SHUTTERSTOCK
age and stage of human existence. One specific homegrown heresy I
would like to see unmasked involves reducing what it means to be blessed to bodily health and material wealth. Namely, that the proof of being blessed by God is to possess an abun- dance of tangible possessions. This crooked assertion thrives because of the strands of truth woven through it: God indeed is the giver of all good gifts, the grantor of human capacity and the one who rewards the labor of human hands. Yet when this truth gets overextended and misapplied, it becomes mythically oppressive. People living in poverty are the
most vulnerable under the shadow of such half-truths. The Scriptures and confessions warn us of the other side: possessions can be ill-gotten, as they are by those who “covet fields, and seize them; [desire] houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house” (Micah 2:2). The Lutheran tradition doesn’t endorse a view that only direct, personal action consti- tutes sin. For example, the seventh commandment addresses economic opportunism and structural sin. “Stealing is not just robbing some-
one’s safe or pocketbook but also taking advantage of someone in the market, in all stores … and, in short, wherever business is transacted and money is exchanged for goods and services …” (Martin Luther, “Large Catechism”; The Book of Concord, Fortress Press, 2000).
The truth of poverty As such, we might want to interrogate the tidy correlation between working hard and getting out of economic poverty. Some of the hardest working people on our planet are among the poorest. Their lack of access to tech- nology, investment capital, modern techniques, quality education, retail networks and global markets tends
to lock them out of opportunities to advance. For example, women farmers in
the Sahel region of West Africa work harder than anyone I’ve ever observed, using tools that seem prehistoric. By any standards, they rank at the bottom of all economic indices. Some of the planet’s wealthiest, on the other hand, enjoy leisure from assets they have accumulated through inheritances, investments or bonuses. Second, poverty is so much more
multidimensional than merely an absence of financial resources. In the U.S., I see so-called urban poverty as a psychosocial debilitation caused by, among other factors, the internalizing of racism and the implied beat-down of being “poor.” This, in an excessively materialistic culture while living under the tacit narrative that people live in poverty primarily because they lack some virtue, especially related to the value of hard work. Many people of all ethnic back-
grounds inhabit their status in the U.S. simply by being born into the right family, possessing the right physical attributes, being undergirded with the right safety nets, and being provided access to the right opportunities at the
right time. It almost seems unchris- tian to utter these words, but appear- ance, luck and privilege seem to have as much to do with socioeconomic success as any other less visible vari- able like being divinely blessed, being intelligent or making virtuous choices. To reiterate, not that productiv-
ity and labor doesn’t ennoble people, enhance meaning in life, and benefit materially individuals and families but that this isn’t an ironclad correlation in an unjust and fallen world. Because of the Lutheran distinc-
tions that 1) refuse to equate the empire of God with the empire of a particular geopolitical unit, and that 2) don’t conflate material prosperity with either personal rightness or spiri- tual righteousness, we have a freedom and responsibility to continue being a voice in the public square for the sake of the life of the world. For freedom, Christ has set us free,
Micah 6:8 references: to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” And, yes, those who walk that walk will also talk this talk, as the very next verse of Micah begins, through the prophets “the voice of the Lord cries to the city” (6:9).
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