The great tragedy among rich Christians is not that they do not care about the poor, but that they rarely even know the poor.
This is one of the sad things about gated communities or even the way much of the world is divided up into neighborhoods which are essentially systems of segregation based on socioeconomic levels. I don’t have a ready solution for this. I’ve lived in neighborhoods like this. Even when it has been a wonderful mix of various Asian ethnicities, a number of Hispanic families of various origins, African Americans, and Caucasians…we were all firmly in the middle class. I have to go out of my way to interact with anyone living in real poverty. This isn’t because they don’t live in the town where I live or the town where I work. I drive past such people every day. I don’t really see them, though. They are not at my workplace or in my home. It’s difficult to really love someone you have never met except in some sort of hollow philosophical way…not with a love that has hands and feet.
Luke 14:12-14
12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
