In the beginning, I think it's safe to assume that there was no poverty. Genesis keeps telling us that "God saw that it was good" even telling us that things were "very good" on the sixth day. Poverty is another distortion and twisting of God's creation.
Genesis is a book of beginnings. In particular, we see the beginning of humanity's collective descent into poverty. This spiral contains individual lowlights that show us that no one is immune. Lot, the only righteous man found in Sodom and the only one saved from God's wrath, ends up drunk and the father of his own grandsons (Genesis 19:30-38). Jacob cheats Esau. Esau vows to kill Jacob. Jacob runs. Jacob and his uncle go back in forth in conning each other (Genesis 27-31). Joseph angers his brothers with his arrogance to the point that they consider killing him and end up selling him off as a slave (Genesis 37:12-36).
However, Genesis also marks the beginning of God's plan to pull us out of poverty. And how does he do this? He fills our poverty with his fullness. I want to highlight two ways that God deals with poverty. The first is Sodom.
"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy." -Ezekiel 16:49So why did God destroy Sodom? In their spiritual poverty, they stopped caring about others' material poverty. I would call this the fullness of God's wrath.
The second way is the story of Joseph. In it we see the worst kinds of poverty highlighted to extremes. I've already mentioned how Joseph was sold by his brothers. (The ancestors of Jesus were not always the best of people. But out of their poverty, God pulled out the greatest of our riches.) We also see Egypt and Canaan wasted by a terrible famine for 7 years. And what does God do here? We see God's hand guiding Joseph out of his poverty to becoming second-in-command of Egypt. In addition, God uses Joseph to ensure that a multitude of people do not die in seven years of material poverty - famine (with the side benefit that Jesus' ancestors also lived through famine).
It's easy to get depressed reading this book of beginnings. Humanity fails completely and utterly and keeps doing so from the start. The bright spots are somewhat dimmed by their imperfections. It goes without saying that we cannot save ourselves from our own poverty.
If our poverty is a lack then only God's fullness can fill it!
David, I really love when you talk about the Bible. Basically, I still think you should just go to seminary!!
ReplyDeleteI was really blessed by your insights, because for me when I read Genesis, I mainly focused on the point that poverty was already there in Genesis (I think the first time the word "poverty" is used is in Genesis 45:11? and the word "famine" in 41:29-31?), but when you say that Genesis is also the beginning of God's plan to pull us out of poverty (and even the beginning of God's plan to redeem His people in Genesis 3 right after Adam and Eve sin! O_o) it reminds me to continue to hope in Christ and to keep looking at him in the midst of how overwhelming the issue of poverty can be...