Rather than elevating poverty to a form of righteousness, Jesus is instead calling for a revolution of imagination around the nature of what we consider true blessing.

Affluence creates poverty.

Granted, many of them replied, that socialism may not result in riches for all but rather in a smaller production of wealth; nevertheless the masses will be happier under socialism, because they will share their worries with all their fellow citizens, and there will not be wealthier classes to be envied by poorer ones. The starving and ragged workers of Soviet Russia, they tell us, are a thousand times more joyful than the workers of the West who live under conditions which are luxurious compared to Russian standards; equality in poverty is a more satisfactory state than well-being where there are people who can flaunt more luxuries than the average man.

The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.

What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, “Christian” minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.