NEW YORK — It’s a rare American who wakes up praising poverty.
Those of us who are poor fight it. We hide it. We tell poverty to stop following us. We tell poverty that we’re going to leave it as soon as we get more property.
We even sell ourselves out to defeat it.
This makes us Americans poor ambassadors of poverty.

It hardens us against what makes poverty enduring and what makes poverty universal and what makes poverty enriching.
Of course we are not talking about the kind of abject poverty that threatens people’s lives.
We are not talking about our moral duty of preferential treatment for the poor.
Obviously, we commend our great social services and the selfless missions of history and the heroic volunteers with love-of-neighbor in their hearts who minister to the needy.

What we are talking about is demonizing poverty and glorifying property in the name of the American Dream.
By poverty we mean the kind that everyone knows but that no one acknowledges – the bareness we are born with and the nakedness we take to the grave.
It’s upon this poverty that we pile our dissatisfaction with the material life and our disappointment with the reception of others and our restlessness with ourselves.
Conversely, all the hopes we have for material fulfillment and for social acceptance and for personal peace we heap upon the day of riches, which we are certain is coming.

It’s a trap deeper than six feet.
Something inside us senses this.
We just don’t know what to do about it.

 

II. Free Money
Our problem with poverty is there isn’t enough money in it.

We know that the more money we have, the more life bows to us.
The more life bows to us, the more our purpose seems confirmed and the more our destiny seems like an accomplished fact.
This fits perfectly with our belief that money is our destiny.
And why not? American culture teaches us that money is the common denominator of happiness. Money is the source and the summit of the American dream.

The problem is the American Dream is more delusion than inspiration.
It is often suggested that the American Dream is to make enough money in our lifetime so that our children will enjoy a better life than we did.
But that is not the American Dream. That is the universal burden.
The real American dream is easy wealth. The real American dream is free money. The real American dream is the big lottery jackpot.

We aren’t honest about how seriously we take this dream because we know what a fantasy it represents.
We know that we can’t get something for nothing, even if all we are counting on is pure luck.
We know that in order to get a great reward we have to deserve it somehow, which takes restraint and selflessness and gratitude for the things that we already have.
We know that our real problem is not that we are miserable being poor, but that we are miserable being ourselves.

So we want a new life of power over disappointment, and pleasure over rejection, and possessions over emptiness.
We would never believe that poverty is the answer.

 

III. Myth and Meaning
We believe in the myth of free money so much that it has become indistinguishable from the fairy tale of Prince Charming.

We believe in the myth even though we know that pots of gold don’t materialize at the end of rainbows any more than love comes without strife and sacrifice.
So we propose a bargain to improve our odds: we promise to do good with our free money.
We promise to give away money, even if we don’t give away our money now.
We promise to be angels to others, even if we have little desire to be angels now.
We promise to be satisfied, even if we are rarely satisfied now.
This is where our deceit tells the truth about us.

By confessing the distance between the people we would be with more money and the people we are now with less money, we are admitting to the world where we draw the line.
We draw the line precisely where we live life today.
If we are capable of being better people with money, then we are capable of being better people without money.
We know this because no one can forbid us from doing good except ourselves. We know this because no one can force us do good except ourselves.

The fact that we choose to stay the way we are testifies that we are free agents. It does not testify that we are restricted by poverty.
It does not suggest that we would be better with money.
Money uses all of its advantages to insulate us from the manual labor of virtue building. Money tells us that hard work is for people who haven’t made it yet.
All we can imagine is how much better we’d be with the money of our dreams.

The truth is with dream money, we would wake up the same people as we are now, except we would be a little shittier.

 

IV. The Spirit of Poverty

There are enough passages in the Bible about the importance of poverty to write four seasons of sermons.
Even if we just focus on the New Testament, and even if we zero-in only on the hero of that collection books, we still find many more teachings about the value of poverty than we could absorb in a single sitting.
It’s impossible to miss them.
The teachings of Jesus in the New Testament about poverty scandalized the people of his time who considered wealth the leading indicator of character just as much as his teachings scandalize the people of our time.
His point is not that poverty is a virtue in itself, or that poverty is some kind of favored poetic alternative to commercialism, or that poverty is some preferred ascetic power over impulses.
His point is that poverty is a person.

Not only does Jesus embody poverty himself as a man who was born poor and who wanders about in his prime homeless, jobless and possession-less, but he elevates the humanity of each poor person he heals.
He tells a rich man who has led a moral life to sell all he has and give it to the poor if he wants to be perfect.
He tells a poor woman who gives a little bit that her donation is worth more than a rich man who gives a lot.
And in one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings that continues to tongue tie theologians 2000 years later, he sits on a mountain speaking to the dregs of his generation who longed for an end to oppression and a restoration of the glory that Israel had under the reign of Solomon.
Jesus did not tell them to rise up and overthrow the forces of injustice that produce poverty. Jesus did not recommend them to a strong work ethic and encourage them to achieve their destiny of financial independence.
He told them Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom heaven.

It is such a momentous message that generations of religious women and men continue to take vows of poverty as a path to spiritual purity, not because poverty is an end in itself, but because poverty is a sacrifice of love.
The idea became so important in the Renaissance that poverty was given a special place on the Wheel of Fortune between war and humility.
What we take from this is that poverty is not something to escape or something to vanquish. It is something to accept that on its face seems unacceptable, like so much else that is counter intuitive in the life of meaning.

Just as empowerment comes through surrender and just as gain comes through giving, enrichment comes through poverty.

Poverty means acknowledging our limitations and admitting our neediness and confessing our interdependence on others.

Poverty means accepting our pain and brokenness so that we might soften the suffering of others through compassion and service.
Most of all poverty means faith in a fortune that no money can buy.