The Bible and the Poor

Questions

1. There are 3.5 billion people in the world. About what percentage of the world's population are Americans?
a. l%, b. 5% c. 10% d. 20%

2. About what percentage of the world's disposable resources does the U.S. consume each year?
a. 5%, b. 10%, c. 25% d. 50%

3. At the present American standard of living, how many people could the earth support?
a. .5 billion, b. 2 billion, c. 3.5 billion, d. 5 billion

4. The average annual income of each person in the U.S. is $4304 [this is figured per person and not per family). About what percentage of the world's population earn less than $1000 per year?
a. 25%, b. 40%, c. 60%, d. 85%

5. About what percentage of the world's population earn less than $100 per year?
a: 5%, b. 10%, c. 25%, d. 50%

6. The 28 "developed" nations, each with a per capita income in excess of $750, comprise 27% of the world's population. About what percentage of the world's income do they divide?
a. 40%, b. 50%, c. 65%, d. 80%

7. About what percentage of the world's income do Americans have?
a. 10%, b. 20%, c. 30%, d. 40%

8. World military expenditures (almost all in the U.S. and Russia} reached a new peak in 1970 of 204 billion dollars. This is the equivalent to the combined year's income of what percentage of the world's population?
a. 10%, b. 25%, c. 35%, d. 50%

9. Two-thirds of the world earns less than $300 per year. The U.S. spent about $20 for each American on foreign development aid. About how much per person did the U.S. spend on the military?
a. $100, b. $200, c. $300, d. $400

10. Of the 60 million deaths recorded each year, about what percentage are due to hunger or to problems arising from hunger?
a. 10%, b. 30%, c. 50%, d. 70%

11. Each American consumes 3240 calories per day. In terms of quantity of food, an adequate diet should include 2700 calories daily, with the absolute critical minimum being 2200 calories. About what percentage of the world consume less than this critical minimum?
a. 25%, b. 40%, c. 50%, d. 60%

12. Jesus addresses which of these subjects more frequently in his teaching?
a. heaven and hell b. sexual immorality c. violence d. wealth & poverty

13. About how many verses of the Synoptic gospels contain direct teaching on economic issues such as the danger of wealth and concern for the poor?
a. 1 out of 100, b. 1 out of 50, c. 1 out of 20, d. 1 out of 10

Answers

1. (b) The. U.S. has about 203.1 million people, 5.6% of the world's population. (Population estimates are from mid-1969 figures supplied by the Population Reference Bureau).

2. (d) Actually the figure is closer to 52% of the world's disposable resources.

3. (a) In the Dec. 14, 1970 New York Times, Scientist Sir Peter Medawar said that at the American standard of living, the earth could support only 1/2 billion people. In the New York Times Nov. 4, 1970, it is estimated that a child born in the U.S. will consume during his lifetime 20 times as much as one born in India and contribute about 50 times as much pollution to the environment. The addition of 75 million Americans (current projections for the year 2000) from the standpoint of the consumption of ever scarcer non-renewable resources, will be the equivalent of more than 2 billion Colombians, 10 billion Nigerians, 22 billion Indonesians.

4. (d) 85% of the world's population earns less than $1000 annually. Less than 10% of the world's population earns more than $2000 annually. (Income estimates are from "Distribution of Population and Wealth in the World," which uses 1966 GNP per capita in U.S. dollar equivalents from the 1968 World Bank Atlas).

5. (d) Over one-half the world earns less than $100 per year; two-thirds of the world earns less than $300 per year. Over half the population in the world live in six countries, each with a population of over 100 million. Four of these six (China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia) have per capita, incomes of less than $100 per year (the U.S. and Soviet Union, of course, being part of the developed rich countries). (Sources: "Distribution of Population and Wealth in the World." Ian H. Birnie's The Church in the Third World, 1971, pp. 10-13 which compares the world to a village of 1000 people).

6. (d) Using 1966 statistics from the World Bank, the "developing" countries comprise 73% of the world's population and share 20% of the total income there are 35 very poor countries (annual per capita income less than $100) with 50% of the world's population and only 8% of the income; 37 poor countries ($100-$300) with 15% of the population and 5% of the income; 32 middle income nations ($300-$750) with 7% of the population and 7% of the income. The "developed" rich nations (more than $750) comprise only 27% of the population and share 80% of the total income. The highest per capita income is 81 times that of the lowest. The lowest 25% of the world's population earned only 3.2% of the world's income in 1960. (Sources: "Distribution of Population and Wealth in the World;" M. Darrol Bryant, A World Broken by Unshared Bread, WCC 1970, pp. 22-27; L.J. Zimmerman, Poor Lands, Rich Lands: The Widening Gap Random House: 1965).

7. (d) Using 1966 figures, Americans divided 35.6% of the world's total income Americans have a combined total income that is 4 1/2 times greater than the combined total income of the poorest half of the world. 1970 figures show this figure as much closer to 40%.

8. (d) World military expenditures were equivalent in dollar value to a year's income produced by the 1.8 billion people in the poorer half of the world's population. This is $60 spent on national security for each person in the world and $60 is more than the total annual income of hundreds of millions of people Only $3 per person was spent in development aid. (Source: The Radical Bible, Orbis Books, Maryknoll: 1972, pp. 53f, 116, quoting U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in World Military Expenditures, 1970, p. 1).

9. (d) The U.S. spent $80 billion dollars on the military in 1973, 40% of the total world military expenditures, $401 per person in the U.S. or $1486 by the average American family. About 59% of the tax dollar that the Federal government can spend went to military expenses--41% ($80 billion) earmarked for current military expenditures and 18% for the cost of past wars (6% for veterans benefits, which the Nixon Administration includes under "human resources," and 12% for interest on the national debt, most of which is war incurred). The Nixon administration's claim that the federal government will spend more money on "human resources" than on military is based on a change in budget accounting, made in 1968, whereby social security payments to individuals were counted as government spending on "human resources." This is very misleading, since social security funds are financed by separate taxes and the federal government merely acts as caretaker--the payments are not taken from the regular income tax money.

10. (d) The figure is hard to estimate, but it is put around two-thirds. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that an average of 15,000 people die of malnutrition daily, 10,000 of them children. (Source: A World Broken by Unshared Bread, p. 31, 34).

11. (d) According to an investigation by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (quoted in Josue de Castro, The Black Book of Hunger, Boston; Beacon Press, 1967, p. xi) only 28% of the world's population has access to a calorically adequate diet of more than 2700 calories per day, while 12% consumed only 2700-2200 calories and 60% consumed fewer than 2200.

12. (d) Source: a personal study by the author.

13. (d) Source: a personal study by the author. See the article below.

The Bible's teaching on wealth is one of the most extensive and clear emphases in all of scripture. The sheer bulk of material is overwhelming. Some have claimed that in terms of number of verses, the subject of wealth and poverty is the second most dominant motif in the Bible, the most dominant being idolatry. In a quick reading of the New Testament with this theme in mind, I isolated over 500 verses of direct teaching. This is one out of sixteen verses and does not include passages of indirect teaching, such as implications drawn from the actions of Jesus and Paul, or related doctrines that bear on the question. In the gospels, Jesus talks more about this issue than almost any other, including heaven and hell, sexual immorality, or violence. In the synoptics, an amazing one put of ten verses (288 in all) deal directly with the rich and the poor. This goes as high as one verse out of seven in the gospel of Luke (165 verses), the most concentrated and thorough book of New Testament teaching on the subject (the epistle of James is more concentrated, with one out of five verses, but is less thorough in its treatment, only 21 verses, because of the brevity of the letter).

Jesus' concern with the dangers of affluence was not a casual, occasional remark incidental to more important issues of discipleship, but a major emphasis in his teaching. Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics, "The Call to Discipleship," Vol. 4, Pt. 2, pp. 543-555) notes that a "break" with possessions was one of the five "prominent lines" along which the calling and commanding of Jesus always moved (the other four involved a break with reputation, violence, family and "religion").

For us Westerners, at any rate, the most striking of these main lines is that on which Jesus, according to the Gospel tradition, obviously commanded many men as the concrete form of their obedient discipleship, to renounce their general attachment to the authority, validity, and confidence of possessions, not merely inwardly but outwardly, in the venture and commitment of a definite act...Jesus' call to discipleship challenges and indeed cuts right across the self-evident attachment to that which we possess. The man to whom the call of Jesus comes does not only think and feel but acts (here and now, in this particular encounter with his neighbor) as one who is freed from this attachment. He not only can but does let go that which is his. By doing exactly as he is commanded by Jesus he successfully makes this sortie, attesting that the kingdom of mammon is broken by the coming of the kingdom of God.

Our economic life and our standard of living is not a purely private matter, then, but a critical area of discipleship. Most of us are not aware the extent to which the five security relationships Barth details, and especially our economic securities, mute our discipleship and blunt its distinctiveness. We must re-examine these "great self-evident factors of our environment" and question their "claim of absolute validity." Jesus knew that money and possessions were one of the central issues of human experience and revealed more about individuals than almost any other single aspect of their existence. Jesus was not just talking "economics;" money to him was a deeply spiritual issue that was closely tied to the central core of an individual. The danger of riches most nearly shown in the Old Testament is the misuse of wealth: the oppression and exploitation of the poor by the rich. Though this is not lost sight of in the New Testament (cf. James 2:6, 5:4), the danger is primarily seen at a much more basic level--not just in the misuse of wealth, but simply in its possession. It is fundamentally a spiritual danger that is highlighted in the New Testament. Possession of wealth twists peoples' priorities and distorts their sensitivity to God, others, and themselves. If Jesus, living in a simple, agrarian society where money was not a national mania, showed so much concern over the danger of possessing too much, how much more do we, living in the heart of the most affluent nation the world has ever known, need to "break" with the power of possessions in our lives and re-examine our standard of living as a critical area of discipleship?

Not only is the Bible extensive in its teaching on wealth and poverty, but it uncomfortably clear and plain. There is not the ambiguity and complexity that one finds in some other subjects, as in the "tension" and dynamic balance of apparent opposites that one finds in such doctrines as the New Testament view of the state. The Bible is clearly and emphatically on the side of the poor. I ave not seen this, more forcefully stated than in a section from Karl Barth's chapter on Poverty in "Against the Storm."

"All the more striking is the fact which dominates the picture, namely the unmistakable and definite sympathy towards poverty seen in the Old and New Testaments.... If in accordance with God's will there are also rich people, if, especially in the Old Testament, He includes among His blessings the gift of riches to one man, He in no wise takes up a neutral position between the poor man and the rich man. The rich may take care of their own future; He is on the side of the poor.

"First, there is no place in the Bible where the rights of the rich are proclaimed, where God appears as the Lord and Saviour of the rich and their wealth, where the poor are exhorted to preserve the wealth of the rich and remain poor themselves merely for the sake of the rich. There are, however, many places in the Bible where the rights of the poor are proclaimed, where God declares Himself to be the upholder and avenger of these rights, where the rich are commanded not to forget the rights of the poor, not to alter or ignore them just when they feel inclined to do so, but rather to be rich only for the sake of the poor and for their benefit.

"Secondly, there is no place in the Bible where anything in the nature of praise is accorded to riches, where the rich are upheld and exalted. There are, however, many places where the poor are extolled as blessed, where they are called the chosen of God, where the words "the poor" are synonymous with "the righteous." The gospel was proclaimed to the poor, while on the contrary the rich are often shown in suspiciously close proximity to the mighty evil-doers, whose pride goes before a fall.

"... In this respect the distinction made in the Bible is as sharp as a knife: the blessings of wealth cannot claim to be on an equal footing with the blessings of poverty. Thus the Bible is on the side of the poor, the impecunious and the destitute. He whom the Bible calls God is on the side of the poor. There the Christian attitude to poverty can consist only of a corresponding allegiance."

Because the Bible's teaching is both extensive and clear, we cannot attribute our lack of obedience to either ignorance or confusion stemming from sparsity and ambiguity of material. Why then the lack of obedience? Even among the most Biblically committed of us, there often operates three common but false assumptions and attitudes that remove us from the brunt of the Biblical indictment on the rich: (1) "others might be rich, but not me--I'm just an average American," (2) "it's my attitude toward possessions and not the number of them that is most important," or (3) "the Old Testament teaches that wealth is a blessing from God; He has simply been good to me." I would like, to deal briefly with each of these by establishing three counter-theses.

Jesus on Wealth
Thesis one: Because we as "average" middle class Americans are rich, everything the Bible says about the sins and obligations of the rich applies directly to us.

There is such an overwhelming gap between our lifestyle as average Americans and the lifestyle of most of the rest of the globe that we can no longer pretend we are not rich. The quiz at the beginning of this article must be assimilated slowly: To most people numbers and percentages do not communicate the human anguish behind them. Once the reality behind the "statistics" dawns upon us, the quiz runs the danger of so overloading our emotional circuits that we are numbed to more descriptions of the imbalance in which we share.

Jesus' hard words were not meant just for the Rockefellers among us. If we compare ourselves to more than just ourselves, then his words must also apply to those of us who are "just comfortable." In the eyes of most of the world, we as average middle class Americans with our "just comfortable" standard of living are not just the rich, but the super-rich of the globe.

We need to hear again the words of the Bible as applying with full force to us:

"Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry..." (Luke 6:24-25). "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

"So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions" (Luke 14:33).

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth ... but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. ... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:19-21).

"No one can serve two masters ... you cannot serve God and wealth " (Matthew 6:24).

"Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you? ... Truly, I tell you, just as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me" (Matthew 25:44-45).

"Other seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain ... these are the ones who hear the word, but the cares of the world, and the lures of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing " (Mark 4:7, 18-19).

"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (Luke 12:15).

"I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need" (2 Corinthians 8:13-14).

"Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things that the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient" (Ephesians 5:5, 6).

"If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:8-10).

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:14-17).

"We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?" (1 John 3:16-17).

Thesis two: The New Testament condemns not just improper attitudes toward wealth but also the mere possession of undistributed wealth.

Many Christians maintain that the amount of wealth a person has makes little difference; what is important, they say, is the attitude taken toward wealth. That covetousness is idolatry (Ephesians 5:5) and "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10) would be readily admitted; but, so the argument goes, one can have much wealth without "loving" or being "covetous" of it.

The New Testament, however, goes much further than condemning wrong attitudes toward possessions. In the New Testament, mere possession of riches is likely to increase covetousness and love for money. This comes out most clearly in Matthew 6:21. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Those who have wealth will invariably love their wealth. Virgil Vogt, "in an article entitled "God or Mammon," comments:

Many people try to deny this kind of attachment to their many possessions. However, these people would never have accumulated so many things had they not believed, with the rest of the world, that to gain more is better. ... Or again, if people with many possessions were not in love with them they would not so carefully keep all those things for themselves but would freely share with others.... We must be careful not to apply this observation incorrectly. We cannot compare one individual with another and say that because Jones has more than Smith, therefore Jones is more in love with earthly things than Smith. Rather, we must always compare the various amounts of wealth--which any individual or group might possess. Applied in this way it is always true that when a man has more the attraction is greater.

St. Basil makes some illuminating remarks which show how many in the early church interpreted New Testament teaching on greed:

Who is the greedy man? One for whom plenty does not suffice. Who defrauds others? One who keeps for himself what belongs to everyone. Aren't you greedy, don't you defraud, when you keep for yourself what was given for giving away? When someone steals a man's clothes we call him a thief. Shouldn't we give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not?

The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you put in the bank belongs to the poor. You do wrong to everyone you could help, but fail to help. If we really had a "right" attitude toward wealth, then we would no longer be wealthy.

It is impossible to maintain a supposed "inner freedom" from wealth without some outward, concrete manifestation. Karl Barth comments in "The Call to Discipleship":

His disciples cannot be content with a mere theory about the relativization of these false absolutes; a mere attitude of mind in which these gods no longer exist for them; an inward freedom in relation to them. It is for this reason that in different ways they are called out in practice from these attachments, and it is a denial of the call to discipleship if they evade the achievement of acts and attitudes in which externally and visibly they break free from these attachments.... In relation to the world he cannot, then restrict himself to an attempted "inner emigration" in which he will not be offensive, or at least suspicious, or at the very least conspicuous, to those who still worship their gods.

Many wealthy Christians believe that their break from attachment to possessions is most clearly and visibly shown in their willingness to give large proportions of their income to Christian causes. In this connection, it is good to remember that the mark of sacrificial giving in the New Testament is not how much is given, but how much is left over after the giving is finished. "Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. And he said, 'Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them, for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had (Luke 21:1-4)." We cannot give sacrificially and still remain wealthy. Barth warns about minimizing the cost of a visible, outward break with the power of possessions: "there will always be reason for distrust against ourselves if we think that what may be required of us along these lines will be something less, or easier, or more comfortable than what was required of them."

Thesis three: While wealth in the Old Testament is often regarded as a blessing of God, accumulation of wealth is warned against and seen as a danger.

The differences between the Old and New Testaments is much more one of differing emphases than of basic conflict and disagreement. In the Old Testament, wealth is much clearly seen as a good thing in itself, and as a sign of blessing of God than in the New Testament (e.g. Psalm 112:1, 3). Roger Mehl makes this important qualification, however, in an article entitled "Money" found in A Companion to the Bible:

These goods and riches are regarded much more as sustenance which God gives to satisfy men who are hungry and thirsty (and to the degree to which they are hungry and thirsty) than as possessions to accumulate.

Accumulation of goods and wealth was not accepted without difficulty of scruples.... Such accumulation was always made the object of reprobation, especially by the prophets.

In the eyes of the Old Testament, it is the unique lordship of God, the Creator and Father, which is challenged by any policy of accumulation or avarice: these things represent mistrust of God.

Thus, throughout the Old Testament, provisions were made to counter the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few and to ensure that the inequality of wealth was not too pronounced. The most striking of these provisions was the institution of the Sabbath year (Deuteronomy 15) and the Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25) in which at regular intervals debts were to be remitted, slaves liberated, and in the case of the latter, all land returned to its original owners. In Ezekiel 27 and 28, the city of Tyre is accursed because of the accumulation of its riches and its trade. Accumulation calls forth the judgment of God in Zechariah 9:4, where God withdraws that which is His own. The downfall of Solomon's kingdom is connected with that policy of accumulation made worse by his successor (1 Kings 12). It is important to remember that even within the New Testament the idea of riches as a blessing of God is not completely lost sight of but is connected with renunciation. "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life." (Mark 10:29-30).

An affluent church has almost nothing to say to the dispossessed majority of this globe. The evangelistic value of an affluent church abandoning its wealth would be incalculable. God grant us the wisdom to learn from Aristides, a non-Christian defending the Christians before Hadrian:

Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If a man has something, he freely gives to the man who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother... If one of them is poor and there isn't enough food to go around, they fast several days to give him the food he needs.... This is really a new kind of person. There is something divine in them.

Bob Sabath was web technologist of Sojourners when this article appeared.