Carol Yip

Financial Problem

Have you romanticized Poverty? From 8 Secrets of the Truly Rich by Bo Sanchez- Chapter 16, Religion can romanticize poverty. We can receive this message. "To be poor is better than to be rich. It's more pleasing to God. He favors the poor. Poor people go to heaven. Rich people go to hell."

If you believe in this philosophy, then goodness, why in the world would anyone even think of becoming rich?

Yes, it's true that God favors the poor. And it's true that the Bible says, "Blessed are the poor" (Luke 6:20). But I believe God loves the poor and accompanies them in their difficult journey so that they can rise from their poverty. Not so that they can remain in their poverty!

It's foolish to romanticize poverty. Whoever says being poor is romantic is out of his mind. When I was 15 years old, I lived and ministered in the slums - and telling you, there's nothing romantic about it.

I lived in a house with nine other people. And we all slept in one single room that's about the size of your office cubicle.

We also shared the dark, damp, muddy toilet with four other families. (Can you imagine how interesting my mornings were lining up for it?) I ate their food and lived their life.

The entire area was flooded nine months of the year. Stagnant water reached my knees. I remember seeing an entire army of mosquitoes living, eating, partying, laughing, making love and hatching millions of eggs around us. It may have been romantic for the mosquitoes, but it wasn't romantic for us.

And there's nothing romantic about the baby I heard crying in the middle of the night because her mother had no money to buy milk.

There's nothing romantic about the old man I met next door who needed a doctor because of severe pneumonia, but his family couldn't even pay for the jeepney fare to the hostpital.

There's nothing romantic about the almost weekly stabbings in the street because of rampant drug addiction.

Poverty is evil. And God wants us to get rid of it. You also need to get rid of it in your life- so that you can get rid of it in the lives of others.