Proverbs 14:20-21

A poor person is disliked even by his neighbors,
but those who love the rich are many.
The one who despises his neighbor sins,
but whoever is kind to the needy is blessed.

What is it about money? For some reason, as soon as people figure out someone has money, they get all weird around them. I don’t get it. When someone has good with money, people start treating them like they’re some sort of genius. I don’t know why. I’ve actually lost respect for several people because they lost all ability to be fair and balanced about judging a person’s character as soon as they discovered they had money.

Have you ever observed that? Someone meets someone with money, and they start talking about them a lot more than they would any other normal person. They start doing things for them that they wouldn’t do for others. They are nicer, happier, suckupier and just down-right annoying.

I guess that could be in part because we’ve never had a ton of it. But, to my recollection, I’ve never been that enamored with affluence. The principles for making money aren’t that hard. The hard part is just sticking to the plan. So, when people make a lot of money, yes they might be disciplined. But, they might have just gotten a lot of money from their parents or somewhere else.

The thing is, we’re all just people. Just because someone is rich doesn’t make them better than me or you. And the fact that we tend to worship those who have a lot of money says more about us and our view of money than it does about the person with the money. They may have a thousand other character flaws that we’ve chosen to overlook because they have money.

The point is, we’re all people. There’s no justification for liking someone more than someone else. There’s no justification for showing favoritism, except – it seems – to those who are in need. Pretty much the opposite of what we tend to do. Those who are kind to the needy are blessed. We shouldn’t despise our neighbor because they’re poor or rich. We should treat them all equally. And we should use the blessing God has given us to bless those who have a harder time of it than we do.