The Victims of Religion

She is the ultimate victim of a system that “devours widows’ houses”

No matter who you read on this – or what sermons you might hear on this – typically, people will say this is how we ought to give. We ought to give till it hurts, we ought to give sacrificially, we ought to give in a surrendered fashion. We ought to give so that we completely demonstrate trust in God, and that’s how this woman gave. There isn’t one word of support in this text for any of those perspectives; it doesn’t say anything about her attitude at all.

For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” ~ Mark 12:44

The fact of the matter is, it doesn’t even tell us that she was a believer; it doesn’t say that she knew the true God, that she believed in Christ; she is not a spiritual hero in the story. What is she in the story? I’ll tell you what she is, she’s a victim; she is a victim. A victim of what? She is a victim of the system. She is the ultimate victim of a system that “devours widows’ houses” – verse 40 – that’s the connection. This has nothing to do with Christian giving, unless you think Christian giving is, “Give everything you have; take a vow of poverty, go home and die.”

Where in the Bible is it a Christian principle of giving to give everything you have and go home and die? That is not in the Bible, not at all – it makes no sense. ~ John MacArthur

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