Poverty by Choice

I have before me a treasured book first published in 1875, written by one of America’s great Christian educators. Recently, while lecturing at an Ivy League law school, I met his great-grandson a pleasant young man dressed like a semi-hippie who admitted that he and his brother went to great lengths to conceal their relationship to this remarkable ancestor, a former university president known for his Christian orthodoxy and strong American conservatism. Though heir to a rich spiritual and cultural legacy, he had cut himself off from it and chosen to be “poor” in spirit. This, tragically, is the condition of many today descendants of martyrs, heroes, and faithful believers who deliberately reject their heritage and then wonder why their lives lack strength, meaning, and direction. The worst poverty is spiritual poverty, especially when it is chosen. If that young man was foolish to deny his lineage, how much more foolish are any of us if we deny our Heavenly Father and deliberately impoverish ourselves?