Jewish people understand that God desires for them to have wealth. They believe wealth is a good thing. Steven Silbiger wrote about this in his book, The Jewish Phenomenon [1].
Judaism has never considered poverty a virtue. Asceticism and self-denial are not Jewish ideals. The first Jews were not poor. The Jewish founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were blessed with cattle and land in abundance. Many of the Proverbs directly address how to gain wealth.
There are Christians, though, with a different mindset. They often use scriptures to justify the lack of wealth. One of the scripture used to keep believers in a poverty mindset is 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pang.”
It is easy to see in this scripture that the Bible is talking about heart issues. A person can have wealth, but at the same time the person must keep their heart following after God. It is so important to remember that it was God that gives a person the ability to get wealth if they follow His wisdom.
Wealth is not limited to personal needs but it is to meet the needs of humanity. The believer’s mindset must not be swayed by a wrong interpretation of a few scriptures but instead must be set to a Kingdom understanding of the entire Bible!
[1] Steven Silbiger, The Jewish Phenomenon (Lanham, MD: M. Evans, 2009), pp. 12-13.