Poverty

"Poverty is a slow violence."

http://shaungroves.com/2010/09/long-distance-slow-violence/

I often think about this issue in my own neck of the woods. Just around the corner from my house is a literal mansion. It's a gigantic house on a horse farm. Immediately next to it is a run down mobile home. They are next door neighbors but couldn't be further apart economically. I sometimes wonder about the people who live there. Do they even know each other? What do they think of one another? Does the guy that lives in the mobile home resent the people who live in the huge house? Do the people who live in the mansion realize what poverty is beside them? Do they care?

I can't decide what is worse: Extreme opulence living next door to extreme poverty and neither changing. Or extreme opulence living insulated from the realities of poverty (where sticking your head in the sand is oh-so-easy). I mean, at least the rich people have to at least pass by the mobile home to get to their house.

For the most part I think that rich people live near other rich people and poor people live with other poor people. It's easy to forget what our fellow man is facing when we don't have to be constantly reminded of it.

I think it is the great sin of the American church that we do not do more to release people from poverty. That is one of the biggest things Jesus asked of us, and we are failing miserably (myself included).

I doubt you'd drink a Starbucks coffee in front of a starving child without offering him something. But we spend our money on Starbucks (and other non-essentials) instead of helping people because they aren't standing next to us starving. If they were, we probably wouldn't go to Starbucks in the first place. We'd be taking them grocery shopping or something.