Poverty is Curable

Matthew 26:11, “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me.”

I used to read this scripture in the light of pie economics. Pie economics being the world is a pie, and if someone has, then by necessity someone cannot. In other words, my slice of pie keeps you from having any. But once I realized that the world’s resources are not a pie, and nothing is ever used up, it is only moved I turned to inflation to argue that the poverty is incurable.

Inflation in its simplest form is too many dollars chasing after too many goods. So if we took a room full of people ½ poor, and ½ rich and after 12 hours with no food gave all the poor people $100, what would happened when someone brought a pizza in for sale? The richest man would buy the pizza for thousands, and sell off small bites for $100 each. And thus the rich get richer and the poor are once again poor, as inflation eats up what the poor man has. And so logically, in a finite world Jesus’ statement of always having poor stands correct.

Problem is that Jesus did not say that Poverty was incurable.

Reality is that no resource is exhaustible. It simply moves from one place to another, and the value of resource is nothing more than its recovery and transportation costs. I.e. water. We drink water, then we excrete water which goes to a treatment plant, to a stream, evaporating, making clouds and raining somewhere. Or the aluminum can… the aluminum is dug out of the ground, made into a can, that eventually ends up in a landfill… where one day it can be dug out of the ground again when the cost to recover raw aluminum is too great. Or oil even… pulled from the ground, refined, and ultimately burned where it is broken down into carbon and other elements that enter the atmosphere, and except for the extreme costs could be recollected and reconstituted into oil once again. And it is in this cycle that we see what wealth, and its antithesis poverty are about. Wealth is having resource move through your local, your hands at great velocity, versus poverty which is resources moving very slowly. We don’t get to keep anything… it just flows through us.

Velocity is the difference between wealth and poverty. And in such it is possible to increase the velocity so that anyone could become wealthy, and if not wealthy certainly with less lack.

And so Jesus was not saying poverty is incurable, but that we would “always have the poor with” us. He was saying that we will always have people in the condition of poverty. There will always be people on the earth are in positions of resource scarcity.

So how in a modern area where any person can be anywhere in a matter of hours, and at most days are there places, even in modern America can there be places where resources do not move with any velocity? How can people in the middle of metropolitan areas find themselves in a desert? Or how can people in the middle of a desert find themselves well satisfied?

The answer I believe is spiritual. Spiritual not in the since of blessing versus curse, but spiritual in the sense of where God chooses us to be. Because in an instant God can open up resources. In an instant He can change the velocity of resources (including money) that flows through your hands. What is important is not wealth or poverty, but in Christ there are wealthy and poor. What only matters is Him. We must have Christ whether poverty is cured or not. We must have Him whether we have resources or not.

Paul wrote, “To me, to live is Christ.”

And of this scripture T. Austin-Sparks wrote, “In the wilderness the whole of our natural life is brought out, and we come to know our weakness and emptiness; that we have nothing. Thus it is that we now find everything in Christ and so can go over and possess. What is the secret of possession, of coming into our inheritance? It is that we have come to the place where all things are "in Christ" and He is everything – our very Life and being. Our flesh is cut off and we know as the deepest thing in our being, that unless God does everything in us by His Spirit, all is of no value. We must come to an end of our own working in order to come into His fullness. It is so easy to sit down in our weakness and nurse ourselves, but the Lord says at that point, "Arise and possess." Your inheritance is not here on earth, it is in Christ in the heavenlies; not in yourselves, your fullness is in Him. It is ever His Fullness over against your emptiness; His Strength over against your weakness; your inheritance is all He is, as typified to Israel by the land flowing with milk and honey.”

Poverty is cured in Christ. But if in poverty, understand its blessing. To be emptied is to be given the opportunity to discover that we are nothing, and that Christ is everything. To cross through the wilderness is to be prepared in your soul, in your character for the inheritance.