Poverty At Christmas

Our Salvation Army centre in Preston has this week been throbbing with activity and looking like a Toys R Us warehouse and a Kwik Save supermarket. Our team of volunteers has spent hours stuffing gifts of food and toys into plastic bags and answering phone calls from health visitors and social workers as to when they can come and collect the parcels for their clients. We've had hundreds of referrals about people in need across this relatively small city. And we try our hardest to make sure no family is disappointed, though with so many cans of baked beans in the food hampers one wonders about the impact on the health of the nation, let alone the gaseous contribution to global warming.


Without a doubt this generous giving is both welcome and necessary, and many people in poverty will be glad to receive something that helps them enjoy their Christmas. But it must leave us with lots of questions:


Why only at Christmas is the wider community so sentimentally concerned for the homeless and the poor, when so much more could be done by sustained giving by direct debit, or even by taxation?

Does small scale charitable giving make a real long tem difference to people's lives when we all know there are deeper causes behind poverty, or does it trap them in dependency?

What is the role of government as opposed to / or in partnership with the charitable sector in making an impact on these problems?

To their credit the Tory Party has been doing some serious work and analysis on these issues and you can read their report on http://povertydebate.typepad.com/voluntary_sector/

Their analysis is heavy on family breakdown, addiction and educational failure as the main causes, and it is not surprising there is a lot of criticism of current government policy. To be fair they have done a lot of listening to organisations in the Third Sector and picked up a lot of issues we have been highlighting for ages.

There is an intersting comment on the social policy list at

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0612&L=social-policy&T=0&F=&S=&P=2067

which suggests that the Royal Family is a pretty dysfunctional family the only difference being that it has a lot more (tax payer's ) money.

There is also an interesting recent analysis of poverty statistics at http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialpolicy/1979.asp

As usual I want to ask WWJD "what would Jesus do?"

Of course we could quote his saying "the poor you have always with you" Matthew 26:10-12 and take it as a fatalistic acceptance of the status quo and a command to concentrate on worship and spirituality. While the context of a woman pouring expensive perfumed ointment on the Saviour's feet does support the second part of that reading I believe we should reject any suggestion that Jesus condones involuntary poverty.

Indeed it is interesting that he was saying this to a bunch of disciples who included Judas Iscariot, the group's accountant, who loved money and betrayed him for cash a couple of verses later..

And it was also undoubtedly a reference to

Deuteronomy 15:11There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

Which in the context of the earlier verse

Deuteronomy 15:4However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you,

suggests poverty is a result of sin... not the sin of those who have become poor but the sin of those who have failed to share equally the riches God has blessed them with..

Even Paul ( often thought to be a conservative) spells this out more clearly than Karl Marx ever did

2 Corinthians 8:13Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality.
14. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality,

I wonder does he mean just a little charitable giving at Christmas? Or Maybe something much more radical... at which we all consistently fail and need God's forgiveness and grace. For after all this is the model we see in the incarnation, in the birth of Emmanuel, as a baby in squalid temporary accommodation and before long as an asylum seeking refugee.

2 Corinthians 8:9For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.