A pastor argues the church has misunderstood poverty as virtue, when Jesus actually called Christians to feed the hungry and house the homeless. That work requires money. The devil wants you poor and ineffective, not prosperous.
People embrace poverty as a virtue, poverty as a saintly trait. The problem with that is that we lack the resources that we need to accomplish things in the material sense for the sake of the kingdom of God. So when we're told to feed those who are hungry, if God doesn't perform a miracle, you're gonna need to get that food from somewhere. If you're supposed to house those who need a place to stay, how are you going to pay for that building? If you're going to clothe those who don't have clothes, how are you going to pay for those clothes? And even if they're donated, how did those people get the resources to donate those clothes? Well, it was money. So money is simply a system by which we exchange goods and services. There's nothing evil inherently about money, but rather it's the love of money that's evil. But still, if the devil can just twist this just so, he can cause Christians to despise prosperity. He can cause Christians to be uncomfortable with and therefore ignorant about finances. And that's where he wants to keep the church, poor and unable to fulfill its mission in the material sense.
