Saturday, April 15, 2006

Should we help the poor?????????


Should we help the poor?
Some biblical quotes that may help you decide for yourself.

Poor and rich are equal before God (Ex 30:15, Prov 22:2,29:13) but to neglect the poor is to deny God's Lordship (Lev 19:10, 23:22). We are to be generous to the needy (Deut 15:7) and to consider their circumstances in structuring our economic arrangements (Deut 24:15).
Both poverty and wealth are created by God, therefore we are not to take credit for our wealth or blame the poor for their poverty (I Sam 2:7-8).

To take from the poor is to do injustice (2 Sam 12:1), and God will judge against those who have the spoil of the poor in their houses (Is 3:14-15).
The poor are protected by God (Psalms 12:5, 35:10, 69:23, 70:5, 86:1) who takes thought for them (Ps 40:17) and will give them refuge (Ps 14:6) from every trouble (both spiritual and physical) (Ps 34:6), who will maintain the cause of the needy and execute justice for the poor (Ps 140:12), and who will give happiness to people who consider the poor (Ps 41:1) Kindness to the poor is a loan which God will repay (Prov 19:17).

The mark of Zion, and by extension any Government whose leaders take God seriously, is that the needy will find refuge there (Is 14:32). At the day of God's presence, the poor will be joyful (Is 29:19); God is concerned that the poor have water to drink even when others fail them (Is 41:17), and will punish a country which allows the poor to be sold for a pair of sandals (Amos 2:6). To judge the cause of the poor and needy is to know God (Jer 22:16).

In the New Testament, Jesus opens his ministry by announcing, in the words of Isaiah, the he has come to bring good news to the poor (Luke 4:18); in the Beatitudes he says it is the poor who will inherit the Kingdom of God (Luke 6:20), and in the parable of the Great Banquet it is the poor who are invited into the Kingdom's feast after the rich have rejected it. (Luke 14:21).

Jesus knows that salvation has come to the house of Zacchaeus because Zacchaeus gives half his goods to the poor (Luke 19:8), and St. Paul indicates that Jesus had done the same, for "though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor." (2 Corinthians 8:9)

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