"F*ck the Poor"

I’ve listened to high Republicans fling poop at the poor. Newt Gingrich comes to mind. He claims that the poor don’t work. If he were right, I’d have to erase "working poor" from my vocabulary.

But I’ll cling to that phrase. The Labor Department defines the working poor as persons who have been in the labor force for at least 27 weeks during the year, but who still live below the poverty line. In 2008, in the United States, there were almost nine million of those folks. (I couldn’t find figures for later years.)

1. Time for a new national motto?

Republicans like Gingrich rise in the world. So much so that I’m tempted to pull out a dollar bill to confirm that the old motto is still printed on the eagle’s banner: "E pluribus unum" (Out of many, one). But with the rise of the values touted by Gingrich and his kind, I half expect to find a new motto: "Nolite tangere quae mihi" (Don’t touch my things). (If anyone knows Latin, feel free to kibitz; I had to use Google’s translating function.)

This new de-facto motto fractures us. The old one cemented us in a common destiny.

2. Hey, Bible: got anything?

If the eagle’s banner doesn’t show our present direction, if it’s not partisan enough, if it persists in proclaiming, against strong contrary evidence, that we’re a unified country, then I look to the Bible for a smack of truth. Biblegateway.com lets you search many translations of the Bible for words and phrases.

So I plugged into that website’s search-engine the phrase "Fuck the poor". I got nothing. Maybe I should have searched the New International Version instead of the King James.

Really, that phrase, or its sentiment, was dear to the religious elite in Jesus’s time; but it’s far from the Bible’s spirit. I’ll say a thousand times: look to the story of Lazarus and the rich man if you doubt who’s side God is on. (Luke 16:19-31.) Or look at the Sermon on the Plain. (Luke 6:20-49.) Or, there’s that saying about the rich and the camel and the eye of a needle. (Matthew 19:24; Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25.)

Believers might know these passages; non-believers also might know them. These and other parts of the Bible show God’s love for the poor. The Bible plainly shows this. We rich (and, by Biblical standards, a whole  lot of us qualify as that) might do well to read the Bible with nervous attention. The Bible warns against persons of plenty whose psychological epicenter is the word "Mine".

3. Fuck the poor?

So "fuck the poor" ain’t biblical. The more Biblical phrase is "Fuck the rich". (Yeah, I know, "With God all things are possible." That’s why I said it was the more Biblical phrase.)

I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist. I’ve lived under communism and the experience didn’t give me a warm glow.

But I’ve read Luke. I’ve read Leviticus 19:9-10. I’ve read Psalm 72. These scriptures are clear. Similar passages that show God’s love for the poor sprout throughout the Bible.

To me, the theme of God’s special love for the poor is so clear in the Bible that it’s like God’s love for the poor reaches from the pages of the Bible and twists the reader’s nose with that message. It’s so clear that I doubt the attentiveness of a believer that doesn’t see it.

4. Does anybody care?

But the Bible’s composers knew that the Bible was likely to be ignored. The rich man tormented in hell in Luke 16 worries about his five brothers. He pleads for "father Abraham" to send dead Lazarus to his living brothers; certainly, he pleads, if someone warns them from the other side of the grave, they would repent and avoid an afterlife of torment. But Abraham replies, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Our habits and our attitudes and our ways of life often change little over time. Verses and chapters from the Bible often no more change our direction than a piece paper blowing in the wind moves a train off its rails. Sociologists say that a radical psychological transformation is the by-product of a "paradigm shift". A Christian needs to shake off his old way of seeing the world and take on a new one. The Bible can help; prayer and other spiritual disciplines can help. It takes discipline and effort and grace. Sometimes our own brokenness teaches us.

5. Objections?

Some might quarrel with this clear message of God’s love for the poor. So, some might protest: "But Jesus didn’t know how horrible and shiftless today’s poor would be!" Please.

Or: "Sure, love your neighbor, but who’s my neighbor?" Already answered: Luke 10:25-37.

6. It matters.

I admit: maybe I’m a pious scold. But, in my feeble way, I’m a pious scold for God.

Feeble truth-teller that I am, this I know: God is not indifferent to how we treat each other, how we treat the poor. Nor is our treatment of each other without divine consequences to us. So, "Love your neighbor" is a law of Leviticus, and it appears throughout the New Testament. And in Deuteromony God warns Israel to obey the law, that they might prosper in the land that God gave them.

I don’t assume God’s continued blessing on America. Some in Jesus’s time assumed their specialness as descendants of Abraham, but Jesus said that he could raise children of Abraham from stones. As children of Abraham, so citizens of America. America will prosper as long as we please God. To please him, we’ve got to strive to be like him.

But we’re not like him when we despise the poor. My plea to change that attitude is my bailing bucket in a sinking ship. If enough people bail, our ship gets saved. But most people won’t leave the buffet line as the ship takes on water.

And you know what? We can’t do it alone. Our ship won’t be saved unless we bail and God bails with us. But if we’re forking roast beef while the Atlantic swirls around our ankles, he’ll probably go to help people who want to be saved.

Those are people who might share their meager fare with strangers.