Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

    
    You're not looking like a fool at all Bubba.  Your's is a very
    thought provoking question.
    
    Carole

    I think you have to read the passage in context.  The complete sentence
    reads, "For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always
    have me."  Regarding the implications of this passage for our
    obligations to the poor, I don't think it means that Jesus was trying
    to discourage the Mother Theresas of the world.  It seems to me that,
    far from telling the apostles that they did not have any responsibility
    for the poor, he was in fact saying just the opposite; the passage
    certainly implied that this obligation was an ongoing responsibility. 
    Jesus noted that, at that particular time, he had some specific needs
    that legitimately needed to be addressed.  The ongoing obligation to
    the poor would continue after he was gone.  It doesn't seem to me that
    Jesus was making any sort of prophetic pronouncement about some
    allegedly preordained fate of the poor until the end of time as much as
    he was pointing out that his specific need at that instant did not
    prevent others from carrying out their ongoing responsibility to the
    poor at other times after he was gone.  

    One way of paraphrasing my understanding of that passage would be, "You
    have plenty of other opportunities to help the poor.  Just this once,
    though, I have a specific need.  Continue doing those things for the
    poor after I have gone."  That doesn't mean, to me anyway, that there
    will *necessarily* always be poor people.
    
    -- Mike

    Re: .2
    
    Thats my understanding too.
    
    Marc H.

Bubba .0,

	I, too, get the sense that Jesus was saying, "The poor will be
will you long after I am gone.  This once, celebrate my presence with
you.  There will be plenty of opportunities to help the poor when I'm no
longer with you."

	Your friend is right.  A large part of war is rooted in greed,
though war is practically never defined as such.  The truth is often
overshadowed by patriotic rhetoric, flag-waving, trumped-up moral
imperatives, and proclamations of divine destiny and will.

	Note 275.10 and others such as 180.40 may help provide some
insight.

	Incidentally, you've raised an interesting parallel in my mind.
Just as some use, "The poor you shall always have with you," to perpetuate
an attitude of inevitability, some use the phrase, "There will be wars and
rumors of wars," to excuse the existence of war.

Peace,
Richard

 
    So what kind of poor people are we talking about, the financially
  poor or the spiritually poor ?  I think it would be possible to
  eliminate poverty in the materialistic sense and still have loads
  of poor people around. I know a few people who want for nothing and
  are quite miserable. In a way they are they are worse off than than
  those who are materially poor. There are concrete steps that can
  be taken to help the materially poor. A job, food, decent housing
  are all things that can be done to help alleviate their poverty.
    What do you do about the spiritually poor ? Evangelize them ?
  Well, some take that approach. Befriend them ? That might not be a
  bad idea either. 
    The age groups with highest suicide rates in the US are teenagers
  and the elderly. I have read that those in these groups who do kill
  themselves are seldom "poor" in the financial sense. They tend to
  be spiritually poor. They are lonely, alienated and lacking a support
  network of family and friends. 
     I think that living in a materialistic society we tend to view
  poverty in materialistic way. Actually those who I think are the
  most desperately poor are those who find life so meaningless that
  they no longer wish to live. That the spiritually poor might always 
  be with us is strikes me as far more depressing thought than the
  financially poor always being with us.

                                                               Mike 
      
     
     
    

.5> So what kind of poor people are we talking about, the financially
.5> poor or the spiritually poor?

You know, Mike, when I wrote the base note I was making particular
reference to the materially "poor" for my thesis on the future of
this dastardly activity called "war".  I was wrong in limiting my
perspective for there are most assuredly those who would feel that
their neighbor is perhaps spiritually poor and ... should be at
a minimum conquered so as to inflict *their* brand of spirituality
on their neighbor.  Not too distant from us fine upstanding folk
who deemed it necessary to bring the heathen Indians to the ways
of God ... they did not come easily so we killed a few along the
way.

Poor is poor - any way you cut it and it most ASSUREDLY depends upon
the glasses upon which you look at your neighbor.

Bubba

	I have to agree with Mike and Jerry.  I was once asked if I could
give just one thing to the poor, what it would be.  To my own enlightenment and
my own amazement, my answer spilled from my lips in a single word:  hope.
I would give the poor a motivation for living, a reason to rise from
resignation, a belief that the future holds something important for them.
Without hope, all the rest really doesn't hold much meaning, it seems.

Peace,
Richard

	"People of faith and churches within the United States bear
significant responsibility for the present crises of poverty, militarism,
and environmental decay.  The triumphalism that greeted the Gulf War,
the predominant position of the National Security State Establishment
within U.S. society, the so-called new world order based on poverty,
militarism and environmental bankruptcy are possible in part because
as individuals and as churches we have been assimilated into a
dominating culture that clashes sharply with authentic Christian
values.  'The dominant values of American life,' writes Marcus Borg
'-- affluence, achievement, appearance, power, competition, consumption,
individualism -- are vastly different from anything recognizably
Christian.  As individuals and as a culture...., our existance has
become massively idolatrous.'"

				- Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer
				"Brave New World Order"

    
      Jerry:
    
             Actually I was thinking of something my mother once told
      me about how she never realized that she came from a poor family
      when she was growing up. There may not have been much to eat and
      they didn't usually have a nice place to live, but there was love
      and support. When times were good her family shared the surplus.
      When times were bad they all did with a little less. Were they 
      "poor" ? Not by the way I measure poor.
              On the other hand my next door neighbor's son killed
       himself this last Fall. A nice middle class family where no
       one gets along with each other. Twenty years old and he
       couldn't find anything worth living for. Are they well off ?
       Not by the way I measure well off. So, I guess you are right.
       It all depends on what kind of glasses you are looking through.
                            
          
                                                               Mike

    
    As long as there are sinful individuals, sinful systems, and
    pathologically criminal individuals (who sometimes get into power),
    I don't see how we can avoid having both the poor and war.  That, it
    seems to me, is reality.  
    
    But we are still called to work for peace and for economic justice.
    That's part of the work of bringing in the Kingdom and being the salt
    of the earth.  Imagine how much worse things would be if we all gave
    up on social and political (as well as individual) change!
    
    Nancy

    RE: .7
    
    Thank you for your message.
    
    	Shalokm,
    
    	Ron