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So this is a very cheap book review… but here are my two cents about the book I read, twittered, and occasionally blogged about in August: Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger by Ronald J. Sider.

Sider’s thesis: The Gospel demands that justice be served to the poor in primarily one way: they deserve the right to earn a decent living. 

A couple of things:

• Redistribution of wealth: this is not about socialism, Marxism, or communism. Those things are about a centralization of wealth via government control and regulation. The redistribution the Gospel demands primarily speaks (in a Biblical context) about the redistribution of land so that people can earn a decent living. This becomes tricky in an age where most people don’t earn their income from working the land, so we must find the inherent values and replicate them for our culture. 
• Hard work: the Gospel doesn’t make everyone a rich land owner—the Gospel aims to give everyone an opportunity to earn their living through hard, consistent, fair work. After all, if you give someone a piece of land to work, the crops won’t come easy, but they will have the opportunity to work for it. 

In the end, I didn’t expect this book to be as conservative as it was. Sider is far from being a bleeding-heart liberal who wants to tear down the rich. 

But he does want affluent Christians in affluent nations to consider what it will take for the poor in the world to have a fighting chance to participate in the restoration of their dignity & humanity.

I am wealthy, by most standards (and any reasonable standards). I am a follower of Jesus.

Therefore I must take a hard look at how insulated I’ve been and how I’ve taken my dignity and privilege for granted. It’s easy to think I’ve “earned” or “deserved” something that God has blessed me with.

The true question is: will I be blessed to be a blessing? 

Will I fulfill the ancient call to be the presence of God in the world? 

Will I choose the way of goodness, the way of Jesus?