True poverty reduces one to their true values but poverty is such a hard edged teacher.  One can easily present as a good person if one has sufficient resources, but obeying your own authority regarding the values of good from a state of deep poverty is the ultimate test of character and integrity.  This isn’t news.  I believe Jesus made that point to world’s future Christians in his story about the widow who threw a few pennies in the collection basket even though those pennies were the last of her resources. Generosity is a soul scraping virtue for the poor. Tragically it is the economic system that creates and sustains poverty and not the lack of resources on an abundant planet.

But the true poverty of watching the flesh literally melt from your starving children’s bones in your systemic food desert not broadly our current experience in the United States. That must be why in this era we watch voters cheerfully swallow the lies and the misleading use of micro facts in macro deceptions regarding our economy and the justness of distribution.  But the day of reckoning is coming when voters will need to do some real values clarification. A country that must borrow billions just to maintain a facade is no longer wealthy or great any more than the addict borrowing 10 dollars at 25% interest compounded daily on the lender’s promise of broken knees.  A country that picks the pockets of the poor to fill the coffers of billionaires while calling the whole process a big beautiful plan is living in self delusion. A politician who promises a better life simply through tax cuts is almost certainly a huckster. You can’t minus your way to a positive balance. A country that wastes as much money on spontaneous, poorly thought out wars, unnecessary secret police, and grand ballrooms for the rich and famous can hardly be called truly poor in the whole. That being said, far too many common middle Americans are one mishap from true poverty and that number will be multiplied if Congress allows health care and other supports for middle and poor Americans to be launched into the land of the unavailable or unaffordable. 

An urgent Proposal for Good

Good is recognizing that the resources required to restore America to her citizens are still briefly here in this economic system, but not for long.  Generosity is its own reward and America the generous has received its share of her former generosity’s rewards and benefits. But the current avarice of the government we elected is begging for the hard teacher of poverty to blow across the land. As ‘a people‘ we must, as did the first patriots prior to the American Revolution, demand the representation of the common person’s interests in government and not just orders from a wealthy executive. Be careful voters right now in what you pray for, for if you pray for a better, more just nation outside the spirit of generosity you just might find your prayers are justly answered with a dance with poverty.  If your sense of good is not sufficient motivation to vote for a change of government, then the suffering of systemic poverty for the common person is waiting in the wings to ring out the wages of our value system. The good news is the choice of generosity or poverty is still in our hands waiting at the polls.