Most Christians know or have heard of the prosperity gospel, a tackle the Gospel that overreads into passages about wealth and blessings from God. It takes these verses and focuses on self-accomplishment, prosperity living, and the way we will even demand blessings from God.
To quote Hope Bolinger from Christianity.com, “In essence, the prosperity gospel asserts God will reward faithful giving with financial, familial, and entrepreneurial blessings… Many messages will run along the identical thread of ‘living your life now,’ and ‘being one of the best you possibly can be,’ and ‘your suffering now will turn right into a harvest later.’”
While the prosperity gospel is best known, one other form of false gospel is just as dangerous: the poverty gospel.
What Is the Poverty Gospel?
As Bolinger mentioned, prosperity preachers control people by making false guarantees and questioning why those guarantees are usually not being realized. The preachers often use lines like, “You lack faith.” or “You aren’t trusting God enough.”
What does this need to do with the poverty gospel? Well, quite a bit. The prosperity gospel takes the identical approach but works from the alternative message. Iran Nicodemus explains that the poverty gospel “is the idea that being poor is holy, wealth needs to be avoided since it is dangerous to our faith, or material belongings are inherently bad. It is normally accompanied by a fear of not having enough, demonstrated through hoarding and guilt over spending.”
Like the prosperity gospel, it takes specific passages and overreads them to argue that there are specific things we will do to earn God’s favor and abundance. In this case, the particular thing is to take care of poverty.
I should highlight what poverty means. We often associate poverty with extreme examples like homelessness. However, lacking resources is commonly subtler than that. It is a family where parents can’t find stable work to offer food and education for his or her kids. It is the one who encounters a life-threatening disease and is drowning in medical bills. It is the only parent who lost their spouse and is barely making it by. It is the one who has an invisible disability (i.e., autism, chronic depression) who can’t get the crucial accommodations to carry down a job. It is parents whose child has a developmental disability who can’t get the proper accessibility for his or her child because they lack resources. Even in a prosperous Western context, poverty shows up in some ways amongst Christians.
Poverty gospel preachers will tell these impoverished people they “just have to trust God” or that accepting help shouldn’t be counting on God enough. Even worse, those in poverty have to be content to the purpose of not praying for deliverance.
This shouldn’t be how Christ called us to live.
Now that we have now a definition of the poverty gospel and an emphasis on what poverty can mean, allow us to look further at where this belief may come from.
When Did Churches Become Interested within the Poverty Gospel?
We don’t know exactly who coined the phrase poverty gospel. It’s possible that it evolved from the term “gospel poverty” that Thomas Dubey uses in his book Happy You Are Poor.
However, we will say that while it’s been a preferred position at various times within the church, it has change into especially popular because the early 2000s as a response to the prosperity gospel.
One of crucial lessons we learn from church history is that each generation swings from one position to the alternative. We rarely see one generation make a moderate correction to what the previous generation believed. Humans are inclined to swing from one extreme to a different. To give a recent example, when the sexual revolution and the AIDS epidemic occurred within the Nineteen Sixties-Nineteen Eighties, many Christians responded by pushing for purity culture: strict dating structures and a powerful emphasis on proving every relationship alternative motion with scripture became the order of the day. As the deconstruction movement got here within the early 2020s, many Christians argued for a stronger emphasis on love relatively than proof-texting when discussing dating and marriage.
Similarly, as we’ve moved from the heyday of the prosperity gospel, many churches seek the acute opposite position: the poverty gospel.
What Bible Verses Do Church Use to Justify the Poverty Gospel?
Poverty gospel advocates will use scripture to justify their claims, using passages like:
“Blessed are the poor, for his or her inheritance is the dominion of heaven.” (Matt. 5:3)
“For you already know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was wealthy, yet to your sake he became poor, so that you just thought he was wealthy, yet to your sake he became poor, so that you just through his poverty might change into wealthy.” (2 Cor. 8:9)
“ . . . Truly I say to you, only with difficulty will a enter the dominion of heaven. Again, I inform you, it is simpler for a camel to undergo the attention of a needle than for a to enter the dominion of God . . . With man that is not possible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matt. 19:23-24, 26)
They can also cite stories about notable Christians who did much with few resources:
As Christianity.com covers in great detail, George Mueller was born right into a wealthy nineteenth-century Prussian family but lost his inheritance when he became a Christian and aspired to change into a missionary. Relying on deep prayer, God provided for George’s Bristol pastorate and orphanage through acts of charity. Poverty gospel advocates highlight how he lived and relied on prayer to receive generously from other people.
As Annette Griffin from Christianity.com highlights, St. Francis of Assisi was a Twelfth-century Italian monk. Raised wealthy, he sold all his possessions after receiving a vision from God and devoted himself to extreme poverty and preaching the Gospel. His easy lifestyle generated a following, which became the Franciscan Order.
So, what can we take into consideration these arguments? Is there something deeper in these passages and these famous Christian figures’ lives?
What Is the Biblical Response to the Poverty Gospel?
While these stories are wonderful examples of religion, prayer, and give up during uncertainty, we oversimplify them if we read them as hard rules about living in probably the most powerful poverty.
For one thing, Mueller and Francis had specific reasons for avoiding wealth. Francis felt he had to provide up his past to follow God—and, in a culture where being wealthy meant being a part of the family business, he could have needed to make a dramatic break from the family estate. Mueller turned down a bigger income because he would have gotten the cash from a practice called pew rent—people paying for one of the best church seats, which he apprehensive created church inequality.
More importantly, not every Christian known as to provide up the whole lot on the spot. Of course, Christ calls us to not have treasures of this world nor to depend on the materials and wealth. But this doesn’t mean we mechanically surrender all our blessings.
Consider the wealthy young ruler in Mark 10. This young Jewish man held to the laws given, and Jesus loved him as he showed dedication. But he walked away in tears when asked to sell his possessions and follow Christ. Wealth shouldn’t be the issue; it’s the attachment to wealth. As Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of cash is a root of every kind of evils. It is thru this craving that some have wandered away from the religion and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
We can also consider certain kings of Israel. King David and his son Solomon ruled the throne of Israel, which included security, protection, abundant food, clothes, and even wives/concubines (although God didn’t approve of polygamy). Solomon selected wisdom over wealth when God told him to ask for anything (1 Kings 3:1-15). Solomon was blessed with more through his humility and longing to serve God despite his imperfections.
Wealth was not mistaken, but how they used it was mistaken. We see this most notably with David falling for Bathsheba to the purpose of murdering her husband (2 Samuel 11-12) and Solomon worshiping false idols over God (1 Kings 11), leading to a line of kings that might rebel against God.
What Does the Bible Say We Should Do about People Experiencing Poverty?
So, what does the Bible say then about poverty?
Throughout the Old Testament, specifically within the Proverbs, God is mentioned in how much he loves and appears out for the poor. Case and point:
“Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who’s generous to the needy honors him.” (Proverbs 14:31)
“It is best to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoils with the proud.” (Proverbs 16:19)
“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he’ll repay his needs.” (Proverbs 19:17)
I would like to hone that last verse because, as Christians, we’re called to provide to the poor and minister to them. Let’s have a look at what the disciple James says in his Epistle.
“If anyone thinks he’s religious and doesn’t bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that’s pure and undefiled before God the Father is that this: to go to orphans and widows of their affliction, and to maintain oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:26-27)
He further cements this in the next chapter.
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but doesn’t have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in every day food, and considered one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?” (James 2:14-15)
He discusses how faith without works is dead (2:16-26). It shouldn’t be enough to have faith but to do what Christ calls us to do in our works, especially with the poor. The case and point are the parables of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46) and the nice Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In each stories, we’re called to live out our faith and go above and beyond by ministering to those in poverty and suffering.
In other words, you can not give the poor half-hearted encouragement similar to, “Well, God’s on top of things, so that you might be okay,” or “Just proceed to have faith because God sees your suffering.” We’re not doing much if we encourage poverty as an alternative of helping people affected by it.
How Can Christians Look Out for the Poverty Gospel?
Christians should be mindful of how their church ministers to the poor around them. Is it setting funds aside for charities? Is it ministering to people within the pews who’re hurting? Does it help congregants in addition to church leaders? Does the church speak harshly about poor people behind closed doors? Or are their hearts and actions reflective of Christ? The church must help the poor, minister to them in prayer and community, and help them carry their burdens.
Yes, we should be mindful of how much we give and why. We should be mindful of when helping hurts because we aren’t helping in one of the best ways.
Nor are we meant to provide the whole lot we have now and neglect our own families. The Gospel calls us to assist people carry their burdens, which we will only do if we have now resources.
We can minister in some ways. It could be so simple as making meals, buying coffee, or sitting with people of their grief.
Give what you possibly can and what you’re called to.
Photo Credit:©GettyImages/Stas_V
Trey Soto holds an M.A. in Communication Management from the University of Denver and B.A. in Communication Studies from Biola University. He is a author, communications expert, and social media managing wizard. You can see more of his work and make contact with info on his Wix portfolio.
This article is a component of our Christian Terms catalog, exploring words and phrases of Christian theology and history. Here are a few of our hottest articles covering Christian terms to assist your journey of data and faith:
The Full Armor of God
The Meaning of “Selah”
What Is Grace? Bible Definition and Christian Quotes
What is Discernment? Bible Meaning and Importance
What Is Prophecy? Bible Meaning and Examples
