What Dave Ramsey gets wrong about poverty

Dave Ramsey gives great advice about getting out of debt. I’ve seen that first hand as I’ve celebrated with friends marking their first day of debt-free living, thanks in part to Ramsey’s teachings and all those white envelopes of cash he urges his students to use instead of credit cards.

But while Ramsey may be a fine source of information on how to eliminate debt, his recent comments about poverty are neither informed nor (as he claims) biblical. In fact, they represent such common misconceptions about the poor that I addressed them in a post for the CNN Belief blog today. 

An excerpt: 

People are poor for a lot of reasons, and choice is certainly a factor, but categorically blaming poverty on lack of faith or lack of initiative is not only uninformed, it’s unbiblical. God does not divide the world into the deserving rich and the undeserving poor. In fact, the brother of Jesus wrote that God has “chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him” (James 2:5). God doesn’t bless people with money; God blesses people with the good and perfect gift of God’s presence, which is available to rich and poor alike.

Read the rest here.