Justice to Charity

In Lawrence Mead's From Prophesy to Charity: How to Help the Poor, he argues that we must move on from Justice, and take a step towards Charity.

"The Good Samaritan rescues the man beaten by robbers not because his community expected this -indeed, it did not- but because of his personal compassion toward the victim."

Mead then goes on to apply this to today's society. He argues that, in order to be charitable, the poor need not have some kind of value applied to them by society.

"The poor need not have standing in their community. They need not be 'deserving.' Indeed, the Bible virtually defines them as the undeserving. We need not claim that they have been wronged [as Justice would seek to do]. We need not identify with them, claiming that they are citizens just like the more privileged. We need not deny obvious differences between the poor and nonpoor. Rather, in the sight of God everyone is unworthy, poor and nonpoor alike."

 When one takes this approach, it becomes impossible to ignore one glaring fact: we are all poor. If this is true, how might we then apply charity to our fellow impoverished brothers and sisters?