Who are the Righteous?

A few weeks ago I was listening to Darrell Johnson's summer school class entitled Praying by the Book. In the discussion on Psalm 37, a student questioned how to understand verse 25 as true. Here David says "I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his children begging bread".

As much as various versions of a prosperity gospel are prevalent today, we know, if we are awake and alert, that the world contains many faithful Christians who are desparately poor. Does this verse promise prosperity to the righteous, or has David simply lived a sheltered life away from seeing poverty among the faithful?

For me, however, I was struck by the following verse where David describes the righteous in these words: "he is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing." Perhaps David sees something that we do not. Perhaps David understands the righteous person not so much in terms of the person whose religious practice is impeccable or the person whose behaviour conforms to all the rules of the law (whether secular or sacred), but rather in terms of the person who indeed gives generously to those around him, particularly to those in need.

It struck me that probably the reason many of us do not give generously out of whatever we have, great or small, is that we are afraid that if we give generously we will not have enough, that our children will end up without. Our fear of being forsaken keeps us from being the generous person that David calls righteous. Knowing this, David says that in reality this is a false fear. David has seen that the person whose characteristic behaviour is to give generously is not forsaken, even if financial reversals happen. The man who has shared openly with his poor neighbours so that their children do not have to beg bread will not see his own children begging, no matter how serious the financial situation may get.

Generosity begets generosity. Righteousness begets righteousness. This is what David sees that we often do not.

God seems to be bringing this theme up over and over lately. It came up at Breakforth in the sessions I had with Joyce Heron of Jacob's Well. And it comes up again in a recent Christianity Today online article, Community In, Not Of, Capitalism, an excerpt from David Fitch's book, The Great Giveaway. This sentence in particular caught my eye and forced me to pay attention: "We live in fear that to give up our possessions will leave us alone and destitute when our time of need comes."

Building up substantial resources does not make one immune from these fears — something I discovered within myself recently during a mini cash-flow crunch; even though the process of completing our income tax returns and consolidating investments with a single financial advisor makes it fairly obvious that those fears were very much out of proportion to reality.

But I wonder if God is trying to tell me that even deeper behaviourial patterns are rooted in a twisted view of reality — that if I really saw clearly the depths of riches that are mine in Christ Jesus I would have a much different attitude toward my material wealth, and live much more generously as a result.