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“The law also applies to our demonstrations of prosperity. We cannot be very happy if we are poor, and nobody needs to be poor. It is a sin to be poor. You may ask whether Jesus cited any example of poverty’s being a sin? Yes. You will find it in the story of the prodigal son. That is often used as a text to preach to moral sinners, but a close study of it shows that Jesus was teaching the sin of lack and how to gain plenty. It is a wonderful prosperity lesson.” — Charles Fillmore, Prosperity

If, as I’ve said before, spirituality is that which gives life, then there is nothing less spiritual than poverty.

It would be nice to be able to just say to people “Don’t be poor.”  And sometimes it seems that’s what people are doing when they are throwing around quotes like “It is a sin to be poor” or this one:

“Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich.” — Wallace Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich

If we stop there, all we’ve done is define the problem, and we can fall into the trap of blaming either ourselves or others for our failure.

But we need to get off of that quickly, and move on to solutions.

Charity Doesn’t Work

According to the two works that I cited above, there is only one long term solution to the problem of poverty: a connection to our Source (God, the Universe, Fred, whatever you want to call It.)

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t feed those who are hungry - one of the great teachers used his spiritual powers to do just that, and commanded his disciples to do the same.

But then there’s also this story, in which Jesus basically said “F’ em.”

It seems to me that the difference in the situations was that in the first two teachings, the feeding wasn’t just to put food in their mouths, but to do it in conjunction with teaching them, so that they could do it for themselves.

Simply putting food in front of people may keep their hearts beating, but if that is all we do, then nothing changes in the long run.  As a matter of fact, giving people food, shelter, and clothing without teaching them the basic principles of becoming prosperous themselves can turn them into slaves.

What You Can Do

There is nothing better that you can do for the world than to become prosperous yourself.

Become an example - of prosperity, of love, of generosity.

Give freely of your excess time, energy, and money - but until you have an excess of these things, don’t feel guilty for not giving.

Do what you can, where you are, right now, for yourself.  Abundance will come, and then you can share both the physical and the spiritual fruits of your labor.

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