"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8
The Bible makes one thing plain: God has a heart for the poor. The mandate to aid the poor and the ban on policies that hurt them is so pervasive, so persuasive, that in 2008 the British and Foreign Bible Society published The Poverty and Justice Bible, which highlights almost 3,000 passages that address poverty and injustice. The Bible Society's website says its Bible was inspired by the Rev. Rick Warren who admitted that he went years without noticing the Bible's emphasis on the subject...
The Bible Society's media packet also includes a testimony from Jim Wallis, the founder and president of Sojourners Magazine. Wallis lectured at Dillard University in October, and the Bible Society quotes him telling the same story he told Dillard: "When we were seminarians ... we cut out of an old Bible every single reference to the poor, to poverty, to justice. ... We were left with a Bible full of holes," he said, "which literally was falling apart in our hands. I used to take it out with me to preach, saying 'This is the American Bible, full of holes...' "
A Bible full of holes. That's the Louisiana Legislature's Bible, too.