A poor man pleads for mercy, but a rich man answers harshly. Proverbs 18:23

This is an interesting verse given the society we live in. Even though most of us are middle class, we are considered rich by most of the world. Consider then, the attitudes we have towards those who are poor, even those in our society: “they deserve what they get,” “if they’d only work harder,” “they should get off their backside and find work.” The list of what we might say goes on and on. Some of the accusations may have an element of truth in it. The point being, in general we, being rich, do not have a great deal of mercy on the poor.

In many societies, government officials use poverty as a means of controlling the people, i.e., they may ration a large shipment of food to keep people weak and dependent on the government. Sometimes the politicians will let the food rot rather than distributing it in a timely manner. In that sense we should be merciless towards those officials. And unfortunately, we have those kinds of politicians in our midst as well. They dress better and are paid a lot more, but still their endgame is control.

Hopefully this can be a time of reflection for us on how we treat the poor.