...is amazed by Andre Bauer (Republican) quote on helping the poor: "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that.”
Response: Wow! Is he saying (poorly) how not to fund and empower a welfare-state-of-mind, or is he really saying "let people starve since they cannot take care of themselves"? Or is he talking about the limited responsibility of national or local government? I don't think, despite their attempts, that any political party (Canadian or American) has the corner on charitable and humanitarian ventures - not sure they all see helping poorer people as essentially a political concern, but a social one. Some see this as the job of elected officials, where others see caring for our poorer neighbours as the job of everyone in our community, town, and city, and not the purpose of taxation. Some of us think that government workers should be the caregivers of poorer people, and that loving our neighbours needs to happen bureaucratically and through taxation and employment - not with personal concern, self-sacrifice, and local outreach by all the people of a community. I've never thought any government, in the history of the Western World, has done a great job of caring for its poorer citizens, especially people who suffer with mentally ill. I believe our biggest challenge is not with irresponsible government - but the biggest threat to the welfare of those in need of assistance is from within ourselves, with us, expecting someone else (government employees) to be missional, and to love our neighbours instead of us. It is time for people, especially Christians, to be more responsive and be truly counter-cultural, and stop passing the buck. Seems much of the political battles and finger-pointing is just dodging the call to be personally responsive - Christlike.
Perhaps we should ask the question: Are the best humanitarian "movements" more likely to be self-sacrificial social responses or government-run political reforms? Assuming a distinction can be made, we might divide what Wilberforce did between the two, but I think we can see from Jesus, and those inspired by him (Martin Luther King and Ghandi) that the climate that makes political reform possible is social responsiveness that finally gets like-minded people elected in. I'm not sure why, but one of my favourite movies is 'The Kingdom of Heaven'. The line: "It is a kingdom of conscience or nothing at all", makes me think that the issues and needs of our poorer people in our communities and cities needs to move from the abstract to deep within to our sense right and wrong, to justice and to reflection on some of the causes of marginalization, and to the condition of our own hearts, not away from us, past a pointing finger. Seems the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:25-37) is all about not passing the buck, claiming responsibility for people and situations we did not influence or create - but are willing and resourced to simply embrace and help in any way possible. If there is anything beautiful about Christianity, beside God Himself and the mystery of His holiness and His self-sacrificing love, it is the strong, relentless, unflinching, Christ-like love of people.
fascinating commentary on the responsibility of the individual in our society. at times, its difficult to know how to best respond to poverty, as our best intentions can seem to be enabling of behavior that has the potential to be destructive. for example there are people who are truly helped by soup trucks, yet at the same time, there are those who do not have the motivation to seek work because they know they can always fall back on handouts, or just survive on the bare bones provided by govt services. my personal journey with the poor has taken me to a place where i'm trying to learn how to discern how best to serve the poor. in the good samaritan story that you referenced, the person in the story has been physically assaulted and left for dead. are these the people we are giving change to on city corners? are these the people who we send money to during crisis telethons? who are the poor---i guess that's my main quesiton.
ReplyDeleteOk, this is the second attempt at this - I was just babbling and I want to do more than that. Firstly, I agree with the points you've made. After contributing to individuals and organisations, I still have to ask, "Was I helping or contributing to a problem". But what if we are doing both. Is prolonging someone’s’ life with the hope of transformation naive – do we need proof that we are not empowering poor decision making before we act? The Good Samaritan story is a great one. Two religious people go by someone in need and don’t intervene (being a neighbour), but the least liking person, from a 1st Century Jewish perspective does. The Samaritan doesn’t appear to know anything about the man in need (he could have been a bandit whose victim overpowered him!) This story doesn’t address the questions we are asking. It just reveals a situation where someone has limited knowledge of the need, but has the resources to help and does (with seemingly no questions asked). I don’t think we can derive a policy or strategic guidelines from this story alone. I only brought this up because for most of us, we know local people in need and have both opportunity and resources to help.
ReplyDeleteFrom a Christina point of view, Jesus consistently teaches that our belonging actually belongs to God – we are just caretakers or stewards. In other words if we give something away it is really us giving God’s stuff away. How people treat or use God’s stuff is outside of our judgement – or beyond our frame of reference and ability to discern how He views their use of the resources given. This doesn’t get us off the hook, but it changes the ultimate responsibility – God wants us to leave judgement to him (in many ways), especially when information is incomplete and we realize we can’t read the minds and intensions of others. On an extreme level, Jesus gives an example of giving opportunity to be not just played, but mistreated and robbed by people (Luke 6:29). I think by being overly gracious, and not particularly shrew, we have the ability to bring enlightenment, embarrassment, discernment, and a change of behaviour – it worked for Ghandi.
I now have more sympathy for the comment that started this blog. The issue of population growth among the world's poorer people, and the intervention of outsiders, doesn't seem to be slowing the birth and death rate (90 million people are born on our planet every year - that's almost 3 times the current population of California or 3 times Canada's population). I have no idea how you help people consider the idea of having less children - seems having the recommendation of establishing abortion clinics as part of the US foreign policy hasn't worked.
I really know too little of situations outside my neighbourhood and acquaintances to lay out international policy. There are many great organisation that a doing good. There is also the whole issue of injustice and the people becoming poor because of injustice, civil wars, and invasions, not to mention our fragile world economic situation. Maybe something is owed them! Who are the poor? Anyone and everyone in desperate need of basic resources to survive and maintain life. Thanks for your questions.