Editor’s Note: Originally published on Plough.com as Fight Wealth, Not Poverty, April 22, 2024. Used by permission.

After decades serving the poor, I’ve realized that the problem and the solutions lie closer to home.

Already as a teen I was consumed by the idea of fighting the extreme poverty, hunger, and injustice that were rampant during two decades of dictatorship in Brazil. I married a likeminded woman, and for forty years we have had the opportunity of serving in various contexts: slums, feeding people, encouraging underprivileged students, helping beggars find work, and developing blighted neighborhoods. Attuned to practices that don’t create dependency, we have been mindful to “empower” people, modeling microenterprises and urban agriculture, helping poor families manage their finances, making connections between rich and poor, and giving people opportunities to discover vocations and transform their lives.

So why, after all this, have I given up serving the poor and stopped fighting poverty?

At key moments in my life, I have paused to ask myself this question most frequently: Does what I am doing make sense? Are my heart and work aligned with God’s will, or am I missing the point? More than once, this has led me to relocate and start all over just when I thought things were going well. And it has meant putting myself and my family in very insecure situations. Along the way, I have seen many sincere friends come and go. They start out excited about serving but soon get preoccupied with personal issues, doubting that God will take care of them, and eventually they burn out or move on. I have seen others paying someone else to fulfill God’s service, moved by real sincerity from a distance but without personal involvement.

I have also seen how much poverty takes over the lives of those who are financially poor, and how much it reveals their unfulfilled desire to own and consume. Their situation is reinforced by the same things that seduce and destroy the rich: individualism, selfishness, self-gratification, and ownership as a simulacrum of happiness. Rich and poor have the same conviction: that what they need is something the market, the government, or some other agency can offer. That they will be happy with ownership, a full stomach (some with bread and meat, others with croissants and caviar), and a constant flow of money, thought to be the one and only mediator that solves everything.

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