“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 134
“The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all” (Prov. 22:2).
Given the fallen nature of the world, the vision for a classless society is a rebellious one. Jesus famously said that we would always have the poor with us, and the implication was that we should take care of them. But addressing radical poverty will not have the effect of eliminating relative poverty. As wealth increases, it will always pile up in lumpy ways, like a range of mountains, and not level out like a placid ocean. If we are talking about famine, disease, rags, and houses made out of cardboard boxes, poverty is an enemy of all Christians. But if we are talking about comparative poverty—a poor American being the one with only 20 gig in his iPod—then we ought not to worry about it. Unfortunately, we live in a time when people don’t want to make distinctions between different kinds of poverty.