Every one of us can learn valuable lessons from the generosity and compassion of the poor

I don’t think it’s right to stereotype and say all poor people are generous or all rich people are stingy.

I’ve lived in Indonesia for a few years. My father-in-law does quite well for himself, and could have chosen to live in a huge house, drive a luxury car, etc. Instead, he chooses to help people in his family who aren’t so well off.

Many of the poor people I see here, on the other hand, are corrupt, impertinent, and definitely not generous. As an example, my fellow English teacher friend lived with his wife in a gated community and hired a carpenter to do some work on his house. He later found out that the guards at the gate were shaking down the unfortunate carpenter for snacks, cigarettes, etc every morning when he came into work. My friend could do literally nothing about it, since by default as a foreigner he has very little power here. Also, since these guys were guarding the gate to his house, if he called them out, they could perhaps rob his house or let others in who would do so.

There’s the example of the poor widow in Mark 12:41-44 who gave her last coin to the temple. She was proportionally more generous than all the rich people. This isn’t a real world example, but at the moment I’m at a loss for real world ones ;P

There are plenty of rich people like Bill Gates and J.K. Rowling who donate money to the less fortunate. And there are plenty of rich people who at worst cheat others or at best are very stingy. There are generous poor people and not so generous poor people. Just like anything in life, you shouldn’t generalize.

I do have a tendency to think that there is some correlation between inadequate education and poverty, at least in places like Indonesia. Maybe this doesn’t hold for places like the Nordic countries, where a Swedish friend told me a grocery store bagger has a bachelor’s degree. It also seems there is a correlation between more education and being “liberal”. At least in the US, university towns with a more educated population are more “liberal”, while small towns often are populated by “conservatives”. Interestingly, many of these small towns also have lots of poverty, such as the Rust Belt states.