Escaping Poverty
Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie
March 8, 2009
©2009 Rev. Thomas Perchlik
One general image of the last president of the United States was that he was a very Biblical person. However, deeply Christian preachers like Tony Campollo, Jim Wallis, and Jeremiah Wright often complained that Bush did not seem to read any of the Biblical passages on how to treat the poor. For instance he seemed to have missed the first eight lines of Chapter 31 that begin "Oh my son, the child of my womb" (Proverbs 31:4ff)
"It is not for kings, O Lemuel not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, 5 lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights." Now, this is where it gets interesting, "6 Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; 7 let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more."
All joking aside, I don't know anyone who accepts these lines as a command of God. What is important is the demand for justice. After telling the king to help the poor forget, his mother reminds King Lemuel to, "8 Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. 9 Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." One online Catholic Encyclopedia claims this passage is an exhortation to chastity and temperance... I don't think this is a very careful reading. The truth remains that even if beer helps you forget your troubles it will not end them. More than likely is that it will keep you from seeing your power and doing the work needed to escape poverty.
How to escape, how to help someone escape? This is a very old dilemma, should we give money to someone on the street not knowing if it will help him eat or merely buy booze? Will giving aid help someone survive the day or will it encourage that person to settle with just surviving. How do we find a balance between patronizing and empowerment? We fear becoming a weak "Do-gooder," one who, while trying to help, only wastes wealth. Or we fear becoming the leech, only taking. At the same time we fear for people suffering, even dying, because we did nothing out of fear. How to help? And what if you find yourself in poverty or at its dark doorstep, how do you escape its traps?
Who exactly is poor? According to Mollie Orshansky the woman whose ideas developed the poverty measurements used by the U.S. government, the baseline for determining poverty is the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet. With some elaboration that is how our nation determines the poverty line for a person, or a family of two or four, etc.; what is needed to survive, to eat enough to live to the next day. It is only an average, since that cost varies from place to place. The cost of housing or health care is also figured in to this to some extent. But at base, abject poverty is not having enough to eat as well as lacking access to clean water or basic shelter.
However, Orshansky also said, "to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us take for granted." This is a different level of poverty. Several studies have born this out. The single most important factor in determining whether you think of yourself as poor or rich is who you compare yourself to. To be poor is to not have the goods, and pleasures, which others around you take for granted. Being Middle-class or just getting by in the 90210 zip code area looks much different than it does in our 47305 area. So the first step in escaping poverty is to compare yourself to those who have far less than you. Go work at the Sleeping Room or the Friends Food Pantry for a while and get to know the people who need those places. Realize how much you have in comparison to the bottom of the economy. In fact, even when compared to the Kings and Queens of Medieval Europe most of us live very rich lives with better transportation, better health care, better heating and cooling, as well as access to the internet and to international trade. Yet for those of us who have something but are having trouble getting by there is another problem.
In addition to basic comparison there is an accompanying judgment that comes with having less or more than others. This moral judgment has much to do with preventing people from escaping poverty. We have a disdain in our general culture for the poor, a deep seated fear of the poor being all shiftless bums who want nothing more than to unjustly sponge off of our good will and hard labor. The Moral position against this should be based in a rejection of stealing, rather than a blanket condemnation of character, or a whip to punish the needy. The attitude of judgment arises from potential abuse, and from a true difference in financial power, but skews how we see reality by projecting an image of weakness or threat on everyone whose financial resources are very limited. Thus those who have the power to help accept the image of those needing help as weak, powerless, and in need of us. We begin to see ourselves as the savior, the person of power, self important and generous with our largess.
Worse yet is when the person in poverty also accepts this image. We who are poor take on a perception of our self as weak, emphasizing what we do not have rather than what we have. The more powerless and flawed people think they are the more likely they are to sink into despair and give up. This is why poverty is so dis-empowering, it not only takes away financial power, but it erodes what power we still have to choose and do.
What is needed is to admit one's limits and then focus on what one does have, what power, what connections are healthy and which new relationships can be formed, what decisions can be made. Working for the group Rebuilding Together some of us have seen houses, damaged by leaking roofs and years without repairs. Sometimes one sees despair in the home, the walls are rotting, there is dirt and junk littered about the house. Then there are other houses where people have struggled to keep clean, to decorate as well as possible, even as the house crumbled. It is possible to find dignity power even when power is declining.
It has to do with how you frame your situation. Sometimes people who have given to others all their lives will find themselves weak and in need of care. They think of themselves as someone who takes care of others, not someone who is taken care of, yet unexpectedly they find themselves sick or wounded, unable to walk, perhaps with hurt back muscles or legs. The simplest things become obstacles; often they can not dress themselves or bathe, at least as long as they are healing. If I am talking with someone who is particularly uncomfortable with accepting help from others I encourage them to think of not that they are taking or receiving but also giving. I say, "Think of yourself as being generous, as giving to other people the opportunity you have had to be helpful. You are able to give others the realization that they have something to offer, that they are important in your healing, that they are generous too. Thus one moves in mental framing from being poor to being powerful and able to help others.
Still you must face your limits. I have known such people who rush too quickly back to independence, trying to take care of themselves, lifting things, moving things that they should not, and then finding themselves back in bed, their muscles re-injured. So it is a balance, the spiritual life, the healthy life, a balance between accepting our limits, and knowing our power and building on what we have. The idea is to focus on what we have as a foundation for health.
I have mentioned before the wonderful NPR (National Public Radio) program on ethics, religion and meaning, Speaking of Faith. It centers on deep and thoughtful, hour-long, conversations between the host, Krista Tippet, and interesting people. I love that when they decided to create a series of programs and resources on dealing with the financial crises they decided to call it "Reclaiming Virtue;" not "how to get more money" or "how to hold on to what you have." They focus on the core values and attitudes that will guide us in difficult times and perhaps help us thrive or improve our lives in the midst of economic decline.
Reading through some of their materials I came across a blog entry by Trent Gilliss, their Online Editor. He first shared what Alana at the "Blood and Milk" blog wrote:
Bad development work is based on the idea that poor people have nothing. Something is better than nothing, right? So anything you give these poor people will be better than what they had before. Even if it's your old clothes, technology they can't use, or a school building with no teacher... But poor people don't have nothing. They have families, friends – social ties. They have responsibilities. They have possessions, however meager. They have lives, no matter what those lives look like to Westerners" [or people with more wealth.]
Mr. Gilliss' response to this was:
"I need to remember to apply these lessons closer to home as we encounter more suffering and job losses and homelessness during these tumultuous economic times. When I start to pity the bearded man who sits on a 5-gallon bucket at the off-ramp of Penn Ave and I-394 in sub-zero temperatures, I need to remember he has a life. To pity him is to judge him. That's not helping him; it's not helping me; it's not helping teach my boys in the back seat each day we encounter him."
Speaking of Faith, a couple of months back, featured a conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina, [bin-ya-van-ga why-ny-na.] This smart young man is an opinion columnist and writer from Kenya. One of his most famous columns is his 2005 article, "How to Write About Africa," printed in the British magazine Granta. He is a satirist. So he has taken what is wrong and exaggerated it to make a point to make the bad more visible. This is the satirical advice he gives to those who would write about Africa for American and European audiences:
"Broad brushstrokes throughout are good. Avoid having the African characters laugh, or struggle to educate their kids, or just make do in mundane circumstances. Have them illuminate something about Europe or America in Africa... African characters should be colorful, exotic, and larger than life— but empty inside, with no... depth or quirks to confuse the cause." He then tells that one should write about rotting bodies and such and encourages the writer, "Do not feel queasy about this: you are trying to help them to get aid from the West. The biggest taboo in writing about Africa is to describe or show dead or suffering white people... Animals, on the other hand, must be treated as well rounded, complex characters. They speak (or grunt while tossing their manes proudly) and have names, ambitions and desires. They also have family values: see how lions teach their children? Elephants are caring, and are good feminists or dignified patriarchs. So are gorillas. Never, ever say anything negative about an elephant or a gorilla."
As with the poor man on the street corner our desire to help the starving people in Africa can keep us from understanding all the people of Africa. Our very desire to help can prevent us from seeing the power, the dignity, and the self determination that people with little money may already have, or need to develop. Several recent articles, including "The New Colonialists" in the July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine noted that development aid deepens the dependency of governments on outsiders and undermines the capacity of a poor nation to provide services at all. The intense desire to help can cause problems; run roughshod over another person's need to need to do something about their own powerlessness. Furthermore, Africa, or any so-called "needy" population, has never been a monolith, especially not one of need and despair. Think of what foolishness has been done by people for whom clans were an artifact from Biblical times when they tried to help people for whom clan identity was central to their identity, security and even survival. It is a projection of our own ego, a desire to see one's self as savior that makes us see the other as a simple victim rather than as they truly are.
Mr. Wainaina reminds his readers that Kenya is only a 45 year old country. Where was America in 1816? What sort aid did we need back then, what troubles and divisions did we face? Wainaina also notes the lack of accountability to Kenyans in goals or funding of aid projects for Kenya, even in the UN's recent "Millennium Villages." He tells of visiting a special hospital that was doing great work to fight sleeping sickness. What they were doing was important, but there was no Kenyan ownership of its work, no local roots to that hospital, and meanwhile the local people lacked even basic health care. When he asked how this beautiful hospital would be funded in the coming years the workers there said that it all depended on what happened in the French politics. When he asked to whom the hospital would be given if funding ran out, they told him they did not know, and he guessed that it would become another crumbling shell like so many similar projects over the years.
[On the other hand, in contrast to the hundreds of billions that have been poured into African nations through governmental aid, what has had the greatest impact is the micro-lending movement, in banks that are willing to loan $100 to $1000 to impoverished people in order to get a business started, or develop the economy of a village. Aid is good. Sometimes emergency food and medicine and water will save lives, but aid is far better when grounded in the motives of the people beyond mere survival, encouraging them to improve their own lives.
The ancient philosopher Thucydides put it this way– "... Wealth to us is not material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think is no disgrace to acknowledge, but what really is degrading is to make no effort to overcome it." That is why I like the idea of EPIC (The Eliminating Poverty Initiative Committee) where a circle of people do not merely give to a person in poverty but share in that person's journey to set goals and strive to reach them. That is why I like the recent move to save the Buley Community Center, started by people within the community it serves. Always the question is: What will the people do for themselves and then how can I help them be more successful?
I began this sermon with words of an ancient Jewish prophet and I end with words from another. From the prophecy of Jeremiah, 22:13-16 (New International Version):
"Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. He says, 'I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.' So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red."
Cedar was a symbol of great wealth in ancient Palestine and Lebanon and Israel, and so in greed they chopped down their forests and sustaining wealth. The prophet continues:
"Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. 16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?" declares the LORD.
To know God then is to defend the poor. The ruling truth for Jews and Christians, Muslims and atheists, is to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly on this earth. To empower people must be our desire, to find their power and build on it, to find their dignity and generosity and hope and strengthen them. This is our call, to serve the power that will help us all, not just a few, but help everyone to escape poverty.
