HELPING THAT DOESN'T HURT

Ever wonder how compassion can enslave?  Has it ever entered our crusty craniums that maybe our most noble and compassionate efforts toward the poor have actually hurt them?  Well, Steve and Brian have given this a lot of thought.  Just kindle, nook, or book it to to get inside their heads.


 As I've listened to the discussions over this book in one of the small groups I attend, I've found the foundations of my missions-driven, pedal-pumping life challenged, shaken, breakin', and topplin' over.  

The big ah-hah for this blog is simply a new answer to the old question, "What is pOvErTy?"  Hands shoot up quicker than a hold-up.  I know.  I know what poverty is--lack of water, lack of food, lack of adequate housing, lack of education, lack of reading skills, lack of job-skills, lack of . . . lack of . . . lack of . . .

Textbook answer: 

"lack of material things and services.
Yes!  A+! 

But missiologists and social scientists have come up with quite a different answer.  Poverty, they would quickly tell us, is the result of God-designed relationships that are broken.  Call it sin or addictions or falling short of the glory of . . . but poverty happens when relationships are broken and thus lack harmony and joy. 

Sitting in a tin-walled ten by ten in black Shanty Town, South Africa is as much poverty as sitting in a middle-upper class twenty by thirty living room--if we've got broken relationships with God, ourselves, others, or creation. We're all in the same boat; we're all on the same lonely island.  So the first step to addressing poverty is to identify the place where we are impoverished.  "We" and "them" suddenly become just "us". 

How's your relationships these days?  Any cracks?  Anything broken that needs fixing?  Just remember what Jesus alluded to as the first step out of poverty:  "Blessed are the poor in spirit."  Or "blessed are they who know they are spiritually bankrupt."  Only the Savior can fix the broken places, only the Lord can repair nerve-damaged relationships.  And that, for me, is Good News.

More later,


Thomas