April Fools?

When we talk about the jarring contrast between the “haves” and “have-nots” of this world, it is all-too-often through a sentimental haze of vague piety, demanding little more than lip service. As someone has pointedly said, “It is much safer, from Satan’s point of view, to vaccinate a person with a mild case of Christianity, than to subject them to the real disease.” -1

But when we talk about the “haves” and “have-nots” from a true, Christian perspective, we might start by comparing our experience in the U.S. with other countries. For example, the poorest five percent of Americans earn on average the same as the richest five percent of people in India. And the headline we see most often is that nearly half of the world’s richest one percent live in the United States. Of course, we’ve heard these figures a thousand times before, but from our Christian perspective, these will continue to be troubling comparisons for as long as they exist.

Although most…