Our Bible was written in times when poverty and suffering were the reality in most people’s lives. It talks of those who are materially poor, of those who are rotting (often unjustly) in prisons, and those who are physically handicapped – the blind, the lame and those afflicted with diseases like leprosy. There are still where hundreds of millions in our high-tech world for whom this is still a daily reality.

But, even for those of us who live in islands of abundance and prosperity, there are other forms of poverty: social, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) and other forms of captivity (compulsions, obsessions, […]