Wealth and Poverty – RE Coursework
A. i) All religions worldwide have different views on wealth and poverty, even within Christianity. Christians believe that wealth is something which can be used for both good and evil, also that wealth should come from hard work and should be gained by lawful and moral ways. They believe that money is neither good nor bad, what does matter is what we use it for and how we share it, many Christians believe that wealth is a gift from god, Most churches themselves are full of wealth such as the church of England and the roman catholic church, whereas there are many Christians that choose to live in poverty in the poorer parts of the world, they believe this is right because even Jesus led a pure and simple life within poverty. This is shown in the bible when Jesus said ‘it is much harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of god than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.’ (Mark 10.25)
Ultimately there are two views about wealth and poverty, the first view is, some Christians believe that there should be no such thing as rich and poor in the world, everyone should have the same amount of wealth, it should be shared evenly as everyone is equal in Gods eyes. The Bible teaches that no human need should be ignored in the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37), it tells us that no human beings should be able to pass by on the other side when they see somebody else who is in need, the wealth of the world is divided unfairly, which means some people end up with much more than they need and many with much less or next to nothing at all. The Iona Community is a Christian community who believe that wealth and possessions should be shared and they follow this view, they contribute evenly to tasks like cooking, cleaning and gardening, they believe that a life shared with others is better than one where people are on their own as individuals, ‘Now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as everyone had need’ (Acts 2:44-45). This shows how they all divided everything equally despite who they were, what they had to start with or how much they put in the first place, like the Iona Community. Much of the Old Testament is designed to protect the poor; the prophet’s call for justice and compassion for the poor. In the New Testament Jesus loved the poor and always compared himself to those who were less powerful. This first view calls for the wealth and recourses of this world to be shared much more fairly than they are.