Poverty in Thine Eyes

Last night I went to the residents Bible Study which I have not attended for some time. I had been distinctly put off by the new series on poverty. I tend to find that whenever a group of Christians, or for that matter "Christians", gets together and starts talking about a topic of social justice they get very slippery, and begin talking about grand ideals and noble sentiments that they keep as removed from themselves as possible.
It soon turns into a type of committee making snap decisions on what the Church and the West should do. Almost always delegating the hard jobs to people who were unable to attend that night, such as the pastors of major churches, Kevin Rudd, and the Pope.
You see there is a fascinating tendency to make decisions and commitments in order to clear consciences, all the while not really looking into the engineering of the situation, but instead assuming that we "know it all" and that everything we happen to have picked up from watching the news and in general conversation gives us a complete picture.
That's the reason why Bible Studies and the topic of poverty rarely mix well, because Christians have become so devastatingly good at keeping themselves personally removed from the topic beyond making themselves more committed to donating to charity and such, which are actions that allow us to do something about poverty without needing to have contact with it.

Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised on this occasion. I actually found the discussion quite well informed, indeed, more informed then I was. This was greatly aided by the presence of two overseas students, one of them a girl from Sri Lanka who had simply fascinating information and perspective.
Beyond that it was actually a very self-analyzing session. The question was really asked, "Are we were we need to be?" and that my friends is a question the Church of the West needs to be seriously asking itself.