Unto the Least of These
Whoever scorns the poor reviles his Maker Proverbs 17:5
Scorns – Because we think of ourselves as good and upright people, we are apt to treat this verse as though it is a judgment against the vile and corrupt of the world. Certainly despots and egomaniacal business leaders who exploit the poor for personal gain are top on our list. We are appalled by the statistics that show the cosmic disparity between the billions of impoverished and the few hundred of the super-wealthy. We, the morally manicured, shun racial epitaphs, cultural slurs and social discrimination. But if we were only 5th Century BC Jews, we might have a different opinion of our respectability.
The key to understanding this verse lies in the two verbs. The first is la’ag, the word translated “scorns”. The word means, “To deride, to despise and to ridicule.” It carries the idea of an intense invective against another group by accusation and verbal abuse. We all know what that feels like. We participate in the action of la’ag every time we stereotype someone else. Homosexuals deserve the curse of AIDS. New Orleans welfare victims are just a bunch of lazy people with their hands out. All liberals are neo-socialists. All Republicans are only interested in profits. Muslims were judged by God when the tsunami destroyed Southeast Asia.
Of course, God’s perspective here is not geopolitical. He is concerned with just one group – the poor. So we need to ask: what does it mean to scorn the poor?
May I suggest something pointed? (You could say “No” and stop reading.) To scorn someone in the Biblical sense is to deliberately and with malice aforethought treat them with less respect than God does. You cannot scorn someone out of ignorance. Scorn requires calculated ridicule. So, in the power countries, we enjoy a life style that in large part exploits the world’s poor. We may never have considered the fact that our taste for a $5.00 coffee keeps the poor farmer in Ecuador chained to a poverty wage. We may not realize that the $80 pair of pants at Gap was sewn by a poor woman in Honduras who was paid $0.50 an hour. We don’t think about the relationship between our luxury living expectations and the desperate, broken and suffering millions who are victims of the global excess labor-pool. And if we do consider any of this, we say, “What can I do?”
But now you are no longer ignorant. Now you must act. You will either continue to live with expected luxury, deliberately disavowing any mistreatment of the world’s poor, or you will ask yourself, “What if I don’t have that $5 coffee today? What could I do with that money to treat someone who is desperate just the way God would?”
When we live without regard to the economic impact that our lives have on the plight of the world’s poor, we scorn them. We say, “You do not matter to me. My wants are more important than your needs. I am not my brother’s keeper.”
Now, who is this verse for?
