Money, sex and power

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Money, sex and power, writes Richard Foster, are inseparably intertwined:-

Money manifests itself as power.  Sex is used to acquire both money and power.  And power is often called ‘the best aphrodisiac’.  We could discuss at length the interlacing connections.  There is, for example, an important relationship between sex and poverty: sex is the poor man’s holiday and the poor woman’s disaster.  Note also the connection between power and wealth: power is frequently used to manipulate wealth, and wealth is used just as frequently to buy power. 

…

Praying for people we have never met

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I like this entry in the Handbook of Bible Application:-

Sometimes we wonder how to pray for missionaries and other leaders we have never met. Paul had never met the Colossians, but he faithfully prayed for them. His prayers teach us how to pray for others, whether we know them or not. We can request that they

  1. understand God’s will,
  2. gain spiritual wisdom,
  3. please and honor God,
  4. bear good fruit,
  5. grow in the knowledge of God,
  6. be filled with God’s strength,
  7. have great endurance and patience,
  8. stay full of Christ’s joy, and
  9. give thanks always

All believers have these same basic needs.…

The Hitchens Challenge

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Arch-atheist Christopher Hitchens repeatedly held out the following challenge to religious people:-

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

Hitchens seems to think that he has religious folk stumped.  “As yet,” he claims, “I have no takers.”

I am very far from wanting to defend ‘religion’ in general.  So I would respond by asserting that it is not difficult to find multiple instances of moral acts that would only be performed by followers of Jesus Christ, and others that would more prevalent amongst followers of Jesus Christ than among non-believers. …

Options for rich Christians

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John Stott outlines three options for rich Christians.

Become poor

It might be supposed that 2 Cor 8:9 teaches this. Consider also:-

(a) The example of Jesus. He was born into a poor home. He had no home and few possessions. ‘He taught from a borrowed boat, rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey, spent his last evening in a borrowed room, and was buried in a borrowed tomb. He and his disicples shared a common purse, and depended for their support on a group of women who sometimes accompanied them.…