Transparent heart icon with white outline and + sign.

Life's busy, read it when you're ready!

Create a free account to save articles for later, keep track of past articles you’ve read, and receive exclusive access to all RP resources.

White magnifying glass.

Search thousands of RP articles

Articles, news, and reviews that celebrate God's truth.

Open envelope icon with @ symbol

Get Articles Delivered!

Articles, news, and reviews that celebrate God's truth. delivered direct to your Inbox!

Create an Account

Save articles for later, keep track of past articles you’ve read, and receive exclusive access to all RP resources.



News

Saturday Selections – May 4, 2019

The 16 most amazing nests built by birds

The amazing tailorbird crafts camouflage for its nest by using grass or spider silk as thread, and then it actually sews leaves together. But that's not the only crafty bird God has made – here's 15 more with the unique nests they build or borrow.

In 2018 at least 1.12% of deaths in Canada were due to euthanasia

"According to the latest figures, about 3,000 Canadians were euthanized in 2018."

6 biological evidences for a young earth

Here are 6 very fun, very quick, evidences that point to a young age for the earth.

Sabbath rest: not just for grown-ups (10-minute read)

Our kids need to understand that we aren't saved by our output.

18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day

2019's Earth Day has come and gone, and in the lead-up to it we heard dire predictions like this one from congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez: "...The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change..."

This 12 year figure is being batted about so it's important that we:

  • Mark their words. They are prophesying, and the way to tell a false prophet from a real one is whether their words come true.
  • Remember – as the linked article does – all the false prophesies of the past.

FREE FILM: The Fool – the true "banana man" story (65 minutes)

This is the true story of how evangelist Ray Comfort was mocked and ridiculed by atheists the world over for a silly joke he made that fell flat. But even as Ray was brought low, God was using Ray's humiliation: these same atheists started inviting Ray onto their shows, podcasts, and stages sand they let him say anything he wanted. So he used these forums to share the Gospel with hundreds and even thousands of atheists at a time. Some atheists even took Ray's books and read through them on their YouTube channels, all in attempt to mock him. But the end result was they themselves read out a Gospel presentation to their listeners. As Ray asks, "Who but God could take atheists and not only have them listen to the Gospel, but have them proclaim it?"

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections – April 13, 2019

Is it a sin to be angry with God? (2 min) R.C. Sproul gives a clear answer to this question. The 8 deadly sins of political conservatism Whatever party we might vote for, most RP readers probably identify themselves as politically conservative. That makes this article an important read for us all. The trans-child as an experimental guinea pig (15 min read) "So what if the boy wants to wear a dress; what's the big deal?" If you've been asked this question or one like it, this National Review article is an answer. God tells us we are made male and female (Gen. 1:26-28) and those who "in compassion" say otherwise are only showing God right when He says the "mercy of the wicked is cruel (Prov. 12:10b). In Canada living as God wants keeps 99% out of poverty In Venezuela and many other parts of the world, poverty can happen to people no matter what they might do, and even in the stable West many things are still beyond our control. But the Fraser Institute has found that in Canada poverty is largely a result of "bad choices" rather than "bad luck." The poverty rate here is less than 1 percent for people who do 3 things: graduate high school work full time have children only in a committed relationship Of three, two are obviously biblical: working full-time (Col. 3:23, Prov. 12:11, Prov. 13:4) and having kids inside marriage. Graduating high school is the wish of most parents so there are some Fifth Commandment implications there too. So while the world hates God's law we can see here how His restrictions evidence His love. Our Father knows what's best for us and for our good He's warned us what to avoid. Parents, you can control your temper Our kids can be exasperating, and while we don't want to lose our temper, sometimes it just seems to happen. It can't be helped...right? Jay Younts says, not so fast! Preacher, apologist, and ordinary joe plead for the unborn (3 min each) In Phoenix, preacher Jeff Durban, apologist James White, and ordinary joe, Zachary Conover showed what being a public witness for God and for the unborn looks like. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News, Science - Creation/Evolution

Why haven't we heard from ET?

Some 70 years ago physicist Enrico Fermi looked up at the stars and wondered where everyone was at. With billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars, it seemed inconceivable to him that ours would be the only planet to evolve life. So where was everyone? Fermi's Paradox His query is now called Fermi's Paradox, and on March 18 a group of about 60 scientists met in Paris to share their latest theories as to why we haven't heard from any of our galactic neighbors. Live Science's Mindy Weisberger shared some of their creative ideas: The "zoo hypothesis" - Earth is like a galactic animal reserve where aliens are leaving us alone to be observed in our natural habitat. We've been quarantined - aliens know about us, but don't like us. Aliens are trapped by their superplanets' intense gravity and they can't come out to meet us. Aliens have come and gone, dying off before we had a chance to connect with them. Three days after the Paris conference Cosmos dug deeper into Fermi's Paradox with an even more vexing question: where are all the "von Newmann probes"? Von Newmann probe What's a von Newmann probe, you ask? Well, back in the 1960s, mathematician John von Newmann argued that a sufficiently advanced civilization would be able to build a space probe that could mine raw materials on other planets and use those to make replicas of itself. These replicas would, in turn, build other copies. And as the process repeated, the number and spread of these self-replicating "von Newmann probes" would expand exponentially until, as Cosmos' Lauren Fuge put it, "in a relatively short space of time – perhaps as little as 10 million years – the galaxy would be teeming with these exploratory machines." But there are no hordes, teeming or otherwise. So, again, where is everyone? The Cosmos article offered, as a possible explanation, astrophysicist Duncan Forgan's "predator-prey hypothesis," soon to be published in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Astrobiology. Forgan argues that "self-replication could result in encoding errors” and that maybe some of these coding errors could lead to some of these probes taking a predatory turn. If they did, then perhaps the reason we don't see these teeming hordes is because the predatory probes are hunting down and destroying the other probes. Hmmm.... While these various hypotheses make for incredibly creative speculation, they all share one thing in common: there are no facts to back them up. In fact, the only "evidence" for any of these theories is that aliens haven't contacted us. So why did scientists bother meeting to swap what amounts to untestable, unverifiable, just-so stories? Why did Live Science and other media outlets bother covering the Paris event? And why did Cosmos think Forgan's theory worth sharing?  They covered them because these stories – to the undiscerning – seem to offer an explanation to Fermi's Paradox and the problem it presents to evolutionary theory. But they're just stories. And what does it say about the theory if its defenders are willing to hype stories that the public will mistake for scientific, factual, or evidence-based? If luck can do it, why not the best and brightest? Here's a different sort of hypothesis to consider: what if ET just isn't out there? What if life, instead of being easy to come by, only happens via miraculous means? And God only did so here on Earth? It's worth noting that there is nothing in the Bible that speaks against the possibility of life being on other planets. It would be hard to reconcile intelligent life with the Bible – here on Earth all Mankind fell through Adam, and Jesus became Man to save us, so how could intelligent aliens have any part of that? But there wouldn’t seem a biblical problem with microscopic or even animal life existing elsewhere in the universe. But while the Bible allows for life on other planets, evolution would seem to demand it – if life can just happen, then someone else should be out there. It's only when life is miraculous that it becomes understandable that it might be rare. Now here's a question for our evolutionary friends: if we suppose that dumb, unplanned, undirected luck can create life, why can't the world's most brilliant minds, using available blueprints (from living creatures), and working with quadrillions-of-calculations-per-second supercomputers, in laboratories staffed with every device and chemical they could possibly want, manage to make even a single living cell? If living things can come about by chance, why hasn't anyone created them on purpose? Looking at evolutionists' still-lifeless labs we can't help but ask again: where is everyone? ***** In 2013 cartoonist Zach Weinersmith crafted a cartoon and gave the talk below on his "Infantapaulting Hypothesis" in which he theorized that the reasons babies are so aerodynamic is because they used to be catapulted into neighboring villages, to increase their chances of finding a mate among a more genetically diverse population. He was satirizing the tendency among evolutionists to indulge in "just-so stories" - to indulge in creative hypotheses that might fit the available evidence but which are not testable. If a fellow who still believes in Darwin's theory can be this brilliant, insightful, and hilarious in exposing evolutionary flaws, can creationists take this further and be even funnier?    ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections - April 6, 2019

5 ways dads can encourage our daughters This isn't all that long but it's worth reading through slowly and considering how to put these into practice with your daughters. RC Sproul on "Are there contradictions in the Bible?" This is a short, succinct, and entertaining answer from a very special teacher. Teaching our kids not to be bystanders to bullying "Bystanders don’t need to do what their name implies: stand by. They can stand up and do something.... One kid can make a huge difference. Really. Just one." Free commentary on Ephesians We haven't read this commentary, but others in this commentary series have been well worth recommending. The ebook of Richard Coekin's Ephesians For You is free all April but you do have to give them your email address. May same-sex attracted Christians have exclusive relationships? Sam Alberry is writing to Christians struggling with homosexual temptation but his reminder is a good one for all: friendship can be intimate, but it isn't exclusive. Are we starting to see through environmental tokenism? The difference between biblical stewardship and secular environmentalism comes down to the type of worship offered. God despises virtue-signaling and blasts pharisaical worship (Luke 18:9-14) so He expects us to use our talents to do real good. But environmentalism's false gods – whether that's trees, the ocean, the planet, or the public – can't tell the difference between doing good and merely looking good. That's why the world's environmentalism often amounts to tokenism. Two examples: the recycling programs that have been rampant in cities across North America for decades, and the recent straw bans that have been put in place by Seattle and other cities. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Male rapper “breaks” women’s weightlifting record

For a world increasingly confused about gender, February was an illuminating month with not one, but two well-publicized examples of how it is God, and not our feelings, that makes us male and female (Gen. 1:27). In the first instance two boys identifying as girls placed first and second in the girls’ 55-meter dash at Connecticut’s state indoor championship. One competitor dared protest, telling the Associated Press: “We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing.” While the two boys are the best “girls” in their state, they aren’t even in the top five nationally. So the ridiculousness of having boys – albeit not especially speedy boys – running against girls was lost on some. But two weeks later British rapper Zuby offered up his own helpful bit of clarity when he decided to break the British women’s weightlifting records. First up was the deadlift record. Though only a self-described “recreational lifter” Zuby bested the British women’s record by a “wide margin.” Then he tackled the squat record, and finally bested the women’s bench press record too. Afterward, he posted short videos of his efforts to Twitter, assuring viewers it was all okay because he was “identifying as a woman at the time.” When someone pointed out his women’s records weren’t official because Zuby hadn’t demonstrated his level of male testosterone was “below 10 nanomoles per litre” (as apparently international competition standards require men to do when they want to compete as women) Zuby had the perfect PC response: “Stop questioning my lived experience.” Or, in other words, what was this detractor doing, bringing in objective measurable standards when the world has already concluded feelings trump reality. If being a woman is simply a state of mind, if a person’s genitalia and genetics don’t matter, then why should “nanomoles”? Or as Zuby put it, “Stop being a bigot.” The best supportive tweet? A Steve Green shared he was setting some records of his own: “I broke the Olympic men’s record because my 2 kg dumbbell identifies as a 400 kg weight.”...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections - March 16, 2019

Turning pro-choicers into pro-lifers in seconds? (2 min) Ray Comfort has another 30-minute pro-life film, coming out on May 9. It will be freely available on Youtube then, though you can download it now for $20 here to help fund it. Check out the trailer below! Beyond bias: 3 strikes on the New York Times It used to be that, as much as we knew the mainstream media spun the facts, we counted on them not to manufacture them. However, as this short article from Marvin Olasky reveals, now even the venerable Gray Lady, the New York Times, has gotten ridiculously unreliable. Parents: peace is not the absence of conflict While it isn't always possible to be free of conflict, we can show our children how peace can still be had. Has bioluminescence evolved 40-50 times? Bioluminescence is the light that comes from living things, and it can be found in creatures as diverse as spiders, fish, fireflies, squid, and even mushrooms. This is a problem for evolution, where common traits are often presented as evidence of common descent – creatures who share a trait are thought to have descended from a common ancestor, maybe millions of years ago, who first had that trait. But no one thinks mushrooms and squids had a common glowing ancestor. So does that mean bioluminescence evolved many times over? That would be remarkable! Meanwhile, creationists see common traits as indicators of a common Designer who knows what works, and thus uses these traits repeatedly. Is Social Justice just? In this book review, Denny Burk shares how social justice practitioners have: "...left behind a liberal ideal of justice for the illiberal ideal of retributive and distributive justice. Retributive justice involves punitive social action against historically privileged groups while distributive justice requires redistribution of goods and capital to historically oppressed groups." In contrast to this group-focused social justice, Christian justice involves treating people not as groups, but individually, without partiality for rich or poor, black or white, man or woman, etc (Lev. 19:15, Deut. 1:16-17, Gal. 3:28). Real men rise early (4 min) David Murray offers men practical advice in his Christian Man Academy, this time focussing on the benefits of a set morning routine. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections - March 9, 2019

How a bird is built (5 minutes) The creation of a bird is "an elaborate dance, it's like a ballet taking place on a stage with thousands of cast members, all of them doing everything they are supposed to on cue, in the right order...and the right time." Should we ban billionaires? The Tenth Commandment says that our neighbor's wealth is none of our business. But the world is encouraging us to make it our business. As one columnist opined: “No one needs a billion dollars. No one deserves a billion dollars.” But the interesting thing about God's law is that not only is it a roadmap for pleasing God, but, because God loves us, obeying is also good for us. And, conversely, disobeying it will cause us harm. And as this article details, if we were to ban billionaires – if we were to covet their wealth and take it from them – we'd all be poorer for it. Drafting our daughters? - Forcing women into combat is wrong The US hasn't used the military draft in 40 years but it still requires men, when they turn 18, to register. And now a court has ruled women need to too. But, as John Piper notes, God doesn't call women to be frontline soldiers (and He hasn't equipped them to this task either; in fact, "the average male has a greater total muscle mass and strength than 99.9 percent of females.") Is there a gene for marital happiness? To the materialist, we are simply the sum of our parts. But the Christian knows we are more than biological computers - we are more than our genes. Government is always religious... Bob Dylan noted, we all "gotta serve somebody." As Gary DeMar explains, the question is not, whether we will bring up God in politics, but only which god? Are we going to justify our policies on the basis of them being popular? Then democracy is our god. Are we going to anchor our positions on how much money they will save? Then a balanced budget has become our god. But what might it look like if God was our God...even in politics? Mr. Indifferent (3 minutes) Here's a fun one, on kindness, to watch with the kids. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections - Mar. 2, 2019

The Kara Tippets documentary is coming soon When an regular Christian mom was diagnosised with terminal cancer, she decided to share what she was learning about God's trustworthiness, and His love, and His goodness, even in the midst of her questions, and doubts, and slow decline. We're all going to die, and this woman gave us an example of what it means to do even that to God's glory. Gay tennis icon criticized for saying men competing as women isn't fair Martina Navratilova is one of the greatest tennis players ever, and a lesbian activist. And when she criticized letting men compete as women she was kicked off an LGBT athletics group. In related news, this past week a British rapper identified as a woman just long enough to beat British women's weight lifting records. GOOD NEWS: Large protestant denomination reaffirms marriage is male/female The devil would like us to think he runs this world. But we should never forget our God is King and He's so powerful He can even make a mainstream denomination reject same-sex marriage. This past week the 12 million-member United Methodist Church stood strong on marriage, and while that might lead to division, they have rejected sinful compromise. "Why do I act like I don’t love my wife?" You love her...but you don't always sound that way when you talk with her. So what's wrong with you? The risks of IVF ...but there is an alternative. Are beneficial mutations support for evolution? (30 minutes) Most mutations are harmful, but occasionally genetic mutations can be beneficial, even activating new functions in living things. So do these kinds of changes support evolution? No...but, as this video podcast explores, they do fit well with biblical creation. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections – Feb. 23, 2019

Doing Jordan Peterson one better   Jordan Peterson has inspired many a young man struggling with aimlessness. But Peterson isn't Christian, so his answers can only go so far. While Peterson can't answer life's biggest questions, God can, so David Murray has created the Christian Man Academy, to share God's thoughts on what it means to be a man. Learn more at the link above, and below you can get a sampling of what's offered, this one tackling the subject of "Real men repent." Practical thoughts on raising selfless children Are we raising our children to be good future husbands and wives? Or are we raising them to think that their recreational schedules should dictate parents' schedules and that while others need to sacrifice for them they don't need to sacrifice for others? (Prov. 22:6)? What does Paul mean when he says ‘let a woman learn quietly?’ (10-minute read) Some thoughts on 1 Timothy 2:8–14 and women teaching in the Church. The Empty Planet – under not overpopulation the real concern Two points worth noting about overpopulation fears: They were always unbiblical. God describes children as a blessing, not the curse that overpopulationists have treated them as. But Christians were largely swayed by the "experts" and their fearmongering, and started having smaller families too, and didn't speak out as loudly as we could have. But, now, as this article shows, it's becoming evident to everyone that "population bombs" were mere hysteria. We blew it by not loudly and aggressively fighting the overpopulation hype and it meant millions died, as this hype was used to push abortion worldwide.  Now, when scientific experts are telling us that carbon is deadly, will we learn from our previous mistake? Every new child comes with its very own carbon footprint, so there is pressure once again to minimize the population. You don't need a philosophy of education to home-school If there are no good Christian schools nearby, don't worry - you can homeschool. Sure, it might seem intimidating, what with all the different curriculum choices out there. "Choices are great, but when they become too overwhelming, we need to be reminded of simplicity....All you really need to homeschool is a Bible, a library card, and a math book.” The Moses Controversy trailer This trailer almost makes it look like an attack on the Bible, but these guys are on the right side. Could be very interesting... ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
Economics, News

The $33/hr minimum wage?

As of January 1, the minimum wage in New York City was boosted to $15 an hour, a more than doubling of the $7.25 minimum wage of just six years ago. Three days later The New York Times published a piece with the provocative title: The $15 Minimum Wage Is Here. Why We Need $33 an Hour. Author Ginia Bellafante didn’t exactly demand $33 as a new minimum wage or at least didn’t set a timetable to reach that number. She did argue that the new $15 minimum wouldn’t do much to meet New York City workers’ needs and “the war” for an adequate living wage had to continue. Bellafante cited a report by New York’s largest food bank, City Harvest, which calculated that a “single parent with two school-age children…would need to make nearly $69,427 a year” which works out “an hourly wage of just under $33.” But is need a good basis for a minimum wage? If a single mom needs $33, a married couple with two kids could get by with just half that. So maybe $15 is a good number after all? But then what of that single mom? And what if, instead of just two kids, she had four? Then she would need a lot more than just $33, so should we be looking at a $50 minimum wage, or even higher? If you see a problem with that idea, you’re recognizing something that many minimum wage proponents do not – that the basis for wages isn’t employees’ needs. Consider our own buying habits. We don’t buy a car from Ford because Ford needs the money – that’s not a consideration. When we head to Safeway and find out that a dozen bagels are on sale for $5 we might buy them. But not at $10 a dozen – they aren’t worth that to us. So whether we buy them or not depends on what value they return to us for the money we have to hand over. It’s no different when employers buy labor. They aren’t buying our labor out of a charitable impulse – they are looking to get good value for their money. And like us, if something is overpriced, they aren’t going to buy. That’s why a minimum wage of $50 would be disastrous. Many of us aren’t worth $100,000 a year to an employer so if $50 were the minimum wage, we would be out of work. We would be unemployed because our labor was overpriced by government mandate. While $15 is a lot lower than $50, not everyone is worth that either. Unskilled workers might not be able to produce $10 or even $5 an hour of value, or at least not until their employer trains them. If the law says they have to be paid $15/hr that makes them unemployable. It may not even be the unskilled worker who pays the price. Take as example a business that employed high school students at minimum wage, and also employed a single mom who made a bit more. When the owner needed help running the business he began training the single mom to become a manager, and increased her salary to go along with the new responsibilities. Then the minimum wage went up and the owner had to increase the pay of all his high school students. That money had to come from somewhere and the end result was that the owner had to let his manager-in-training go, because he had to use her wages to pay the students. This government-mandated increase, legislated as a means of helping the poor, didn’t help her. High schoolers who had already been happy with their wage got more, but a single mom lost a good job. The government might have meant well, but they didn’t do well. There is a Christian case to make against the minimum wage and any number of verses could be cited. Prov. 14:31 tells us to be kind to the poor, and while that is the professed intent of the minimum wage, that is not its effect on the least skilled. Just as relevant is Prov. 27:14 which tells us that mere good intentions are not enough – we actually have to be kind. In the online discussions of this article Luke 6:31 was raised: "Do to others as you would have them do to you," as in employers should pay their employees what they would think fair, were their positions reversed. True enough, but this verse is applicable the other direction too. Don't want your job banned? Then don't ban other people's jobs. There are any number of reasons why someone might be happy to work for wages below a government-mandated minimum. Someone might want to work for free as an intern instead of spending thousands learning the same skills in university. Low-skilled or no-skilled workers might want to get a foot in the door so they can work their way up to higher paying positions. Some low-paying jobs have fringe benefits, like a parking lot attendant I knew who could do his university homework during his shift. Mentally handicapped people who can't do as much as others might still enjoy work. Elderly folks who can't move as quickly as they once did might appreciate a job that doesn't demand a high output. And students might prioritize flexible hours over big bucks. Do these sound like positions that need to be banned? Should it be the government's job to make working for less than $15 a crime? God warns against arrogance (Daniel 4:30) but when a government makes minimum wage laws it is making decisions for millions and presuming it can price the value of people's labor better than they can themselves, and better than individual employers can. Our governments are trying to manage our economy in a hands-on way that requires them to be near all-knowing and have miraculous powers. But they are not God, and they can not make everyone worth $15/hr. by government decree. In humility, our governments need to recognize that their powers and knowledge are limited, and they are simply not up to that task of running an economy. Is it any wonder, then, that God never asks them to? This article has been expanded by a couple of paragraphs to answer some of the questions the original version prompted. ...

Red heart icon with + sign.
Apologetics 101, News

Abortionist: “God performs way more abortions than I do…”

In a Dec. 29 tweet abortionist Leah Torres went viral by claiming: “God performs way more abortions than I do…” While pro-lifers were quick to respond, most failed to offer an effective reply. When we debate the world there can be a temptation to assume anything they say must not be true. That's what happened here, with many a Christian afraid to concede there was something to Torres’ claim, at least as far as it went. And because this uncomfortable truth was avoided, the rebuttals missed their target. The newsgroup LifeNews.com tweeted this reply: “But you believe in evolution. So it’s evolution’s fault, not God’s.” Maybe Torres does believe in unguided evolution, but the largely Catholic LifeNews presumably doesn’t. So why not offer a Catholic or Christian response, instead of this evasion? Faithwire.com thought another reply, a tweet by ToniMZ81, was worth sharing, but it also sidestepped the real issue. She wrote: “…most miscarriages are because of an issue with the pregnancy/ non viability & most abortions are viable pregnancies.” What this forgets is Who controls viability. There is a difference between an abortion and a miscarriage, but this tweet didn’t get to the heart of it. The difference is not that Torres takes life and God does not. The difference is that God is the Author of life and Torres is not. As the Source of life He has a right to take what He has given. Torres does not. This point was made by a few pro-lifers. Greg Schultz tweeted: There’s a difference… You Are Not God Taken to its logical end, Torres' argument justifies every sort of murder at any age because, after all, God has killed more people of that age, than any of us have. To highlight the incredible wickedness of this logic, Anthony Abides, in the most memorable tweet of them all, put Torres' self-justification in Hitler's mouth: “God killed more Jews than I do.”...

Red heart icon with + sign.
News

26 richest people own as much as the world's poorest 3.75 billion

The 26 richest people on the planet hold as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the world’s population. So says the Oxfam Inequality Report 2019 released this January. That quite the statistic – it’s a disparity that will surprise and stun many. But why is Oxfam sharing it? To foster covetousness. Of course, that’s not how they present their case. They speak of fairness. They think it obviously unfair that the 26 people at the top have as much as the 3.75 billion on the bottom. But what the report doesn’t detail is how these 26 got their wealth. No accusations of theft are made. We know God hates for the powerful to oppress the poor (Prov. 22:16, 22-23) but Oxfam doesn’t even try to make the case that this is how the rich gained their money. The report details the dire circumstances the poor face around the world, but no linkage is made between their poverty and wickedness done by the rich. Still, isn’t it obviously wrong that so few have so much, when so many have so little? To answer that question properly, we need to view things biblically. In Scripture we find God repeatedly calling on us to help the poor (Prov. 28:27, 31:9, etc.). And at the very same time in the 10thCommandment – Do not covet – He makes it clear He doesn’t want us concerned with what the rich have. Poverty is a problem to be tackled, but the God who made Solomon wealthier than any before him nowhere speaks of “fixing” wealth inequality. How can the God who wants us to help the poor also tell us not to concern ourselves with the wealth of the rich? Aren’t the two related? No. That’s the lesson the Oxfam needs to learn. Abraham prospered, but his increased wealth didn’t come at the expense of anyone else (Genesis 14:23). Similarly, a successful businessman doesn't become rich by taking from the poor. Unless he steals, the only way he can become wealthy is by making others wealthier too. He can only sell us his $10 widget if we think he’s delivering more than $10 worth of value. After all, if we don’t think it's worth more than the asking price, why would we trade our money for it? If we do make that exchange, not only is the widget-maker wealthier (he’s up $10!) we're wealthier too because we now own a widget that’s worth much more than $10 to us! The Oxfam Report laments the wealth of the super-rich. They see it as representing good that could be, but isn't being, done – they see it as good withheld. What they don't understand is that this wealth represents enormous good already done – every dollar representing more than a dollar’s worth of wealth given to their customers. (And we haven't even touched on how these 26 people’s wealth is tied up in companies that bring further benefits by employing millions.) There will always be a temptation to look over our back fence at what our rich neighbor has. But when God calls on us to help the poor, He's calling on us to help the poor....

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27