Our attitude to the poor, it seems, reveals a lot about our understanding of God's grace. Suppose someone says:"we should not help the poor because their situation is their own fault" - a sentiment one often hears, though not usually phrased so politely. Imagine if God had said that to us? Where would we be? If we condemn the poor because of their own lifestyle then we have not undestood the extent of God's grace towards us with our socially respectable lifestyles that are really deeply corrupt. Gregory the Great said "belief in inequality arises from the spring of pride." In other words, people accommodate inequality by reasoning that their wealth and privileges arise from some kind of superiority - whether skills, experience, enterpreneurial drive, national character and so on. But grace humbles us before God. It forces us to renouce claims to superiority. The parable of the good Samaritan is addressed to a teacher of the law who asks "Who is my neighbour?" At the end we expect the answer to be:" the person in need." But Jesus turns the tables on the lawyer by asking:" Who was a neighbour to the man in need?" The parable places the teacher of the law not in the position of the benefactor, but in the position of need. The more we understand the wonderful grace of God to us in our need, the more our hearts will be open to the poor and marginalized. Often Christians wary of social involvement are persuaded not by intellectual arguments, but by their own encounter with poverty. God's grace causes us to respond to need with compassion.
- The Case for Social Involvement; Tim Chester -
