Why are religion and poverty tied together?

Question

There’s some relation between those two traits.

dynamicyandere · Accepted Answer

I agree with your option that said priorities in life are different.

I grew up in a conservative religious home. My parents keep drilling into my head the idea that money isn’t important and God would provide everything I needed. To focus on serving God to not worry about money.

Then, I began to run into money problems.

Healthy food? No money.
Health insurance? No money.
Car insurance coverage? No money.
New clothes? No money. (My clothes literally had holes in them.)
Sleeping somewhere other than a storage room? No money.
Visiting family outside of town? No money.
Taking people out to eat? No money.

I literally was living on $3 a day for food. I couldn’t fully meet my basic necessities. $20 was “enough” to feed me for a week.

And my parents blamed my money problems on poor money management when the reality was it was because I was making less than living wage and I was deep in student loan debt.

After I got into a car accident (someone ran a red light and wrecked my car), and my parents weren’t concerned, I snapped out of it.

I realized that maybe my parents weren’t actually looking out for me.

Perhaps they were just playing a guessing game with my future and not thinking about the possible implications of actually listening to their bad financial advice.

I was in a point in life where I was more broke than almost all my friends and if I got hospitalized, I would have no way to pay my medical bills.

I decided that I was going to start looking after myself instead of trusting my parents to guide me.

I started to actually work on my career and stop listening to my parent’s horrible advice that “money’s not important”.

No, money IS important. It’s very important. It’s just as important as food because you can’t even buy food or shelter or water without money.

Unless you are going full bushcraft and living in the wilderness, you need to learn how to make money. It’s unavoidable.

So, I began to learn about it, understand it, and really work on my career so that I could make more of it. Rather than seeing money as this evil thing that only greedy people concern themselves about.

God gave me a brain, so that I could use it.

Believing that “God will provide.” and not putting any work in, is like you wanting to start a campfire.

God may provide you with the flint and steel, kindling, and chopped logs, but you may still need to put in the work to USE what God has provided.

Otherwise, you’re acting lazy and entitled, expecting God to do all the work when he may have better things to concern himself with.

So, I decided to use what God has given me, to use my brain, to be resourceful, to be hard-working.

And now, I’m in a much better place financially, even better than most of my peers from that time.

I’ve also stopped being religious and became spiritual instead, critically thinking about everything I hear before adopting it into my life.

I no longer blindly consume and adopt dogma. I use my brain, which God has given me, to discern the truth of things.

So yeah, believe religion and poverty can be tied together when there’s too much of an imbalance in priorities.

Sure, money isn’t everything and money can’t buy happiness. But, money IS important. And poor people should learn how create it rather than demonize it.

And in the Bible, there’s plenty of wealthy people who were “Men of God”.

Job? (As in book of Job) Rich.
Joseph? (Governor of Egypt) Rich.
David? (As in KING David) Rich.

Wealth is external. Wealth does not corrupt.

Greed is internal. Greed DOES corrupt.

Rags or riches do not determine the purity of one’s heart.

Canuck37 · Accepted Answer

It depends on which religion, specifically; but certain religions praise poverty and giving away material goods in pursuit of something better, such as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

These religions are not wrong on this point, per the lessons that the West has learned from materialism and consumerism: focusing life on financial success is shallow, as any wealthy person will tell you.

By contrast, some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the happiest, in my own personal experience. I can tell you that I've taught students who have owned nothing more than one basketball and I've taught students who have gaming laptops, the newest mobile phones, etc., and guess who was happier? The poor kid.

Now, I do need to add a caveat here: poor people are happy only as long as the state can provide security against physical and sexual assault, and there are a number of poor countries and cultures where that is not true. The crime rate for crimes that impact bodily autonomy is not correlated to wealth, and such crimes bring great unhappiness to its victims.

But provided that personal security is taken care of, I find poor people happier than rich people, and for that reason, religions that focus on the pursuit of personal growth over the accumulation of wealth are guiding people towards a more lasting form of happiness, which is one of the reasons why such religions have experienced lasting global success.

It's also why those religions are less successful in wealthy countries: when the adherents of those religions depart from their core value of a focus on spiritual happiness over material gains, then religion loses its spiritual power, and those faiths lose their adherents; and it is difficult to maintain that value when surrounded by so much wealth.

However, the entire world will never be wealthy at the same time, because you cannot be rich without someone else being poor. For that reason, religion will not be disappearing any time soon.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Because with poverty comes ignorance. And with ignorance comes fear. And with that comes an extremism that has nothing to do with authentic religious ideology.

The average person in those areas of the USA has never read or comprehended the Bible in its entirety. Rather they listen to a priest spouting off select verses and lines that are meant to appease masses but, when taken out of entirety, are meaningless.

If these people did read the Bible, they'd rather pray to God in a ditch than attend the local religious sessions held by corrupt priests or worse watch televangelist "priests".

This is quite obvious in how there's been televangelist "priests" like Ken Copeland who have literally abused their followers' ignorance for their own gains. At least one televangelist "priest" used their followers to purchase not one but three private jets.

.

This is the same in every religion. Poverty - igorance - the most "loyal" followers.

Take the ISIS groups. Yes Sunni Muslims are more extreme than Shia, who are more authentic to Islam out of the major groups. But most people involved within ISIS are uneducated, poverty stricken individuals who have never read the Qu'ran in their life.

If they did, like with Christians as above, they wouldn't pick and choose what they follow for their own gains. In ISIS there is a lot of drug & alcholism which is, comically, one of the various sins they commit as per their own religious practices.

purplepoppy · Accepted Answer

Take this quote as an example

" it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"

Funny thing is I don't see many rich people trying to offload their dangerous money. But second, a poor person complains of hardship you can guarantee this quote will be used against them.

The church has long been controlled by its bigger donators. If the peasants are grumbling about low wages or crippling taxes, then slip the priest a few quid to preach about not asking for more and being happy with what you've got.

Anonymous · Answer

With regard to Christianity my understanding is that it's Martin Luthers fault.

No, not Martin Luther King Jr.

He was a church reformer, at the time the best gig in town was getting rich suckers to pay you and all your mates to pray for their sins, with all that combined prayer power you are virutally guaranteed a seat on the same table as Jesus in the afterlife.

Martin Luther thought this was awful and that money was corrupting the soul etc so he decided to be a tramp, much like that guy in Game of Thrones who foolishly gave away his shoes.

And that was the end of that party, from this point forward being broke was cool as long as you are loving you some Jesus and if the rich want a good seat they will have to bank roll the construction of mighty Cathedrals to stop people realising how much sodomy was going on between priests and young boys after all, God isn't real and therefore doesn't give a shit what you do, but normal folks do have a tendancy to get a bit pitchforky over child rape.

Leopard23 · Answer

Percentage of respondents in the USA stating that religion is "Very important" or "Somewhat important" in their lives, 2014

GreatBigCircles · Answer

The idea of predestination was popular in a lot of religious circles, especially protestant, around the time the Americas were being colonized by England. One of the ideas that came with that is success and wealth would naturally come to the righteous and just... And by inverse those who were poor must have some spiritual malfeasance that god is punishing them for. While the explicit idea isn't as well spread, you still see it in how some people talk about 'those kinds of people', and make the act of being poor a personal shortcoming rather than a situation.

Stoner710 · Answer

Charity. The red states are farmworkers or shit, that frankly don’t think about, people in Roosevelt Washington what is their main job? Dealing with the garbage that comes from Seattle all of Washington and half of Oregon. Do I want to do that, No! Will I be a reporter and ask the workers question yes, this is blue collar America but the democratic have turned their back on the blue collar. Even centrist like I use to be, I’ve been consistently on this sight for 8 years. I was borderline socialist. That was 2015 even when I voted for trump v Hillary, why because trump was fun destroyed the republicans and Hillary Clinton is terrible. So I tried to defend both side a capitalist/socialist. Only 1 side works this is free market with religious morals. There is a necessity for a religion, even though you don’t believe yourself.

AngryCarl2 · Answer

Jesus said "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven." He didn't say that because he wanted everyone to be poor, he said it because he wanted wealth to be distributed more evenly. You could argue that Jesus was a Marxist.

Anonymous · Answer

Because the major religions don't understand the Bible.  Like these small little verses they can't explain what they actually mean: — Matthew 25:29, RSV. I tell you, that to every one who has will more be given; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 
 - Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." They can't explain them and furthermore they can't explain why bad people get good things. Look if the masses are always wrong... And only a few people in society really win... What does that tell you? It tells you the mass way of thinking is probably wrong.  But that goes for non-religious people too.

Guy13 · Answer

Money is only the most important thing to the Dead is Spirit and Soul.

Poverty of your soul to burn in hell 🔥. Your soul thirsts for God and all the stuff you do and still gaping hole and empty feeling.

This earth is already a living hell with its fallen and sinful nature. A little humbleness and poverty is no big deal.

normalice · Answer

Because it's free. Or at least in can be. A religious leader can be extremely generous with promised retribution and salvation after death. After the person they promise those things to dies it is no longer something they can call bullshit on (because they are dead).

lightbulb27 · Answer

not sure. I've known many successful, middle class christian/catholic people. Clearly Jewish and Muslim also do well. I've know wealthy christian/catholic, and they justify their wealth... you can read anything you want in the Bible... depending upon how you spin it. The church I sometimes attend, is quite rich.

Wade12345 · Answer

I believe in God, but I agree with the OP. Most people who believe in God have the mistaken belief that "faith" is the only thing they need. The book of Proverbs says WISDOM (Not Faith) is the principal thing, therefore get WISDOM and with all your getting get Understanding.

Waiting for God to solve all your problems for you is not wisdom.

RandomGuy1030 · Answer

1. They tell you to give 10% of your money away to the church

2. They tell you to give your money away to other charities

3. They tell you to beg and pray instead of working harder to make more money

4. They say "it doesn't matter if you're rich if you lose your own soul". Which means you should value your soul above everything. Seriously, just ask a psychotic person, if you dont have your peace of mind you have nothing.

Staximus · Answer

I've met plenty of rich people that were very religious, or at least claimed to be. Being in some churches with lots of members is kind of like being in the Masons. They scratch each others backs, give each other jobs, loans, contracts, political appointments, intermarry, etc. It's a club I'm not in and prefer to stay out of. I could have joined the Masons but I declined. I wasn't going to swear allegiance to anybody or swear that I have faith in God, etc.

msmissydc · Answer

I can recommend a reading of this. It sets at least protestants and capitalism into perspective.

Weber, M., & Parsons, T. (1996). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Van Haren Publishing.

sheenagwapa · Answer

it's hatd for rich people to go to heaven because they don't trust God. God is not encouraging to be lazy in fact Jesus is a carpenter but if you sell your soul for money that's another story

supercutebutt · Answer

If you believe your kingdom is not on this Earth but in a magical Heaven, you are way less likely overthrow the fat cats in charge. :)

Sevenpointfive · Answer

i fail to see the outline of religion in your graphic. i get where you're going but republicans are just as religious as democrats

RockyHammock · Answer

Christianity pushes a selfless doctrine.

Take LDS for example, all the mormon families I knew growing up had 5 kids. Many mormons also practice tithing, which is giving 10 - 20% of your net income back to the church.

Jamie05rhs · Answer

Because, as a religious person, I am taught to live a simple life of humility. To care for my neighbors and not to hoard resources. To pursue fairness and justice as opposed to money.

jshm2 · Answer

It isn't.  Any more than education and happiness are tied together.

genericname85 · Answer

cause when people don't know how to help themself anymore, they turn to faith. not cause faith will do anything real for them. but cause it makes their situation a little more bearable.

Why are religion and poverty tied together?

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