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The Missional Life | The Least of These - 5.16.2010
For I was hungry, while you had all you needed.
I was thirsty, but you drank bottled water.
I was a stranger, and you wanted me deported.
I needed clothes, but you needed more clothes.
I was sick, and you pointed out the behaviors that lead to my sickness.
I was imprisoned, and you said I was getting what I deserved.
Matthew 25:42-43 RESV (Richard E. Stearns Version)
Readings from: The Whole in Our Gospel pp. 116-117, 120.
I don’t like the word poverty. It is one of those loaded words that carries with it a great deal of baggage and stigma. It sounds like a disease or a bad character trait that some people have and others don’t. It’s also a word that divides the worlds into two unequal groups, the poor and the rest of us, as though somehow we are different. Each of us brings different associations to the word poverty based on our past understandings and misunderstandings. In America, which has prided itself as being a “land of opportunity,” it is not uncommon for us to make value judgments about those who are poor. If they are poor in America, we reason, it must be because they don’t work as hard as the rest of us or have made bad choices. We may think that the poor are lazy or stupid, even if we wouldn’t say it aloud. When we think about the poor in places such as Africa or Southeast Asia, we may bring other stereotypes into play, perhaps racial or cultural. We may shake our heads at why this nationality or that race just can’t seem to get their act together. We wonder why their governments are so ineffective, their leaders so incompetent or corrupt, and their economic development so weak. Or we may look at them paternalistically, feeling sorry for them as a parent would a helpless child. All of these biases are patronizing at best and prejudice at worst; they lessen the human dignity of people created in God’s image. If we are to see the poor as God sees them, we first have to repent of our judgmental attitudes and feelings of superiority. I had to do it myself…
Think about your own life. How successful would you or your family have been if you had lived in a place where there was no clean water and one-quarter of all children died before their fifth birthday? Imagine growing up constantly weak and malnourished, to the point where both your body and your mind became stunted. What if there had been no health care system, and therefore an abscess or an ear infection was a death sentence? What if you had lived where you couldn’t go to school because you had to fetch water six hours a day – or where there was no school? Or worse, think about what might have happened to you if rebel armies had sacked your community, killed your parents, and driven you hundreds of miles form our home to live in a refugee camp.
These are the daily realities of the world’s poor. No matter how hard they work, how gifted and talented they are, or how big their dreams, the poor have few choices and even fewer opportunities to fulfill their God-given potential. These precious human beings created in God’s image have been left behind and cast on the garbage dump of history by circumstances they cannot change. We must never say it is their fault. How dare we?
Questions:
• What are some ways that you have patronized or have been prejudiced toward those in economic poverty?
• Why do our “judgmental attitudes” and “feelings of superiority” hurt our relationships with poor people?
• How successful would you or your family have been if you lived in a place where there was no clean water and one-quarter of all children died before their fifth birthday?
• How can our pride keep us from seeing poor people as God sees them? What do you think is the effect of this distorted view?
Readings from: When Helping Hurts pp. 103-105.
You turn on the evening news and see that a tsunami has devastated Indonesia, leaving millions without food, adequate clothing or shelter. Following a commercial break, the news returns and features a story about the growing number of homeless men in your city, who are also without food, adequate clothing, or shelter. At first glance the appropriate responses to each of these crises might seem to be very similar. The people in both situations need food, clothing and housing, and providing these things to both groups seems to be the obvious solution. But there is something nagging in us as we reflect on these two news stories. Deep down in seems like the people in these two crises are in very different situations and require different types of help.
How should we think about these scenarios? Are there principles to guide us to the appropriate responses in each case?
A helpful first step in thinking about working with the poor in any context is to discern whether the situation calls for relief, rehabilitation, or development. In fact, the failure to distinguish among these situations is one of the most common reasons that poverty-alleviation efforts often do harm.
“Relief” (phase 1) can be defined as the urgent and temporary provisions of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from a natural or man-made crisis. When a crisis such as the Indonesian tsunami strikes at [phase] 1, people are nearly or even completely helpless and experience plummeting economic conditions. There is a need to halt the freefall, to “stop the bleeding,” and this is what relief attempts to do. The key feature to relief is a provider-receiver dynamic in which the provider gives assistance—often material—to the receiver, who is largely incapable of helping himself at the time. The Good Samaritan’s bandaging of the helpless man who lay bleeding along the roadside is an excellent example of relief applied appropriately.
“Rehabilitation” (phase 2) begins as soon as the bleeding stops; it seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their pre-crisis conditions. The key feature of rehabilitation is a dynamic of working with the tsunami victims as they participate in their own recovery, moving from [phase] 2 to [phase] 3.
“Development” (phase 3) is a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved—both the “helpers” and the “helped”—closer to beginning in right relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation. In particular, as the materially poor develop, they are better able to fulfill their calling of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruits of that work. Development is not done to people or for people but with people. The key dynamic in development is promoting an empowering process in which all the people involved—both the “helpers” and the “helped”—become more of what God created them to be, moving beyond [phase] 3 to levels of reconciliation that they have not experienced before.
It is absolutely crucial that we determine whether relief, rehabilitation, or development is the appropriate intervention.
Questions:
• How do you think understanding these three phases of poverty-alleviation can keep us from doing harm in our attempts to help those in material poverty?
• Which phase of relief, rehabilitation, or development do you feel most drawn to be involved?
• How can you or your small group apply these principles the next time you’re faced with the opportunity to help a poor person?
Scripture Study:
Read Luke 4:16-19:
Context: Luke is describing the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Verses 18 and 19 are what Jesus reads from Isaiah to explain his ministry.
• What does Jesus say that the Spirit of the Lord is upon Him to do?
• What role do the poor play into Jesus ministry?
Read Galatians 2:7-10:
Context: Paul is retelling the story of when he began to go out to minister to the Gentiles (non-Jews) and there was a question to whether the Gentile believers should be circumcised or not.
• What is the one thing that James, Peter (Cephas) and John asked Paul and Barnabus to do?
• What does Paul say was his response to this one command of these “pillars” of the church?
Read James 2:14-17:
• In what ways are we called to help the poor according to James?
• How does helping the poor relate to our faith?
Conclusion:
• After thinking about these passages, what do you think was the early church’s understanding of how they should respond to the poor?
• How has this challenged you to see the poor differently?
• What ways can you and your small group grow in your ministry to the poor?