Polls consistently show that the more money Americans make, the less sacrificially we give.[7] With each transition to a higher income bracket, the smaller the percentage of our income we give each year to churches, charities, and other nonprofit groups. Wouldn’t you agree that if we are making more money than ever but giving a smaller percentage t

This is why the real Beatitudes are today the powerful scandal they were in Jesus’s day. Because the kingdom is for the hurt, the grieving, the mourning, the poor and poor in spirit, the meek, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the discarded, the weary, the torn, and the broken. And why is that?

Every Sunday we gather in a multimillion-dollar building with millions of dollars in vehicles parked outside. We leave worship to spend thousands of dollars on lunch before returning to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of homes. We live in luxury. Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate. And he is hungry. In the time we gather for worship