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Distribution of Money and Power ...

Thursday, Mar 13, 2014. How is money and power distributed in this world? We all know that it not evenly distributed. There are some who have a lot of money and some have a lot of power. There are many others who have neither money nor power.

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Blessed and Giving …

When we look into the biblical books, it is not the main concern to talk about money. Money is not the most important thing in the bible. Much more important than money is grace, salvation, forgiveness, purity, hope, joy, truth! Money is not that important. But that does not mean the bible would be silent about money. It says a lot about how we use money and how we deal with those who have either much more than we have or much less. Let us have a look into Deuteronomy 15:

7 “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. 9 Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. 10 You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15, 7-11)

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Social and Political Questions …

You can deal with the question of poverty and wealth on the personal level, and you can deal with it on the structural level of society and politics. The text here talks about it on the personal level only. It does not search for strategies to equalize income or wealth in a society. But it asks everyone to follow a responsible attitude with what is given to him. Give freely - that is the clear command in this important text. There are two points to keep in mind:

First, it is said that there will never cease to be poor in the land. That sounds like a prophecy, which is rather generic and done for ever. Poverty will always be a part of Israel. I read it even with a more general target: we will always have poor people among us, in whatever society we live in. We can do a lot to equalize wealth, but we will not succeed in completely erasing poverty. There might be reasons for it, we can try to understand the mechanism of wealth and poverty … but let us accept this for a moment as a description of the world as it was and is until today.

The second point is: God promises blessing and support, if we freely support the poor. He wants us to go beyond our usual limits. It can be difficult to support some of those who are in need. Some of us, who are poor, cannot be made responsible for it. But others have brought themselves into their misery by their own decisions and habits. If you have worked hard for some wealth, and then you are told to give to someone who does not want to work at all, that sounds like a big injustice! But nevertheless, God wants to guide our mind, our heart and our hands to the attitude of help and giving. And his blessing is there to support us, when we follow him!

(Roland Potthast) ... more texts

jn_en_2014_03_13.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1