Why are there poor?
And answers like "sin" or "Adam in the Garden" are copouts. I mean, here and now, in 2009, why are there still people who cannot buy food?
P.S. Sorry we've been so out of touch recently. Family has taken priority. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and that you all watched that guy Robbie Maddison almost kill himself in 14 different ways, and then drop the mighty-mighty-f-bomb on live ESPN TV. American entertainment at its best, folks.
While you're at it, why is there sin? The answer is in the question.
ReplyDeleteBecause the shame of poverty is to be preferred over the sin of communism. (copout)
ReplyDeleteDeuteronomy 15:11
ReplyDeleteFor the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, "You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land."
The poor are there so that we can love them and minister to them and feed Christ through them.
Hmm. Claire, excuse me while my brain explodes. No but seriously, I see your point. I'm just asking why they exist.
ReplyDeleteTy, you're a capitalist pig-dog. [for those of you who don't know Antkowiak the Younger, there are few things that he is less of than a capitalist pig-dog]
mpk, sorry I was unclear. You're exactly right, of course, I'm asking the question from the other direction. Why do the poor exist? What causes "the poor"?
By the by, my brother's response was along the same lines as mpk's, but startlingly close to my own explanation: "Tcha! Dude, they're there so that they can save us." And yes, Kanaan said "tcha!" and with great derision. Few people pull it off like he does. But again, I think he's looking at it like mpk does, a thing that just exists, for us to work with. I'm saying sure, it does exist, we've got to work with it, but why does it exist?
MPK can correct me if I'm wrong but I think what she is saying is not "it exists, so we have to work with it" but "it exists so that we CAN work with it." I would have to hear more of her argument to know if I agree, but I think she did answer your question.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what I really want to say is that I don't think you are asking the right "leading question". You have every right to ask it, but I don't think it does any good.
The question "why do the poor exist", is practically useless except as a philosophical and logical exercise. And whatever answer you give, it's going to sound heartless; because it involves a necessity. Unless there is an equal allocation of wealth (cf., communism), there will always be some people who are better off than others. If there were no poor we would be asking a different question, which is "why is everyone so dang miserable"? The poor would simply have disappeared into the commonplace.
I think the real question is "how can we let people starve"? It's not a question of existence, but ethics. And here is an extension- What is our responsibility to the poor, and are we fulfilling it? It's hard to nail down what exactly our responsibility is. Should we take them into our homes, hand them soup cans from our cars, buy them lunch, sing a sweet song about it, sell all our goods to them (I seem to remember reading about that)? What will ultimately do them the most good? But I think that we can all agree that whatever it is that we should be doing, we aren't doing it. As G.K. Chesterton (and, uh, later "Breaking Benjamin") pointed out, the problem is not finding what is wrong (we can all mostly agree on that) but what is right.
Why are there dumb people?
ReplyDeleteWhile we're asking questions, here's one:
ReplyDeleteHow do you reconcile Jesus' "if you want to be perfect, go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" with "if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat" when we know that some people are poor and hungry simply because they will not work?