How large a social problem are “your poor, your hungry and your homeless”? How could the biblical principle of gleaning (salvaging or recycling) be applied to your situation. (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 389).
I have been called by some a kind and helpful person. Even so, I deliberately practice “out of sight, out of mind” regarding the economically distressed. I of course do not deny that voluntary charity has made significant difference in the lives of many. However due to my own heart of darkness in this matter, I firmly believe that until the poor have and exercise power, economic justice will never occur. Even in the United States where the ballot is practically universal among adults, the progress has been slow in changing economic power structures and arrangements. In America we like to believe that everyone can be a millionaire and we hold up exceptional examples where even the poor and downtrodden have made it big. This gives us hope for garnering own vast fortune at some future point in time. Yet, we see again and again that the general rule is such that poverty is durable in the merciless extreme and the producers of wealth all too frequently do not justly share in the fruit of their labor. Never let anyone fool you about America being a classless society. When the managerial and proprietary classes earn millions and the workers earn poverty, you have a class system in reality however else it may be called or rationalized. The whole matter of just wages will not be resolved until the poor have the power and clout of the privileged classes. The window that provides hope for change is the ballot; for in the end it comes down to the sway of governance as it influences and bears upon economic structures and arrangements. The biblical call for social justice pertains as much as ever.
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