Like the Sirens from the islands, she cries from the streets. Her lure is irresistible. Once she is embraced, she suffocates her lovers in a deadly hold. Her reward is poverty. Her name is Fairness. She is the queen of the city, and the Have-nots are her lovers.

In the name of Help, she points her bony finger at the long lists of her enemies. "Behold the rich! Behold the beautiful! Behold the rulers! They - the Haves, are to blame!" In a promise of utopian equality, she calls for the Haves to surrender their riches to her Have-not lovers.

Meanwhile, her Have-nots gasp and flail under her suffocating embrace. In her hold, they have ceased to believe, they have ceased to hope, they have ceased to work. They too, point their fingers at the Haves. "You owe me," they cry. And in their dying breath, Fairness crouches over her Have-nots, and reveals her true identity. Poverty of the Soul, is her name.

Like a black-widow, she devours her lovers. Her blood stained lips curl in a contemptuous smirk. "Life's not fair." she says.

Somehow, the greater part of American people today have embraced Fairness. From time to time, we all do. It happens so easily. The blame for our misfortunes can be pointed at another. Preferably, someone who has what we desire. It doesn't matter that they have worked hard to achieve their position, and fortune. It's still not fair. It doesn't seem to matter that previous generations of hard working people chose to leave their riches to their children. It isn't fair. Just because someone has something I need, or want, it means that they must have taken what was mine. So goes the reasoning of Fairness. So, the trap is laid - I am a victim.

Little do we realize, that we are really the victims of ourselves. Our attitudes, our choices, and our actions often lead us into the traps we struggle against.

It is not the poverty of my circumstances that kills me, it is the poverty of my soul.

This victimization trap holds true, not only for those caught in the unfortunate web of poverty, but people of every rank and division can be held by its grip. This is true for the Church as well.

In the small church, leaders and followers alike, occasionally look at the larger congregations with a disdainful eye, as though to say, "Something must be wrong, we have done all that we could, and yet we remain small. You must have cheated somewhere along the way to grow so large, or perhaps you were given an advantage I did not have."

At other times, we feel as though we are owed the help of someone bigger. "If only they would help, things would be much better." We look to the mother church, the denomination, or the friend who pastors a booming congregation. It is believed that outside support would give us strength, but that simply is not true. Outside support is evidence of our need, and our weakness, and makes us dependent upon that which does not come from ourselves. It shows that we are impoverished within, and encourages us to trust in the help of others.

The strength of a church is not measured by its size alone. Sometimes it is not measured by its size at all. It can be measured by our giving, our ability to trust in God alone, by a mindset of victory rather than victimization, and by reaching out to others rather than expecting others to reach out to us.

The cry for "Fairness" is too often a rallying cry from Satan himself. When we fall prey to this self-inflicted wounding of our souls, which causes us to despise, and envy another's success, or become discouraged by our own lack of fruit, we hurt ourselves. The victim always loses. Only the victor wins. If we see ourselves as victims, then surely we are choosing to lose. This is the suffocating grip of the victimization trap.

"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." (Rom.8:37)