At Cake and Chat, our weekly social group of school parents, church folk and random parishioners, we were talking about Iain Duncan Smith’s proposals to change the government’s definition of child poverty. Our parish ranks in the bottom 2.5% of parishes in the country for deprivation, so we are all familiar with poverty and its effects.
The general consensus was that poverty is not absolute – the amount of money someone has does not define how poor their life is, and especially how poor their children’s lives are. We see many parents with little money whose children are doing brilliantly – growing up with aspirations and discipline. And we know others whose children are not doing so well. Some of this is related to the amount of money available, but mostly it is to do with how that money is directed, and many other factors to do with the ability of parents to raise their children to escape poverty.
Jesus said
The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. Matthew 26v11
Poverty is in many ways an attitude of mind, but there will always be those who cannot escape it. As Christians we follow the God who chose poverty so that we might become rich, and that is why we choose to live in the inner city – so we can offer the riches of Christ to those who know the reality of poverty.
Yesterday I listened to Mez McConnell’s story of grace (I’m going to be ordering his book too). He grew up in the most heart wrenching poverty – not just financially, but in almost every way you could think. What transformed him and turned his life around was not a government scheme or piles of cash. It was the gospel.
The Vicar's Wife 
Good post. You touch on the key thing in my view – ‘mindset’.
Well meaning Christians can do a lot of harm when they try to help the poor. There are plenty of examples in the book ‘When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty without Hurting the Poor….or Ourselves’, by Corbett and Fikkert. I don’t believe Christians have really grasped this. We still persist in a ‘rich=good’, ‘poor=bad’ mentality. But we are all broken before God and alleviating poverty is about restoring broken-ness – which is much broader than material lack & injustice.
I work for Five Talents – the Christian microfinance charity, which tries to avoid the hand-out mentality and esteems the talents of ‘poor people’ by providing opportunity to work their way out of poverty. It’s just one way (an exciting one at that) of working with people rather than doing stuff for them.
I think poverty isn’t just about money; it’s about stupidity. I used to drive every day down West Bromwich High street. Look at it now! Kerbs sticking out into the road, traffic lights, pedestrianised precinct so the police can’t get to the riots and an ugly pink thing. They love to knock the historic buildings down or let them crumble into decay. I’m surprised St Michael’s church is still there. I haven’t been up there for years, I suppose it’s all Payday loan companies, off licences and bookies on the High Street now. It used to be Marks and Spencer – well done to the empire builders in their palace at Oldbury.
I really dislike the way that poverty is ‘officially’ defined as a percentage of mean income. I think it makes people focus on lack of contentment, rather than lack of actual things or opportunities. Because you’re right, it’s not about income, and it’s not even about televisions, x-boxes and computers, it is about attitudes and priorities.
spot on Ros, when poverty is defined only in economic terms then salvation will only be understood as having enough money to buy an ipad.
How ironic that the ad on your post is for a credit card…
Ha! I don’t see the ads in my browser but I guess they picked up on what I was saying to direct it. Those adbots are a bit stupid…
Fantastic post, Vicar’s Wife. Our parish over in Wales is very much the same.
Thank you for this astute and helpful blog post 🙂
Autumn