‘ It is a scandal… that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well.’ That was the Emperor Julian in the fourth century. It had been less than 50 years since Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire, and Julian wanted to return it to its pagan roots. He had seen that caring for the poor was a key factor in the growth of the church, and urged his priests to show more compassion for the needy, noting that the Christians – those ‘godless Galileans’ – cared not only for their own poor but for the pagans as well.
It should perhaps come as no surprise that this was the case. A concern for the poor is present throughout the Bible, and Christians knew that caring for the poor was bound up with their worship of God.
THE OLD TESTAMENT: PROTECTING THE VULNERABLE
Sometimes the Old Testament speaks of the ‘poor’ in a metaphorical sense as those who depend on God [Psalm 40:17; 86:1; Isaiah 61:1]. Most often, ‘poor’ refers to someone’s economic situation of being needy and vulnerable [Psalm 10:2; 72:12; 109:31]. The Bible makes it clear that poverty sometimes comes about as the result of laziness or foolishness [Proverbs 6:10–11; 10:4; 14:23], but other times systemic injustices contribute to the cycle of poverty [Isaiah 1:21–23; 10:1–3; Amos 2:6–8; 4:1–4].
