Ok, let me flesh out my last post a little bit. It's been more than a week and I hadn't intended to wait this long.
First off, part of my aim with my last post was to actually get a couple of comments. Comments have been sparse as of late in the blogmunity and I was certain I'd get at least a few comments.
Let me deal with each statement and tell you my thoughts...

The fact that there is massive poverty in the world means that the church is partially failing their purpose.

My simple thought here is this, if the all powerful, all knowing, completely loving God desired to feed hungry people (and Jesus' life on earth leads me to believe that on some level it was important to feed hungry people) it would fit with his character and his past promises for him to do it via his body (i.e. the church). I mean, he did commission us to evangelize the world, to care after orphans and widows, etc. God has also promised to bless his body with all the gifts it needs. So hmm...lets think about this...the church today has more money in it than probably any other orginization in the world...hmm...the country that has become the epicenter for missions, the church, and religious activity (for better or worse) is the richest country in the history of time. Hmm...if only God in his infinite wisdom had doled out the appropriate gifts in order to bring about that sort of change. The only hang up is that statistically the church doesn't give (by saying the "only" hang up I realize that I'm completely simplifying things).

The fact that there will always be poor in the world means that there will always be people who are lazy, with poor judgment, or given no chance.

Statement number two. Jesus said that there will always be poor people. My belief is that he said this not to free us from the burden of serving the poor, but because he knew the nature of man. There will always be lazy people. There will always be unjust systems that push certain people groups down. There will always be addictions. People will always have the freedom to make poor choices. This fact just assures us that when it comes to being the body of Christ we've got job security.

So what do you think?