A New Kind of Poverty

“Blessed are you who are poor,
    for yours is the kingdom of God. 

 Blessed are you who hunger now,
    for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
    for you will laugh.”

Luke 6:20-21

Through the course of these past weeks, the topics of the poor and/or poverty have come up in several conversations and my understanding of the subject has expanded and shifted. There is no doubt more to poverty than meets the eye. I would love to share some of what I have learned, and I’ll start by asking you a question.

If you were to stop reading right now and go to the top of your browser right now and search poverty, what images would you expect to see? What sort of emotions and feelings would you affiliate with such a word?  

-a Lack of: Shelter- $$$- Ability- Freedom- Food- Resources

I just searched it and found countless images of sad malnourished children from various third world countries around the globe. The individual people, our brothers and sisters, captured in these stills are no doubt experiencing intense material poverty. Most often we think of poverty in terms of material lack. But is that all there is to this brokenness called poverty?

This past week at our Wednesday night gathering at “The House” (Kris, Jeudy and my house) with our neighbors, Jeudy and Becca shared about their experience on short missions trips to Mexico. They touched on how through connecting with individuals in the communities they visited in Mexico, they saw incredible faith and intense joy in a place one might not expect; in lives gripped by the unyielding hand of material poverty.  A place of beautiful reliance on God, when they had nothing else to rely on. Maybe Jesus know what He was talking about when He shared the beatitudes with us…

A second conversation about poverty occurred at our bi-weekly Community Fellows training where we discussed a chapter out of the book, “When Helping Hurts,” by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. (I would recommend this book to EVERYONE)  The chapter was entitled “What’s the problem?” and included a whole new perspective and definition of poverty. A perspective shared from the material poor themselves. They shared about poverty primarily in terms of, “shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.” This starkly contrasted my initial thoughts on poverty and the poor. For them it was less about the physical things they lacked and more about the mental and perspective repercussions of the material lack. This is a HUGE and necessary paradigm shift. I realize that for me, as long as poverty remained cornered in the physical realm, I could ignore the true relational poverty I was dwelling in.

“Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable. Poverty is the absence of shalom in all its meanings”

            -Bryant L. Myers

Poverty can look just like me… or you.

Sin is the root, and inceptor of this prideful perspective I so often can have of myself. I love being self-sufficient and okay--- ALL THE TIME. It is underneath that façade of collectedness and self-sufficiency that my poverty is exposed. I am really good at convincing myself I don’t need anybody. This is my brokenness and my struggle. I was made for community with creation, others and myself, yet I make choices every day that deepens and widens the chasm between myself and the shalom God desires.

Thank God for my neighbors, the needs they have exposed in me, and the opportunity to live in community with them.

I need them.