This shouldn't happen

a typical house in an mexican "rio" community - homes made of collected trash

Deuteronomy 15 basically is what I'd call God's personal course in Biblical Economics. Just for kicks, let's call it, "Biblical Economics 101" taught by professor God through Teaching Assistant Moses. God's economy and his game plan for dealing with stuff like money and crops and an income are very different than the worlds. Go figure.

Go ahead and check out Deut 15 for yourself.

Deut 15:1 starts out saying that at the end of every 7 years you must cancel all debts. And verse 12 starts talking about freeing all labor or debt bound slaves after 7 years and returning land back to it's original owner, etc. 

We hear Deut 15:11 a lot! It says, "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land."



But this one jumped out at me a few days ago and I found every translation I could because I didn’t think it could be correct. Deut 15:4 says "THERE SHOULD BE NO POOR AMONG YOU...." WHAT??!? I find this to be just insane. There are poor people everywhere. 30,000 kids die everyday from starvation or preventable things like diarrhea. But God set up some system for us and there would be NO POOR if we would follow his rules and commands. MIND BLOWING... seriously

But then he goes on to say that there will always be poor among you. 
There shouldn’t be but there will be. Why is that? Are we just pathetic at following his ways and he predicted this?

 My commentary says that all societies will always have people who get rich and those who become poor due to uncertainties in life and that is why God says when you do come across anyone poor, we are commanded to extend generosity and kindness.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.... Christ came to show in word AND DEED what god's kingdom looks like. He proclaims freedom for the captives (yet leaves john the baptist in jail to get beheaded? interesting), sight for the blind, to bind up the broken hearted. Jesus healed people of their sins AND THEIR SICKNESSES. He didn’t tell people, "your sins are forgiven but you are still going to die a leaper." He healed them; he fed them - word and deed. 



So Jesus set up how we are live it out- bringing god's kingdom right here.



and THERE SHOULD BE NO POOR AMONG YOU. 

 God's saying, "Get on it. Follow my rules."

For whatever reason I find this mind blowing. There shouldn’t be poor people. 


Statistically if the American church alone would tithe and give some money away for the poor- we could eradicate all extreme world hunger and extreme world poverty instead of building newer multimillion-dollar sanctuaries and parking lots. God doesn’t live in a building. He lives in the eyes of a dying starving to death child. 



So then... if we decide: "We must do something! Let's help people." 
Apparently - we could act prematurely and without good wisdom and we hurt the poor instead of help them in our attempts to help them. This science of economics in helping the global poor is becoming more and more interesting to me with each passing day.

But I serve a God who apparently has the answer to our world's global crisis of extreme poverty and hunger. That's awesome.