It came up two weeks ago as an example of a collective belief: “There will always be poor among us.” It came up last week in my mind while writing about what we lose as a society when we tolerate poverty. And here it is again, conscious politics practitioner, saturated in opportunity this day, not just to look under the hood of this particular belief but also a little more broadly at how even though beliefs always very much matter, their veracity and their origin do not. Shall we?
“There will always be poor among us.” This declarative phrase, you’ll notice, is an elegant example of a crystal clear belief — an unambiguous platform for our discussion. The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, I’m told, credit Jesus with saying it. That’ll give it some heft. I swallowed it whole myself and I’m a just a largely lapsed Jewish guy in America. But I’ve since become a consciousness guy, which means I’m hyper aware of what I’m believing. I also have a particular affinity, you may have noticed, for infusing our politics with consciousness and so here’s what the poverty issue in America looks like to me: we want to end poverty, foot on the gas; we believe we will always have poor among us, foot on the brake.
It’s one small example of the degree to which we collectively believe there will always be poor among us: a well-known politician on a national platform affirming the belief willy-nilly, as a matter of course, as has happened innumerable times in American politics for how long now?
I can’t and won’t speak to any or all people — perhaps including you — who already know far more about the alternative take of this belief I’m about to share. But I can say with confidence, before we go any farther, that America has had a war on poverty for more than 50 years; things were economically bad for as many as half of all Americans before the pandemic arrived here early last year; and poverty or the threat of poverty is alive and well for too many millions of American adults and children in 2021.
OK then. It seems plausible that some important context around the belief that there will always be poor among us may have been overlooked for a couple of thousand years or so. Specifically, essentially:
1) that Jesus was referring to a passage in Deuteronomy, the Torah, his bible, known to his followers, which implored (paraphrasing) non-poor people to be open-hearted in their dealings with the poor
and
2) that it also says in Deuteronomy that “…there need be no poor people among you, for in the Land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today.”
Oh really?
So an alternative take exists: that there’s perhaps more to the idea that we will always have poor among us — including the possibility that we need not have poor at all. This particular alternative from “progressive Christian” writer Fred Clark — one of many I’ve seen over the years — lays it out rather well and with feeling. He was writing in response to Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) who was considering running for president at the time. It’s one small example of the degree to which we collectively believe there will always be poor among us: a well-known politician on a national platform affirming the belief willy-nilly, as a matter of course, as has happened innumerable times in American politics for how long now? As Clark so aptly puts it, this dynamic leaves us Americans with “a shrugging acceptance that poverty is just the way it is and that there’s nothing we can do about it.”
We trust the source of the belief and thus accept it as true. We’re not bad people, it’s just something we do. And still, the other huge piece of this is that it doesn’t matter whether what we’re believing is true or not. Anything we believe is true for us anyway and anything we believe will create in our reality anyway. Truth — objective truth — has nothing to do with it.
And what if it’s all a crock? What if some credible new discovery points to Jesus never having said anything like “there will always be poor among us?” What if this Clark guy and me and everyone who questions the origin and veracity of this belief are discredited beyond recognition? What if? What if? What if? Exactly. Because it doesn’t matter.
The point of today is understanding that when it comes to beliefs, all that matters is whether or not they serve us. All that matters is whether we can get to where we want to go with the belief(s) we have — or not.
Will there always be poor among us? Only for as long as we believe there will always be poor among us.
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NOTE: If you celebrate it, Happy Easter.
Hi Steven, I decided I would go through and read all of your wonderfully written articles before we had our next cup of coffee together. Have always enjoyed your writings. Regarding the poor... I don't believe that poverty needs to exist. Having lived in downtown LA, traveled through the heart of Mexico and Morocco, I have seen poverty at its worst. The wild part of it, is that often people who are living in the middle of it don't even see it the way we do. Not that it shouldn't exist, but they have been raised into a world where poverty is their normal. Years ago I was shocked to discover that our government school systems here in America actually try to create and perpetuate poverty. Those that designed and implemented the grade curve system (the way I was taught to teach before I graduated with a "BS" in education) prevents at least 50% or more of our students from getting a true education. This pretty much sets them up to stay in poverty. Why would elites create something like this? From the information I got by discussing it with a high school principle in Indianapolis ---> for fear of losing the lower and middle classes that are willing to take lower pay for the work that they do. ... The same reason they are allowing undocumented immigrants to pour over our borders while they tell you and I that it is the "humane thing to do". They promise a higher minimum wage that they know will put businesses out of business while taking advantage of the lower wage workers that take jobs away from the most impoverished people who were born and raised in the USA. ... Meanwhile, I have seen non-government school systems where nobody graduates until they understand the subjects they are studying 100%. Try to put these systems into a government school and you are attacked! WHY? ... I think that along with becoming "conscious" we have to actually start LOOKING at who and what is preventing the poor from prospering. I will agree with you 1000% that each and every ONE of us is responsible for our own condition and how we perceive this world. You are doing your part by what you do and you are inspiring me to do my part as well by exposing what I see that is blocking poor people from being able to raise themselves up in society.