“Biblical faith is subversive. The people of the non-industrial world are poor because we are rich. The God of the Bible is clearly and emphatically on the side of the poor, the exploited, and the victimized. The Lordship of Christ over all of human life and affairs… is not only personal but a structural and political fact of reality. The Church of Jesus Christ is at war with the systems of the world, not detente, cease-fire, or peaceful co-existence, but at war.”
Jim Wallis
Agenda for Biblical People
1.) Here is an example of misreading the Bible. God is NOT clearly and emphatically on the side of the poor if the poor have no relationship to Jesus Christ. In that case God hates the poor because the poor are wicked. The same is true, of course, of the rich. If the rich have no relationship to Jesus Christ God hates the wicked rich. Indeed, when the wicked poor are exploited and victimized God is the one who is bringing His judgment against the wicked poor and He doubtless delights in His judgment against them. What the wicked poor must do, just as the wicked rich must do, is repent. It is only by repenting that God will relent His judgments against them.
2.) Wallis actually gets things exactly backwards. If rich nations did not exist the poor nations would be even poorer given that there would be no rich nations to invest in poor nations to develop their natural resources.
3.) Wallis assumes that wealth is static so that if one nation increases in wealth that necessitates that another nation or a combination of nations decrease that much in wealth. Idiotically, Wallis assumes that total wealth cannot be created and so total wealth expanded. Wallis assumes that if I have one hundred dollars in my pocket that another person can not have a dollar in their pocket unless my one hundred dollars is reduced to Ninety nine dollars. Wallis will then insist that the way to make this all fair is redistribution by legislation.
4.) Don’t miss the pronoun “we” above. I would bet the farm that the “we” that Wallis is referring to is “white people.” White people are keeping non-industrialized people (read non-Caucasians) under their economic thumb. This is another version of Liberation theology.
5.) Wallis does not consider at all the impact of worldview and belief systems on a nation’s work ethic, or its impulse to be a producer nation.
I will tell you what God hates… God hates those who demonize the rich simply for being rich and glorify the poor for simply being poor as if there is any automatic virtue that compels divine love from God in the poor.
I, along with God, hate Jim Wallis.
