Any time you want

I failed to bookmark Sarah Vowell's New York Times op-ed column on Pat Robertson earlier this month, so I don't have a valid link to offer here. (Update: Here's a link, thanks Oolon.)

Vowell offers a "Pat on the Back" — praising the often-whacky televangelist and sometime presidential candidate for participating in the Make Poverty History campaign. She doesn't overlook his more infamous contributions to American life, but she wants to commend where she can:

Remember when he wanted to boycott the "Satanic ritual" that is Halloween? Or when he said, "The husband is the head of the wife"? Or when he warned the city of Orlando that the flying of homosexuals' upbeat rainbow flags might incite divine retribution in the form of hurricanes or "possibly a meteor"? Yep, good times.

Nevertheless, when I spotted Robertson in a lineup of celebrities including Brad Pitt, Bono, George Clooney and the also-never-boring Dennis Hopper, I was delighted to see him. He was in the One Campaign's television ad asking for help in the crusade against poverty, starvation and AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.

In the commercial, Robertson says, "Americans have an unprecedented opportunity," and then Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, of all people, finishes his sentence, concluding that "we can make history."

On a recent "Nightline," Robertson showed up with his new best friend, Clooney. When asked if his group Operation Blessing would promote "the responsible use of condoms" along with abstinence in its AIDS education program in Africa, Robertson answered, "Absolutely." Pat Robertson!

"I just don't think we can close our eyes to human nature," he continued, adding that with regard to teaching proper condom use, "you have to do that, given the magnitude." I could have hugged him.

Me too. Robertson can be an important figure in what I've called the "gatekeeper" role. His support for this antipoverty effort, in effect, gives permission to his followers to support it as well. "Poverty is bad" may not seem like the most radical statement, but compared to where Pat and his followers were 20 years ago, it's progress.

Besides, Pat Robertson can leg-press 2,000 pounds.

Despite Robertson's support, a campaign named Make Poverty History is going to raise red flags with many evangelicals.

The lofty aspirations of the campaign are vaguely millennialist — an effort to make the world in which we live more like the perfect shalom of the kingdom of God. That rankles pre-millennialist evangelicals, such as our friends LaHaye and Jenkins, who believe that things can only get better after Jesus comes back. And that, they believe, will only happen after the world we live in gets very much worse. So premillennialists like L&J aren't inclined to support an effort to "Make Poverty History," although their theology would support an effort to intensify poverty and make it more widespread.

The phrase "Make Poverty History" also inevitably elicits another response from evangelicals, which occurs whenever anyone talks about "ending" or "wiping out" this particular scourge. They quote Jesus words from Mark 14:7, "The poor you will always have with you …"

So, here we go again:

1. Anybody who quotes that phrase without quoting the rest of Jesus' sentence should not be trusted. Here's the full sentence: "The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want." Interesting how the first part of that sentence so often gets quoted as though it refuted the second part.

2. Jesus' words refer us back to the books of Moses, to the 15th chapter of Deuteronomy. That passage describes the year of Jubilee — so it's a good one to read regarding the Make Poverty History campaign. It reads, in part:

… There should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. …

If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs. … Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.

The passage begins with "there should be no poor among you" and works its way from there to the verse that Jesus quoted about "there will always be poor people." That initial "there should be" is conditional — "there should be no poor among you … if only you fully obey the Lord your God." The writer of Deuteronomy knows better than to expect that such a condition will be met, thus: "There will always be poor people."

So Jesus quotes a passage that warns against being "hardhearted or tightfisted" toward the poor. And that very passage gets quoted, loudly and often, to support the idea that we ought to be hardhearted and tightfisted toward the poor.

"You can help the poor any time you want," Jesus said. Any time we want. If only we wanted to.