The term "povert" (pronounced "PAHvurt) was coined by a friend of mine over 30 years ago, Rev. Lewis Bulkeley. He was a descendant of a famous American Puritan family. He was an entrepreneur. He later became a CPA.
This attitude is common within American fundamentalism. There is an assumption that spirituality is inherently in conflict with visible success. It is favorable toward a lack of success, especially economic success, in the lives of people who are afflicted with it.
At the other end of the spectrum is the attitude of people within the movement called "positive confession." It is also called "name it and claim it." In these circles, there is actual guilt for lack of economic success. These people assume that spirituality is blessed by economic success. Deep spirituality is supposed to bring economic blessings.
Both groups can find New Testament passages that confirm each outlook. That is why the issue of economic success and its relationship to spiritual commitment is complicated. The basic attitude of the Bible toward economic success is that success comes over time through the disciplines of thrift, wisdom, hard work, honest dealings in business, generosity to the poor, and systematic tithing to the local church. Success is not simply a matter of positive confession in one's ability to get rich though faith.
Poverts prefer to become experts at coupon clipping, thrift store shopping, flea markets, garage sales, and Craigslist. They ignore the fact that this kind of shopping takes a lot of time. They do not value their own time at anything above the minimum wage.
The povert and the positive confessionist have this in common: they don't want to work 70 hours a week. The povert would rather spend his time looking for bargains at flea markets. The positive confessionist wants to pray all the time that he will get rich, and he expects God to answer the prayer irrespective of how hard he works or how smart he works.
With this in mind, I want to discuss what I call the povert mentality.
THE POVERT MENTALITY
These people regard economic success as a testimony to a lack of spirituality. Somehow, people who are economically successful have succumbed to the lure of the world. They pursue riches. It doesn't matter what they plan to do with these riches. The mere pursuit of riches is suspect. People who have earned a lot of money, or who have made a lot of money by investing, are assumed to be second-rate Christians.
People who have this attitude are not successful. They are afflicted with a form of pride in their own lack of success. They see low income as a badge of honor. They have not been tempted by the world, they think, and the proof of this is their lack of economic success. Rather than seeing their lack of economic success as a testimony to their lack of self-discipline, lack of thrift, lack of education, and lack of initiative, they see it as proof of their intense spirituality.
At the same time, they regard the monastic orders of Roman Catholicism and Eastern orthodoxy as second-rate Christianity. They do not adopt poverty as a way of life. It is not a systematic kind of poverty, which is based on a vow of poverty. That would involve hard work, obedience to a rigorous hierarchy, and in the case of Roman Catholicism, celibacy. That is not true of Eastern Orthodoxy's monasticism, but most Protestants know nothing about Eastern Orthodoxy.
It is understandable that a teenager looking for his first job is willing to take a minimum-wage offer. This is how he gets experience. This is what young people do. But when this outlook dominates the thinking of an adult, to the exclusion of putting his time to productive use in a higher paying job, it reflects an attitude toward life that assumes that the economy and the world in general are stacked against righteous people. It assumes that there is no escape from poverty, that poverty is a way of life for the truly holy individual.
THE CHEAPSKATE MENTALITY
These people are fanatical about saving money by buying second rate or used items. They don't spend money to buy the best tools in whatever their trade is. They don't buy the best education that is available to them. They don't sacrifice time to get that education.
They really don't believe in self-improvement. They don't buy how-to books on making money. They do not recognize the truth of this principle of success: it takes money to make money. They also don't recognize this principle of economic success: if you don't have much money, then it takes hard work to make money. They don't want to take the time to make the money that will serve as their initial capital base.
They don't intend to pass on an economic inheritance to their children, either. They don't recognize the truth of this biblical passage: "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Prov. 13:22).
I want to describe a woman who understands this principle. She who works as a waitress at a local Waffle House. Waffle House caters mostly to lower middle-class people. It is an incredibly profitable company, at least we think so. It is privately held, and is over half a century old, and nobody knows how much money it makes. Waffle House is all over the South. I take my grandchildren there at least once a month before we go to the library.
The woman is black. She is always upbeat. She is a good waitress. A couple of weeks ago, I saw her at the library. She was sitting at a computer. She was taking notes. I asked her what she was doing. She said this was part of her break: two hours. She is taking courses online at the low-cost Western Governors University. She is trying to become a specialist in special education children. She works three jobs. She doesn't want to stay poor. She does not plan to work at Waffle House all her life. She is not a povert.
She is determined to get out of poverty. She is not really in poverty. But she is struggling. She has been struggling a long time. She has a 20-year-old son. He is trying to get ahead academically. I gave her some advice on the business degree program at Patten University.
She is looking for a way out. She is also looking for a way up. She is not going to be deterred. This is the mentality of success, and it is not common to the lower middle class in the United States.
When people are poor, such as recent immigrants, they have to work extremely long hours, and they have to budget very carefully. For these people, thrift is a way of life. They don't have any extra time because they work long hours. They may work at two jobs. They are industrious. They don't want to stay poor. They don't regard poverty as any kind of spiritual advantage. They are trying to get out of poverty. Prior to the development of the welfare system, immigrants from all over the world came to the United States because here there was liberty, and the immigrants understood that liberty is the basis of capital development. They saw that they would only give a better inheritance to their children if they came here. Immigrants before the welfare system were not poverts.
This is the outlook promoted in the second half of the 18th century by John Wesley: "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can." This appears in sermon 50: "The Use of Money." He taught this to the first generation of Methodists in Great Britain. This outlook led Methodists out of real poverty in the second half of the 18th century into middle-class success and even upper-middle-class success by the end of the 19th century.
THE HAND-ME-DOWN MENTALITY
When you shop at thrift stores and flea markets and garage sales, you can sometimes find bargains. Mostly you find junk. These are cast-off items that people no longer use. They are hand-me-downs.
Poverts are like the third child or fourth child in a family. The new clothes are purchased for the oldest child, and then, item by item, the dresses or pants get handed down to the next child of that sex. The child on the receiving end of this is well aware of what's going on. If the family really has no money, the receiving child has to put up with it. It doesn't do any good to complain. But the child recognizes that he or she is being treated as a hand-me-down child. This child is convinced that he or she is not going to get the good things of life. In other words, the child believes that life is stacked against him. The child believes that his parents do not recognize that he is a hand-me-down child.
This is how poverts view God. God is seen as a father who deals with His people as hand-me-down children. I cannot imagine a more economically crippling attitude than this one, yet it is widespread within American fundamentalism. This is not the basis of future-orientation, self-sacrifice, hard work, higher education, and the accumulation of wealth.
THE BEGGAR'S MENTALITY
A common feature of the povert mentality is the desire to receive a subsidy from people with more wealth. The povert is only rarely a tithing church member. He doesn't like the idea that he is under an obligation to pay the church a regular tithe. He is cheap when he buys, but he is also cheap when he gives. My father-in-law used to say this: "Americans like their religion, but they like it cheap."
It is legitimate to ask for a discount. If you think you can get one, try to get one. There's no reason to pay retail if there are options. That's what Internet shopping is all about. But you should not expect a subsidy based on somebody else's generosity. If you're capable of work, you should not expect a handout. A discount is not the same as a handout. A discount is a marketing strategy. A handout means that somebody is giving money to somebody else and not expecting anything in return.
The povert really believes that somebody else owes him a subsidy. This is why the poverty mentality has a tendency to drift into the beggar's mentality.
When I started the Ron Paul Curriculum, I began to get requests for scholarships for their children. This program costs about $500 a year. That's about $40 a month. The people making this request would not pay $40 a month to give a child the best education available online. They were not arguing about the quality the education. They just wanted a handout. So, I created this FAQ:
Why Don't You Offer Scholarships?The Ron Paul Curriculum is a profit-seeking publishing organization.
It lets students participate in forums. This is comparable to letting students go to a prom or other event. They pay to attend.
When people go onto Amazon or some website that sells books, and they order a book for their child's curriculum, they do not expect a scholarship. The same rule applies to the Ron Paul Curriculum. It is a publishing organization.
Non-profit schools sometimes offer scholarships. These are only rarely true scholarships. They are in fact concealed discounts that are used to hide the fact that the schools discriminate against parents with more money. Economists call this practice price discrimination. It goes on only when the state prohibits competition through state licensing.
Curriculums are not licensed by the state. Therefore, you do not find different pricing programs in terms of family income.
This is a curriculum-publishing organization. It has no full-time staff members. There is no committee to decide which families to discriminate against. That is what price discrimination always is: discrimination against people who pay full-ticket. Why is it their moral responsibility to pay a price premium in order to educate other people's children? We could not come up with a plausible answer.
Families that want scholarships from private, non-profit schools must supply detailed information about their finances: net worth, annual income (three years), bank accounts, number of children, investments, home ownership, and much more. We have no staff to make determinations about what is fair. We do not have donors to supply funds. We are not tax exempt. We are not a charity.
The proper organization to provide a scholarship is a church. Any family that is in need of a scholarship should apply to its church. If a family does not belong to a church, then a local charitable organization may help, such as the Salvation Army.
This ended the requests. It got rid of the poverts.
AVOID THESE PEOPLE
The povert thinks this: "You must give me more! Jesus says so." He presumes that others owe him something. When he finds someone who gives, he asks for more. These people are a presumptuous bunch. And their name is legion.
The "you owe me" mindset leads to poverty.
He refuses to work 70 to 80 hours a week, if necessary.
The povert wants sympathy. Why, I don't know. He gets none from me.
The povert wants to believe that poverty is a virtue. It isn't, except when it is required for service, such as someone on a foreign mission field who lives like the local people. J. Hudson Taylor and his recruits in the China Inland Mission in the 1880's adopted poverty as a way of life. This was a missions strategy.
Poverty is something to escape. A person with money has more options, meaning more options for service. The meaning of poverty is "limited options."
People are not to pursue poverty. They are also not to pursue riches for their own sake. Both ends of the income scale tempt people into sin: either temptation to steal or temptation to forget God (Proverbs 30:8-9).
The person in poverty should not assume that anyone owes him anything. He should be thankful that someone offers him any help at all.
The povert is in nearly permanent begging mode. He does not perceive that his problem is self-inflicted: unwillingness to work long hours, unwillingness to budget his time and money, and unwillingness to save. He expects other Christians to fund his lifestyle. He accuses them of violating Jesus' command to help the poor when they refuse to give him what he asks for.
Jesus was speaking of those who were poor through no fault of their own. The church has referred to these people as "the deserving poor."
The povert regards himself as deserving. That is his problem. He is in the top 20% of world income, yet he regards himself as a spiritual person because of his poverty.
Money given to a povert cannot be considered giving to the deserving poor. Those with assets must pick and choose their beneficiaries. The povert's mentality keeps him from escaping poverty. He thinks others owe him. He therefore seeks out people to manipulate by guilt.
There is always greater demand for charity (free money) than supply. Wise distribution requires great care. When you encounter the "gimme" mentality, look elsewhere for an object of your charity.
The poor man must maintain an attitude of extreme thankfulness. He should not expect another round of charity. He should not expect more from the person who supplies anything for free. He must recognize that he has competition for the richer person's assistance.
The rich man must maintain an attitude of extreme cautiousness. His money can do great harm if it subsidizes the mindset of the povert. The rule is: "Do no harm."
Charity that addicts a person to charity must be avoided, both for the sake of the poor person and for the sake of all the other poor people who require assistance through no fault of their own.
To people with money to give away, I recommend this: recognize guilt-manipulation when you see it. Do not subsidize it. Immunize yourself to it.
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