Identified with the Poor

Who is my neighbor? What responsibility do I have, if any, for people who are on the other side of town, or in a ghetto across the state, or locked into poverty in some developing nation? The issue it addresses isn't one we can settle in a moment. It goes to the very core of our lifestyle and daily choices. To be honest, it's an issue I do not like to think about because I know there is much to change in me! I pray as you read this today, it will get under your skin and drive you to thoughtful prayer- and real action.

(The next three paragraphs were inspired by a message written by Leonard Sweet. I have edited the content for space and clarity.)

• Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (Peter Unger, Oxford UP, 1997) has been called the state-of-the-art treatment of "how much the well off should sacrifice for the world's most needy" by one reviewer. Unger argues that the world's most serious moral problem is poverty. He claims that in our world 20 million people starve to death each year and one billion live in impoverished conditions where hunger, sickness, and early death are daily companions. And, he says, we (who have more) are morally obligated to work to help those in desperate situations.
  
  Most of us have received those envelopes in the mail that appeal to us to give to an aid agency. With a contribution equivalent to the cost of one meal at an expensive restaurant ($100), the agency will buy vaccines, food or oral hydration therapy which will save the lives of many children. Unger says that getting that envelope is much like driving along the road and seeing a child drowning in a shallow pond. At that moment, you have two options -- drive on, or wade in to save the child. However, if you go in after the child, you ruin the clothes you're wearing. But, what good person would even think about the cost of a set of clothes when a child's life is at stake? Most of us would give up a meal at our favorite restaurant, or even two, to please God by saving a child's life, wouldn't we? And yet, we casually toss the appeal into the trash- 'driving by' the dying children, in essence.
  
  But Unger pushes the case farther: You're driving along a deserted country road in a vintage car that you have lovingly and painstakingly restored. Suddenly you come upon a man who has ripped open his leg on a rusty barbed wire fence and is bleeding profusely. If you do not stop, the likelihood is that he will die. What do you do? Do you pick him up in your mint-condition, restored beauty, put him on those leather seats, knowing that they will now be ruined? Or do you go on hoping someone else will rescue him because 'it is not your problem.' The morality of the case is clear to all but the most calloused. If morality requires us to ruin our suit or the interior of our car to aid someone in distress who is immediate to us, why don't most of us feel similarly morally obliged to aid starving people who live far from us?

There are a host of reasons that we use to excuse our lack of concern for the poor, especially the poor far from us.

There are so many of them that we begin to think that helping a few makes no difference. The nameless, faceless masses are less compelling to us emotionally than one child. Is saving one really less important if we cannot save a million?

Then, too, if we cannot see our funds being used, and we know of corruption and greed in so many places, we decide that we will not get involved. Does the real fact that some resources will be mis-appropriated, wasted, or stolen let us off the hook so we can keep them in our own savings account?

We have learned to reason (wrongly, I should add) that the poor somehow 'deserve' their fate, either because of irresponsibility or immorality or perhaps even, God's judgment. Such ideas are seldom voiced because they sound so much worse when we actually say them, than they do when we think them! But, there are people who believe that their wealth, status, or privilege is a sign of God's approval/blessing and thus, need not be shared!

In the context of spiritual knowledge Jesus said, “Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:48, NLT) We do not wrongly mis-use the Word by applying this principle to our wealth or privilege. The more that is entrusted to us, the more accountable we to God for the way in which we dispose of it.

Years ago, at Creation Festival, I heard Tony Campolo speak. He told of a young man who was in a couple of his classes who was brilliant and gifted. He planned to become a medical doctor so he could use the skills to heal the sick in some poor country. As Campolo tracked the young man's progress, he watched him reach the goal of getting his medical degree, then complete his residency; but curiously this bright doctor lost sight of serving and was trained in a lucrative practice of plastic surgery, doing body enhancements! He used the brilliance, the skills, the education to produce wealth for himself by making wealthy people more beautiful. In the way that only Tony Campolo can do it, he summed up his story by asking a question that was both humorous and yet so provoking that it has lingered in my mind all these years....

" Can you imagine being that man standing before Christ someday to give account for the way he used what God gave to him in the way of advantages, skills, and talents and having to say, 'Well, Lord, I used the gifts you gave me to give rich women bigger breasts!'?"

When I stand before Jesus, I want to hold my head up because I have used the gifts He gave to me, to lift up another. I leave you with this word from the Word today.
May it pierce our minds and hearts and become the catalysts for revolutionary compassion....
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Matthew 25:33-40 (The Message)-

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father!
Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom.
It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation.

And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

“Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say,

‘Master, what are you talking about?
When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink?
And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’

Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth:
Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’
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Want some additional food for thought? See www.one.org for an interesting initiative.