Reviewing Calvin’s eradication strategy to poverty biblically from a Missio Dei perspective

Abstract

Most of the marginalised and underprivileged people across the globe live in the vicious cycle of poverty. Poverty is a thorny issue. The World Justice Project (WJP) estimated that two thirds of the world’s population are not only confronted by multiple injustices which include the civil, administrative, or criminal justices, but they are also living in a vicious cycle of being marginalised and underprivileged across the planet. The poverty-stricken victims are left hopeless and helpless due to unfair socio-economic and justice systems. Attempts are coming from different fronts on how to eradicate poverty. The researcher realised the two extreme ends of these attempts, namely the rich-oriented capitalist and the poor-oriented socialist extremist. Their debates around poverty tend more to a dichotomy contestation. The question is how can the best of their contestation be utilised for poverty eradication locally and globally. The problem that this article is addressing, is the underlying misconceptions which comes to the fore in the contestation between the rich and the poor in their attempts to eradicate poverty. When such misconceptions are left unchecked, they hinder any attempts or efforts from both sides to obey God’s missional call to eradicate poverty. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article adds the voice (value) regarding addressing the rich-oriented capitalist and the poor-oriented socialist extremist in their attempts to eradicate poverty, conscientizing them that, as they have the same make-up and Maker despite their positions and conditions in life and therefore, based on the ecodomy framework for equitable justice, they should make a conscious decision to eradicate poverty as their missional call before their Maker.

Keywords

• poverty
• eradication strategy
• glocally
• john calvin
• missio dei