Why Are They Poor?

In the February issue of Sojourners, Rose Marie Berger wrote a column titled "What the Heck is 'Social Justice?'" In it, she says this:
"Social charity addresses the EFFECTS of social sin, while social justice addresses the CAUSES of such sins."
Ah. Is that why every time I fill a food basket for the hungry or give money to the guy on the street I kind of have this feeling that I should be doing more? Berger goes on to quote Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara: "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist."
For whatever reason, the evangelical churches I grew up in didn't spend much time questioning the whys of the poverty. We continued to do good deeds on behalf of the poor, but we didn't spend time questioning the social framework that causes poverty, and God forbid we suggest that their might be an unjust structure afoot. We mostly blamed the poor for being poor, and quoted Jesus's words in Matthew: "The poor you will always have." But I don't think Jesus said in a throw-up-your-hands kind of way. If God requires dignity and justice for all people, then it seems it is incumbant on us to continue to fill the food baskets, but to also dare to delve a little deeper and dare to challenge...maybe change the unjust system. No one denies that there are poor, hungry people whose circumstances have nothing to do with unjust, sinful structures. But if there was even one person whose was poor and hungry because of the social structures we conveniently ignore, wouldn't it be a sin not to do something to change that?
All of our evangelical interpretations of justice fall into the category of God's justice against moral individual sin. If we talk about justice in a corporate framework, we tend to talk about a nation that has wiped out prayer in school, or has turned from God because we embrace homosexuality or have legalized abortion. But a careful reading of the Old Testament shows that when God was angry with the nation of Israel, he was mostly coming to the defense of the poor which the nation was tromping all over. (See Jeremiah 5:26-29, Amos 2:6-7...and many, many others.) I don't hear much of that coming from the pulpit at my church, or most other churches with which I am familiar. It's too risky and we're too comfortable.
Ron Sider says this: "Imagine what would happen if all our church institutions...would dare to undertake a comprehensive two-year examination of their programs and activities to answer this question: Is there the same balance and emphasis on justice for the poor and oppressed in our programs as there is in Scripture? If we were to do this with an unconditional readiness to change whatever did not correspond with the scriptural revelation of God's special concern for the poor and oppressed, I predict that we would unleash a new movement of biblical social concern that would transform the world."