Over the last two or three months, the churches in the town where I minister have seen a major uptick in calls for financial assistance. Some callers tell us that they’ve recently lost their jobs, but the majority are on disability insurance which, for whatever reason, isn’t enough to keep the lights on. On most days it feels like we’re pretty good at treating the symptoms of financial hardship (past-due rent and empty gas tanks) but powerless to get at the root cause (in this case, physical disablement).

To switch metaphors from the hospital to the battlefields of WWI, our churches are up against “entrenched” poverty, the kind that can’t be dislodged by a quick barrage of money. And in many places across the US and for all kinds of reasons, poverty has been digging in for generations. Some towns have never recovered after the local factory closed decades ago; some neighborhoods suffer the ongoing effects of the racist policies of the past. In St. Louis, where I live, sections of the northern part of the city look like they’ve been through a literal war. Whole blocks are abandoned, and once-venerable buildings collapse in on themselves, victims not of bombs but of long-term economic malaise.

North St. Louis, however, is also home to Mission St. Louis, a Christian organization dedicated to rolling back entrenched poverty in the city – not least by helping ex-convicts find stable work. Last year I had the privilege of volunteering with Mission St. Louis and was invited to attend a ceremony in which twenty young men graduated from the “Job Leadership Training” program. The twelve-week program had provided them with both Christ-centered mentoring and internships with local businesses, most of which turned into long-term jobs. These men were justly proud of their achievement and optimistic about their futures, perhaps for the first time in their adult lives. To put it mildly, I’ve never attended another graduation ceremony as spiritually moving. It was evident to me that Christ was at work in that place.

I believe that combating the cycles of poverty that rob the poor of hope and dignity is a function of Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. But with regard to an explicit call-to-arms against entrenched poverty, perhaps the closest thing we have in Scripture is Deuteronomy 15:4-5:

But there will be no poor among you … if only you will obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment which I command you to do this day.

In context, the “commandment” stipulates that all debts between Israelites be cancelled every seventh year. The idea is that no Israelite should ever be reduced to a state of perpetual indebtedness to a fellow Israelite. What’s more, God forbids his people from refusing to lend money to the needy as this “year of jubilee” approaches (vv. 7-10). Incurring a financial loss is vastly preferable to hardness of heart.

But we also see in this passage that the ideal of “no poor among you” is just that – an ideal. Verse 11 bluntly states that “the poor will never cease out of the land,” implying, as Deuteronomy often does, that the Israelites will inevitably fall short of God’s requirement. It would be highly desirable for Israel to eliminate poverty from its midst, but this simply isn’t going to happen in any final sense.

Scripture thus creates a weird tension for believers thinking about the issue of entrenched poverty. It’s eminently honoring to God that his people should fight against it – as long as they don’t entertain the hope that such a fight is ultimately winnable.

The existence of long-term poverty – like the existence of tornadoes and mosquito-borne illnesses and literal wars – is further evidence that “the creation was subjected to futility” long ago (Rom 8:20). We should try to break the cycles of poverty, build storm shelters, drain swamps and seek peaceful resolutions to international conflicts, but none of those problems are ever going to go away completely. Or if some of them do, then others will likely pop up: you cure polio and then you have a heart disease epidemic; you win the Cold War and then a few decades later your old enemy is fiddling with your elections. What’s wrong with the world is just too deep for us to fix: “What is crooked cannot be made straight” (Eccl 1:15).

Again, that doesn’t mean that Christians should stop trying to straighten things out. It does mean that our hope can never be in our own efforts. Creation is waiting eagerly not for the government to pass the right legislation, or for NGO’s to acquire the funding and manpower they need to get the job done, or even for the Church to finally get its act together (through the exhortations of zealous bloggers, no doubt), but rather for the recreation of all things in Christ (Rom 8:18-23).

According to a range of metrics (global poverty, literacy rates, child mortality, etc), the world is improving –  but the overwhelming majority of Westerners believe otherwise. This is undoubtedly because of better (and constant) access to information about the scope and extent of the world’s ills. Even as humanity makes some progress on eliminating poverty, disease and war, it quails at the increasingly apparent magnitude of these problems. The sense that it’s “on us” to fix the world discourages rather than motivates. As the apostle Paul notes repeatedly, the message of “do this, and you will live” is ultimately a message of condemnation. Thus our efforts to earn both individual and corporate salvation lead to despair.

Conversely, faith that Christ will make all things new could inspire complacency – and, sadly, conservative Christians have too often adopted an unbiblical “It’s all gonna burn anyway” attitude towards social problems – but it does relieve a tremendous burden. The sure and certain knowledge that you’re going to win (or rather, that someone else is going to win for you) can make you lazy, but it can also inspire you to “leave it all on the field.” For Christians fighting entrenched poverty, the intractability of the problem is frustrating but no cause for despair. As is so often the case, we need to remember that failing at our objectives and doing well in the eyes of God are very compatible states of affairs. A thing can be worth attempting even when it’s impossible.