Posting again

I'm going to start posting regularly on a wide range of poverty issues. I want to start off with a quote I read today.

Today there is a heretical teaching that is an absolute plague in American Christianity. It is the dogmatic and unexamined credo that whatever we gain is ours to do with as we please. If we earn $50,000, how we spend it is our private affair. Perhaps we will concede that it is legitimate for the church to talk about tithing, but the other 90 percent is none of its business.

How utterly self-consumed and provincial! In no way can we twist the Scripture to justify such a belief. Out lifestyle is not our private affair. We dare not allow each person to do what is right in his or her own eyes. The Gospel demands more of us: it is obligatory upon us to help one another hammer out the shape of Christian simplicity in the midst of modern affluence. We need to love each other enough to sense our mutual responsibility and accountability. We are our brother's (and our sister's) keeper.

Richard J. Foster, Freedom of Simplicity