Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections

by Richard Rohr

Poor persons may themselves be to blame for their poverty to some degree, but one problem of our sophisticated age is the need to ask that question at all — who is at fault? That should not be the primary question. As Dorothy Day once wisely said, “What the Gospel forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.” When we sit in judgment like that, we stand aloof and apart. That’s precisely the position the Gospel does not allow a Christian — as if we could critique who is worthy and who is unworthy. Our criteria will always be cultural and too often self-interested. A person might be at fault to some degree, but poverty is primarily a psychological state to which one surrenders after repeatedly being put down. It’s a state of oppression. After continually being assaulted by negative voices from within or without, finally we surrender to them. We can’t stand against them. Soon we are so disadvantaged that we can’t even recognize, much less take advantage of, the opportunities offered to us. The negative voices of cultural shame soon become self-fulfilling prophecies.