empathy or prosperity gospel?

How do poor people see themselves?
When poor people are thought we tend to see them in terms of how they lack material things (e.g. food, money, clean water, housing).  However, when a person who is poor is asked how they see themselves most will admit that yes they do lack these things, but more important is their feelings of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, voicelessness, etc.

Solutions?
How poverty is defined will therefore affect how it is solved.  The mistakes most people make when trying to overcome poverty is that ...

• we treat the symptoms instead of the underlying illnesses, and
• we wrongly diagnose the underlying illnesses and therefore prescribe the wrong medicine.

The solution is to develop relationships with people because ...

• People are not always fully aware of what is affecting their life
• People are not always fully honest about their life
• Any effort to resolve poverty is multifaceted in design and execution because we are designed to relate with God, ourself, others, and creation

And therefore we need to ...

• Discover how God is already working among people, their organisations, institutions, and culture, while also
• Seeing people as part of the new world Christ is restoring and sustaining

So who are the poor?
Everyone!  We are all poor because when it comes to spiritual intimacy, poverty of being, poverty of community, and a poverty of stewardship, we all lack something.
As such, because not everyone will experience material poverty, it makes it possible to believe that I am better than others just because I have more material stuff. In addition, this belief often comes with a second thought: that because I achieved this wealth through my own efforts I have the right to decide what is best for low income people.  The consequences of this is:

• People who are not materially wealthy, healthy and powerful have not enough or no faith in God and/or are not obeying him
• People experiencing poverty are viewed as inferior
• People are reduced to objects that fill my needs to accomplish

In terms of the church, these are the philosophies of the prosperity gospel.  Where people who are materially wealthy etc are viewed as having been rewarded for their faith and obedience in God.  Therefore, the solution according to the prosperity gospel preached to materially poor people is that all their finances, their jobs, and how much they possess will increase if they only had more or real faith and obedience.  The poor may even be told that they are sick and unemployed because of their lack in faith and obedience.

Unfortunately this philosophy fails when we place it into the context that if it is true then it must apply to every people and culture.  So can the prosperity gospel work in war torn nations or nations that experience governmental corruption?  How would it sound to a woman who has just been raped or a father whose children died in a house fire?

No it cannot!

Jesus himself reminds us that "the poor will always be with us" and that to follow him is to expect suffering and persecution.  He also repeatedly urges us to understand that seeking after the riches of this world leads to death, and that God sees and treats us all equally no matter how much we have or do not have

Conclusions

• Understand we are all poor in the sense of broken relationships
• Be open to ongoing repentance: "Jesus can fix us both"
• Reject the prosperity gospel that claims “spiritual maturity leads to financial well-being”
• Realise material poverty can be due to external circumstances (e.g. racism, job availability) and not due to spiritual immaturity

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incarnation ... a beginning

Incarnation: The making of something physical, real, able to be touched and interacted.
Surely it is easier for God to remain in the heavens to do and say things?  The Old Testament is full of these kinds of examples.

So why did God make an appearance on earth as Jesus?  Jesus, the bible shares was a human being just like anyone of us.  If the bible says God wanted to 'save us' to reconcile our relationship with him, why couldn't he just do this from heaven?  He was able to sort things out in the past through floods, lightning, prophets, etc.  Why did he choose not to stay at a distance?

According to the writings of the bible's New Testament:

1. The devil had the power of death and the only way this could be broken was for Jesus to die.
2. And, the only way for Jesus to die was for him to become like us in every way, human.
3. So God made Jesus human
4. And where to humans live?  In heaven?

No.

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is sunday for resting?

Question 1
May we work on Sundays and do any activity we want? Or, are Sundays sacred where working is to be avoided and our activities are limited to only certain things?
And, if we believe a Sunday is sacred, may we justify this by stating it as God's will?
Didn't God rest on the last, on the seventh day of creation? Hasn't he also asked his people do do likewise, take a day of rest from work every week (see the 10 commandments)?

But the bible also reads that ...

Jesus did many things which the people of the day considered 'work'. He healed. He picked corn.  Indeed Jesus even chastised people for their hypocrisy for they too would do things considered 'work' if they needed to (e.g. Luke 13:15).
But that is different to earning an income on Sundays. Is it? Yes, the examples Jesus was involved in were not about income earning. They were simply about doing stuff. But, just because income earning is not among the examples doesn't mean it is not on the avoid doing list.  Maybe.  But the point is, these examples reveal work is not directly connected to income. And thus earning an income on a Sunday cannot be put into a special category.

Question 2
What is work?  By definition work is exerting effort to produce or accomplish something.  So, is work what we physically do? Or can work also be something else?  For example, have you heard someone say they, for example, they are "making an effort to change their attitude" or "making arrangements to go on holidays"? Indeed they may say it in other ways, 'trying to' or indeed 'working at'. The point is the same ... effort is being given to achieve something.

Work.

So should we avoid trying to change our attitudes on Sundays? Is that even possible? Would trying to stop, itself, be a type of effort or work to achieve?  Are priests and ministers making an effort, working, to teach us Sunday morning?

Question 3
So, if avoiding work is impossible, let alone on Sundays, then surely we should minimise it? That is a good thought but whose list will be followed? And will they create boundaries between people?  What does God say about what worship is, about living harmoniously, about favouritism? (read Acts 10; Romans 2; Galatians 2; Colossians 3; Ephesians 6 and also ... James 2)

One more question:

If God chose to have a rest on the seventh day of creation, are we still in it, or did he go back to work?

• Do we still live in God's day of rest?  Anyone who has a full time job and also rests on Sundays, works for at least 85% of the week (and this only accounts for income earning income). So, does God ask us to work while he is resting and for how long will this continue?
• Has God returned to work? And if so are we to apply it to a 7 day weekly calendar or something different? If God's calendar is synchronised with our Sundays off, will he then heal or forgive on the Sunday? Yes? Then surely God is working on the very day we suggest is designated, by him, for rest. Are our requests therefore falling on deaf ears on that day, because he is resting? Should we even therefore bother about church attendance on Sundays? Indeed, why would people claim to be healed while at church on Sundays?

Conclusion
Either God asks us to live one way and he another, or he intends his actions and ours, though imperfect, to be the same. My suggestion is that if it is the first way, then we may continue living the way we are. However, if he indeed intends his and our actions to align then we must reassess how we approach Sundays, rest and his will.

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