This is a typewriter. It is how Uncle Luther composes his blog posts.

Occasionally, I’ll have some poor misguided soul come to me for advice or answers to the questions that plague them. Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me, but I figured as long as folks keep coming to me, I might as well blog their concerns and my answer. So, brace yourself folks for the first edition of “Dear Uncle Luther.”

Dear Uncle Luther,

Is being poor a sin? I attend a church that teaches weekly about God’s desire for us to prosper financially, yet I’m not seeing any results. Am I doing something wrong? Is my faith too weak to earn the type of money the other members of the congregation are blessed with?

Thanks for your help,
Bankrupt in Birmingham

Dear Bankrupt,

Let me assure you, being poor is not a sin. Whoever it is that makes you think that has a pitifully small view of God.

God is not an ATM machine. You don’t put your good works in and get financial wealth out. The philosophy being taught at your church is not Biblical— it is called Karma— which is a Hindu concept. It is actually a form of hedonism, where the highest goal is pleasure and happiness.

True Biblical teaching on wealth is as follows:

1. God owns it all.
2. We are given money so that we can be good stewards of that money.
3. Our true riches are found in Heaven.
4. We are to give all we have to the service of God’s Kingdom and to the poor.
5. It is almost impossible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, Christ taught that it was easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for the wealthy to inherit eternal life.
6. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

If you are in a church that is not teaching these Biblically sound economic principles, please find a new church.

God Bless,
Uncle Luther

photo credit: mpclemens

They say common sense ain’t so common these days and it seems this adage couldn’t be any more true than in the church. Fear not though, in response to the overwhelming lack of understanding that has led the misguided among us to take their right to bear arms to mean they have a right to play God and commit other less serious but equally embarrassing acts, I have decided to offer an eight-week seminar this summer called “Common Sense for Christians.” Here is our course outline:

• Week 1: Being Pro Life- Believing that life is precious and has value means all life is precious and has value. You cannot bolster your shiny new gun and go out killing people you disagree with. You also shouldn’t blow up their places of business. Also, if you believe in protecting the second amendment, that’s great—but you might want to consider why a person who is pro-life would want to own a device that can take life. Oh, and if you are pro-life, you may want to really look into the annoying contradiction of calling yourself pro-life while supporting the death penalty.
• Week 2: Marriage- You can’t go around telling homosexuals that marriage is a sacred spiritual bond between a man and a woman until you start treating it as sacred. Fix your own marriages and bring your own divorce rate down, have fewer broken families than the rest of the world and maybe the rest of the world will be more apt to listen to you. Change always comes from within.
• Week 3: Poverty- Politically, you may have a point about it not being the government’s job to meet everyone else’s needs. However, as a Christian, Christ has commanded you to give your money to the poor. So, whether you give in the form of taxes or donations, you’re giving. Hoarding is not an option that is available to you.
• Week 4: Stewardship- All you have belongs to God. All you have is going to burn one day to make way for a new Heavens and a new Earth. When Jesus says don’t store up treasures on earth, there is a very good chance He means that if you have two houses, one of which you only use for a few weeks out of the year and there are people in your community who don’t have any houses, you may have a bit of a stewardship problem.
• Week 5: Politics- Jesus did not come to set up an Earthly kingdom and He didn’t send you into the world to set one up either. We serve an eternal Heavenly Kingdom. Political involvement is important, but it is always secondary to the Kingdom of Heaven, which operates under completely opposite and paradoxical rules than the Kingdom of this world.
• Week 6: Judging- If God had appointed you as the judge of the world, you’d have been born with a black robe, an tacky wig and perfect. If you didn’t pop out of your momma’s womb with these three attributes, then you are a worker in Christ’s field, which means you must sow the fruits of the spirit. In case you forgot, those are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
• Week 7: Sin- It does exist, and you do it too. If everything in life is a psychological problem we have no control over, or if everything we do wrong is just something society needs to learn to accept, then there is no need for a Savior. If there is no sin and there is no Savior, then we really don’t need to read the Bible or go to church anymore. We could instead devote our lives to debauchery, which is much more fun.
• Week 8: Unity- We don’t have to agree, but we should get along. Somewhere in the New Testament we’re told that we are all parts of one body. A body doesn’t function well if the hand is continually punching the nose or the right foot won’t stop kicking the left behind.

Get it? Got it? Good. Class dismissed.

A 2005 survey shows 75 percent of Christians in the United States believe the Bible teaches “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s three-quarters of American Christians who believe this phrase is found in Scripture, a phrase that practically discounts the entire message of the Bible.

Anyone want to guess where the phrase actually comes from? Benjamin Franklin. The idea that God helps those who help themselves is an American one, but it isn’t a Biblical one. Yet, we’ve allowed this incorrect commentary on the nature of God to creep into our theology. It has gripped our belief system so much that it overtakes actual Scripture.

We would rather believe God helps the independent and the self-sufficient than to believe that Christ loves the helpless and calls us to feed the hungry. I’m not sure about your church, but I know at mine there are people who actually believe that the poor are poor by choice and that if they wanted to be rich, they would simply make money.

This philosophy is greed, not God. The God of the Bible is the savior of the helpless. He brought a group of helpless slaves out of captivity, rescued a prophet from a den of Lions, and gave His life for a world too lost in sin to find its way out. Jesus healed lepers and forgave prostitutes. These are not stories of the self-sufficient being aided by the Almighty.

But we’d rather help ourselves. We prefer to confuse our financial shrewdness with a blessing, and we call what we have earned through greed “God’s favor.” We’ve been helping ourselves for so long in this country, we don’t even remember that Jesus told us to look out for “the least of these.” Here’s a brief list of some of the things that have been going on while we’ve been helping ourselves.

• 39.5 percent of Americans now live below the poverty line, and this is according to the Census Bureau, statistics that were calculated before the recession.
• In 2004, 20 percent of requests for emergency food assistance went unmet. These are real people who were allowed to go hungry. How much food did we let spoil in 2004?
• 9.6 million people in the U.S. experience hunger. 3 million of these are children.
• In 2001, over 23 million Americans turned to food banks. 40 percent of these were working families.
• The majority of those below the poverty line are working families. Two out of three impoverished families include one or more workers.
• Almost half of all Americans will have experienced poverty at some point in their lives by the time they reach age 60.

Poverty is a real problem. There are no excuses. Jesus commands His followers to have compassion for those who are in need. They are not deadbeats. They are not lazy. They are people in need of Christ-like love. These are people who cannot help themselves, but whom God has called His people to help.

This is not a political issue. It is not a debate about whether or not government should provide aid. That is irrelevant if we call ourselves Christians. Regardless of what you believe about the role of government in fighting poverty, as a follower of Christ, you are commanded by the One who’s name you claim to do something about this problem.

In the last several months I have heard “strong” Christians tell people who are struggling financially to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, not to worry about money because worry is a sin, reminding the less fortunate that he who doesn’t work doesn’t eat, etc.

Why is it that people who are called by Christ to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and take care of the widows, revile the poor? Why do churches treat the less fortunate less than human? Why do we who have been touched by God treat the beggars of our day as untouchables? Do we really believe that the poor want to be poor because otherwise they would be rich? Here are few other questions:

• Why do we ignore gluttons? Why don’t we tell them to put the hamburger down and hit the gym?
• Why is it OK to judge people we don’t even know, based on a few things we hear them say?
• When did it become acceptable to be greedy and to hoard?
• Why do we feel God is honored and has blessed us just because we can afford two or three houses? Do we ever think he might be disgusted that we didn’t buy one for someone who doesn’t have a home?
• Why is idolatry suddenly fine if it is a parent who worships their child?

Here’s an idea— before we go trying to diagnose why those less fortunate aren’t as “blessed,” and before we start beating them over the head with a list of dos and don’ts, lets do some needed housekeeping and remove the plank from our own eyes.

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A look at Christianity from the Christian family's crazy uncle