Thursday, March 24, 2011

Insult the poor at your own risk

“If you insult the poor, you insult God. The principle is that God personally identifies very closely with the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant, the most powerless and vulnerable members of society. When the Old Testament says God identifies with the poor that is a strong statement. But it still is basically a figure of speech. Not until you come to the New Testament can you fully grasp the degree to which God has done this.

“In Proverbs we see God identifying with the poor symbolically. But in the incarnation and death of Jesus we see God identifying with the poor and marginal literally.”— Generous Justice, page 185

<idle musing>
That's the end of the excerpts from Keller's book. I'm not sure what I'll be extracting from next. I'm currently reading at a very slow rate due to other things going on, but maybe I'll extract from A Severe Mercy...we'll see.
</idle musing>

1 comment:

Jonathan Erdman said...

I dunno...we see some pretty strong language in the OT!

;)

I see his point, though!