Esmée Chengapen
In the book of Isaiah, when the prophet is announcing the coming of the Messiah, one finds that the poor is very much in the priority list of Jesus. Isaiah 11:3-4 says:
He will not judge what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth
And when we fast, what God demands of us (he does not just suggest it) to share our food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter and when we see the naked, to clothe them…. (Isaiah 58:7)
It seems straightforward because of the injustice around us about who should be a major target group of the communities of faith, but also Christ’s message goes beyond simply feeding the poor, it is a liberating message as described in Isaiah 58, true fasting is also to loose chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free and break every yoke.
I would think that it is important first to articulate our view of poverty because this will strongly influence how we should go about it and change our lifestyles accordingly.
Is poverty merely a deficit?
If we view poor people as not having enough to eat, a place to sleep, the unspoken assumption is to provide the missing things and the poor will no longer be poor. If they do not have the relevant skills or knowledge, then providing education and if the poor simply learns enough, they will no longer be poor. We, as followers of Christ, then add the knowledge of the gospel to our programme for the poor.
This has been the traditional approach of the church, however it creates a “Santa Claus” picture of the communities of faith and the poor become passive recipients of the church’s generosity. This approach has two negative consequences: it demeans the poor and it temps us to play god in the lives of the poor.
I experienced this kind of approach while growing up in Mauritius. I must add that I am eternally grateful to the missionaries especially the Irish Catholic nuns who came to the island before its independence from the British. From my great-grandfather to my grandfather to my Dad and his siblings, and to my cousins and I, we all went to missionary schools. In many ways, Mauritius could make it to independence in 1968 because it had an educated workforce and for this, the country owes a great deal to the missionaries who did a great job on the island. However, as of today, most of the island’s population respects Christianity but they are still very captive in superstitious beliefs. As a child, I always thought that the missionaries were superior given that they had the resources, the education and the connections (these are very important on an island!). Indeed, they played god in my life.
Poverty as disempowerment
In “Walking with Poor”, the author shares the thesis of Jayakumar Christian who is a World Vision development worker.[1] His study is based on his work in transformational development in India.[2] Christian describes the poor household embedded in a complex framework of interacting systems which includes:
- a personal system including psychology;
- a social system; and
- a spiritual/religious system (both personal and social).
Each part of the system creates its own particular contribution to the disempowerment of the poor including captivity to god complexes of the non-poor, deception by “principalities and powers”, inadequacies in worldview and suffering from a marred identity.
Captivity to god-complexes of the non-poor- the socio-economic-political system
This is something one would not naturally think of when one has access to the rights and privileges of a middle class European. The poor is subject to another reality: to the whims of a landlord, to radical decisions of governments if he is refugee, to the drug trafficker is he is pawn and victim of the drug trade. Jayakumar Christian reminds us that these powers exist within a cosmic system in which principalities and powers work out their rebellion against God and God’s intention for human life in creation.
Communities of faith working with the poor should be mindful of this aspect of captivity of the poor. Working for the transformation of the lives of the poor can be compared to getting Egypt out of the children of Israel after they were liberated from the powers of the pharaoh. Indeed, it was a matter of days for God to get the children of Israel out of Egypt but forty years in the wilderness to get Egypt out of them!
While we must always encourage the poor to respect the law of the land, we must educate them about the freedom one has as a citizen of a country (one should have a closer look at his entitlements if he has refugee status) and also the freedom one has in Christ.
This is something that I personally struggle with when I am working with refugees. It is very hard for them as they are unable to work for many years under refugee status, the man is usually so robbed of his dignity because he cannot provide for his family, and on top of that, being a refugee equates being despised by many locals.
I can illustrate this point with what happened once to one of my refugee friends. Naibkhil is the father of an Afghan boy named Hassib whom I was helping a couple of years ago, the rest of the family was still in Afghanistan at the time. As he did not have much to do after his son left for school, he used to go for a long walk around the refugee centre daily. Once he met a Dutch lady walking her dog and he said a friendly hello to her. The woman proceeded to tell him that he had no human dignity for coming to Holland as a refugee (in the area they knew who were the locals and who were the refugees) and she then said that her dog had a better attitude to the rest of humankind than he had and she would not speak to people of his level! This really hit my friend and as he was telling me about this upsetting encounter, he had tears in his eyes. I felt so helpless in what I could say to him as I felt that he had lost so much of his dignity.
So how can we go about helping the poor in the socio-economic-political area?
Deception by principalities and powers – the spiritual system
“We were in slavery under the basic principles of this world” - Galatians 4:3
The powerless of the poor is reinforced by fear and deceit created by the god of this age that blinded the minds of believers (2 Corinthians 4:4).
I can so relate to these verses growing up in Mauritius. Superstition held my family so captive and although we were not poor in Mauritian terms, we lived under the lies of the enemy. It seemed that my family had such a bad karma, that the endless fasting and sacrifices to the Hindu gods would not change anything! When I visit the poor in Mauritius or the refugees in Amsterdam, I can see how the same kinds of superstitions haunt them. They struggle to succeed as at the back of their minds, they have been born under the wrong sign or at the wrong time, or they are not getting their permanent resident status because another family in the camp is envious of them and creating bad vibes in their direction.
Dealing with this kind of spiritual deception requires prayer and fasting and also knowing God’s word, I can say this by reason of my own journey from Hinduism to Christianity.
The marred identity of the poor
Jayakumar Christian observes in his thesis that the poor is marred in two important ways:
Firstly, they are excluded as actors in society and too often, the voice of the poor is regarded as “damaged goods”. The leaders of the country do not expect the poor to have anything to offer since they have been labelled as lazy, ignorant or unworthy,
Secondly, a lifetime of suffering, deception and exclusion is internalised by the poor in a way that results in the poor no longer knowing who they truly are or why they were created. This is the deepest and most profound expression of poverty. The poor come to believe that they are and were always meant to be without value and without gifts. The identity of the poor is distorted and is kept by a web of lies that entraps the poor in ways far stronger and deceitful than physical bonds or limitations.
To address this aspect of poverty, the communities of faith need to become instruments of God to restore the identity of the poor. Being their friend, helping them to deal with their internal struggles, walking with them as a friend and showing them God’s truth. It requires a much closer approach to working with the poor than what we are currently doing.
Should missional communities aggressively change their lifestyles, attitudes and teaching to reach out to the poor and marginalized in Europe?
I wish I did not have to deal with this question as this is that has been on my mind for quite a while concerning my own life. I would think that most of us have gone through some downward mobility when moving to Europe and leaving the comforts of home. Part of me wishes that there would be no more downward mobility!
Yet, we live in a bubble and very often, this bubble is called an expatriate middle-class world. We then tend to concentrate on our own middle-class problems and do not have the time and energy to reach out to the poor.
These are the questions I struggle with:
- Should I live in a poorer area so that I am physically closer to the poor?
- How much of my income should go to the poor?
- How much of my church’s income should go towards serving the poor?
- How welcoming am I to the poor in my home?
Footnotes
[1] Myers, Bryant L. 1999, Walking with the Poor, World Vision International, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books
[2] Christian, Jayakumar. 1998a. “A Different Way to Look at Poverty”, Body and Soul, London: World Vision UK
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