Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year’s issue is poverty. Let’s be honest… poverty sucks. Nobody who’s in poverty wants to be there. So why is anyone in poverty? What’s the root cause of poverty? Can we do anything about it?

Talking about poverty in the United States seems a little like talking about electricity within the Amish community — we have it, but not much of it (relative to the world), and in seemingly different flavors and for different reasons. I’ve seen some poverty both in the US and in other countries… and frankly, our poverty appears lame by comparison. My wife, who volunteers in a local shelter and has also been to many more regions of the world than I have, has an even clearer perspective. My lineage comes from Armenia… a place with serious, serious poverty. My wife and I support a little girl in Bolivia through Compassion International. And there are of course many, many more places around the globe that are so poor it makes Western poverty look like the Hamptons. I guess it’s relative. Is it?

So how do we end poverty? Well… we don’t. For me as a Christ-follower I’m called to fight poverty, but not to END it. We’re NEVER going to end poverty. You can’t end poverty any more than you can end indigestion or greed. Poverty is the result of humanity’s fallen-ness and depravity. We are by nature very clever and slightly evil. Anyone who’s spent any time at a homeless shelter knows that some people, no matter how much wealth they’re given, will be impoverished again eventually.

Ok, so how do we fight poverty? And even more importantly for Christ-followers like me… how do we fight poverty in a way that glorifies God, rather than in a way that glorifies secular humanism. One of the best scriptural assessments I’ve found anywhere addressing this issue was this article here, titled The Cause and Cure of Poverty, written by John Armstrong for Mark Driscoll’s TheResurgence blog. My own attempt to directly word-tackle this issue would seem pathetic next to John’s article… so just read his! Seriously!

Some excerpts:

What causes poverty? The question presently plagues many serious Christian thinkers and leaders. The answers vary but the proposed solutions are the stuff of our political campaigns every four years. We can already hear the discussion from the various candidates for the presidency in 2008, both Republican and Democrat.

[...]

…Capitalism is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral code. (This is not to defend all that Adam Smith, the so-called father of modern capitalism, wrote since Smith made mistakes as any theorist will.) …Capitalism is not rooted in greed at all, as is falsely argued by numerous Christian activists today. …Capitalism, when it is rightly understood, is rooted in altruism. And it is fundamentally based upon creativity, the creativity of both service and wealth. …Wealth is good, something many pious Christians have a hard time appreciating.

[...]

Simply put, capitalism creates new wealth, it doesn’t simply capture it or steal it from others.

Think about the much-maligned Wal-Mart chain. Politicians, and the various critics of modern forms of American capitalism, routinely attack Wal-Mart even though their overall record as a company is generally one of helping create jobs, of providing goods at cheaper prices and of stimulating creative economic changes. Yes, mom and pop stores do suffer when Wal-Mart moves to town. But that is the nature of the system. Mom and pop will have to adjust. The spirit of freedom allows them to do exactly that if they become creative enough to work better within the free-market system.

[...]

Socialism always destroys personal freedoms by trying to plan for other lives through a central government system that watches out for you. (This is why President Reagan once quipped that the worst words you could ever hear were these: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you!”) Capitalism allows you to plan for yourself. It allows for creativity and enterprise. Furthermore, it encourages people to provide for others in order to express their creativity through goods and services. Greed is, in reality, inimical to capitalism. Greed drives the welfare state more than it does capitalism since greedy people want unearned rewards to be given to them by a benevolent government that levels the playing field. Such a system directly causes people to petition governments to solve their personal problems, and the bigger the government’s role becomes the worse the nightmare.

The problem with liberal economic state-based solutions is that they undermine this cycle of personal success and initiative. Capitalism allows even “the wretched of the earth” to succeed. Envy and greed create wars and revolutions. Witness the great twentieth century bloodbaths, most of which revolved around economic thoughts and the role of government in engineering material possession and seeking to level the playing field economically.

[...]

Many young Christians are being sold a bill of goods about the evils of capitalism by evangelical writers such as Ron Sider, Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis. The intentions of these men are generally good. They desire equality, which is good. They also hate injustice and racism. This is also very good. But the equality of means and income is not the basis of real freedom. Even lifting everyone out of poverty is not possible since poverty is rooted in much more than access to more money.

Indeed, it seems too many Christian folks are buying into a form of humanist socialism as a means to address society’s social justice issues. Their heart may be in the right place… but Christ tells us that WE (His followers) are the ones who are supposed to be doing that work IN HIS NAME, so that HE get’s the glory rather than some socialist system. So rather than pay higher taxes into an impersonal, godless system of idiotic wealth redistribution we should be supporting free markets and lower taxes so that not only is new wealth is created for all, but so we have more personal income to directly invest (both with our money and volunteer time) into Christ-honoring ministries that fight poverty and win souls.

Free market capitalism and lower taxation actually become a major part of the Christ-follower’s fight against poverty — surprise surprise.

I am going to see TDVC because it will probably be a great movie and I like to see great movies. I like to watch Tom Hanks breathe an intangible but undeniable spark into the life of almost any character he plays. I try to only watch so-called Christian movies when they also are great movies on their own (like The Passion) or have some merit other than their “Christian” label. It makes no sense to watch inferior artistry just because of the label. Would you let a dubiously mediocre surgeon cut you open because he was a Christian?

I am going to see TDVC because it will be a topic of conversation for sure. The controversy alone has generated more dialog than any movie already released right now. The talk may well be questions about the validity of various parts of the movie… the accuracy of the historical references… the theological implications… and of course, the “could it all be true?”. Many of my friends and coworkers will come to me, being “the religious guy”, and ask me what I think about it or what my “priest” says about the movie. I know this from experience.

If I don’t see the movie I can’t enter into those conversations… I can’t directly and credibly engage those people with their questions. As a Christian I’m called to engage. Some Christians might say I could engage by speaking what I know to be true from the Bible about who Christ was and who Mary Magdalene was without having to see the movie… but it wouldn’t be as genuine, as applicable to specific scenes, or as honest. And it wouldn’t be as credible. Credibility is important, because there’s too many hypocritical Christians out there already. You know who you are… you who will condemn Desperate Housewives or Harry Potter or [fill in the blank]… and you haven’t even seen any of them!? All you know is that some schmuck behind a pulpit found it to be a convenient target to fill a Sunday morning rant session and you walked away with an opinion other than one you formed yourself. Now I’m not advocating diving headfirst into the sin city underground and steeping yourselves in every manner of worldly medium… there has to be some limits and you need to use your brain… but today’s Christians tend toward a missionally debilitating conservatism when it comes to culture.

Back to TDVC… I’ve heard Christians tell me that “I don’t want my money going to them”… but who is them? The “them” is probably about 75,000 people scattered over all of the cinematic industry, from marketers to mass-producers to theater employees to stunt doubles. The notion of keeping money away from a particular “them” is a fool’s notion. Your money will go to Hollywood in some form or another no matter what movie you go to. Then the argument Christians are ultimately making by proxy is whether or not to see movies at all, but that’s not the argument they’re vocalizing… so are they confused or intellectually dishonest? Or maybe just plain hypocrites? Christians have had a shameful streak of openly boycotting a “Judas” only to ultimately patronize a “Pontius Pilate”… whether we’re talking clothing, movies, restaurants… you name it. Here’s a tip – see the best movies, buy the best clothing, and eat at the best restaurants. Dig?

So you’d have to be an “outed” gay Muslim cleric hiding in a Pakistani cave not to have heard all the controversy surrounding this movie. Catholic and Protestant groups are calling for boycotts and disruptive litigation. But why? They say the movie is offensive… but how? Sure, the story has all the historical accuracy of an episode of the Teletubbies… much like most other stories from books and movies. Sure, it said Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, but does that offend you to hear someone think or say that? Are we all of a sudden offended by anyone with a different view than our own? Do we only see movies or read books that we already agree with? Who exactly, then, are we trying to engage? Many are seeking some truth from somewhere in this topsy-turvy world, and they just may look for it in TDVC… wouldn’t it be great to use TDVC to enter into a dialog with them about Jesus? Wasn’t that what the Book of Acts says Paul did in Athens?

Pastor Ed Marcelle of Terra Nova Church was a scrambled soul looking for truth in 1988, long before he became a pastor, when the movie The Last Temptation of Christ came out. The movie was met with much controversy from Christians for how it depicted Christ, so local churches would picket theaters and hold demonstrations. Ed recalls going to see the film and having to jostle his way through a crowd of Christian protesters who wore stern frowns of disapproval toward everyone they saw and stood in stiff-shouldered groups to impede entrance into the movie. What was the goal of any of that? What possible constructive purpose did that serve? None… those Christians may have had sincere hearts and some Biblical knowledge but they were acting like idiots. They could have brought a friend to the movie and then afterward talked all about Christ for hours over coffee… a priceless opportunity.

To my Christian readers, listen up a second. TDVC comes out soon. Don’t play the idiotic boycott game… and don’t let priceless opportunities slip away. Be like Paul in Athens and go see the movie. Because if you don’t then someday you may just have to explain why not. *wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge*

Here’s a good site for TDVC error checking: www.davincidelusion.tv

Well, today in church another blend of reasoning overtook me. The thoughts of Chardonnay and fat collided again in my mind… let me explain. (To my non-Christian readers this may be a bit foreign but you should read on.) There was chatter in my church regarding the drinking of alcohol by Christians and insinuations that temperance is holiness (a notion that a rational Christ-follower would easily dispel since Jesus himself drank alcohol… and, in fact, Jesus was readily accused of being a drunk by the 1st century version of some people in my church). Anyways, there was, in this chatter, the obligatory Bible references used to ask if drinking wine was beneficial and honoring and glorifying to God… of course the questions were asked in such a way that it’d be uncomfortable, even arrogant, for most people to definitively answer yes to any of those questions for anything except maybe for prayer and fasting. (A more honest and practical approach would be to ask if it dishonors God) I mean, really, could you really say that it glorifies God to eat dessert… dessert which is loaded with saturated fats and sugar… useless calories that do not benefit our “temple”… usually eaten for the vulgar epicurean delight of its devourer? (sounds sinful to me… get the fires goin’!) I say that obesity, the abuse of food, has far greater in-roads in the church-goers I know than alcoholism, the abuse of alcohol. However, abstinence of dessert sounds pretty ridiculous (especially to obese church-goers)… and it just doesn’t have the same resonance with the ole-timers as temperance-talk. Needless to say, the leanings of the chatter were as evident as the slant a peace-protester-turned-journalist would put on an “objective” news story from Iraq… the facts stated were correct, but the way they were delivered and the parts that were left off bias the story and reveal the chatterers agenda. (To be fair… I don’t believe the agenda today was intended to deceive anyone.)

So be certain that, on their own, I don’t think it is any more wrong to eat dessert than to drink alcohol. Be certain that there are those who think alcohol is wrong (for everyone) and who would sway you to come to their conclusions with them. A great comedian, Conservative and Christ-follower, Brad Stine, wrote a book touching on this very topic and this very comparison between alcohol and dessert. The book is called Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot, and while the literary editing is a bit rough, the content is funny, smart and extremely relevant. If you are one of my fellow Christ-followers (and hopefully better at it than I) this book is a must read… at the very least to be aware of some prevalent idiocy pitfalls. And while you’re at it it wouldn’t hurt to watch any of Brad’s multiple comedy DVDs. He’s also been a featured speaker the last 3 years at Promise Keepers and I suspect he’ll be there again this year.