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