BENjamin

I attended a fundraising banquet for MissionYear this weekend. MissionYear is the Christian, inner-city volunteer organization that I participated in last year and was what originally brought me to Chicago. It was a very nice banquet with Dr. Tony Campolo as the special guest speaker. While I was sitting there through the dinner, I kept thinking about why I had originally decided to participate in MissionYear and my experiences since coming to Chicago…
It was in college that I really first started to discover the themes permeating throughout the Bible about caring for the widow and the orphan, the poor and the oppressed. Certainly love and justice are the very heart of God, caring for those ‘who are less fortunate’ is something that I feel called to participate in as someone who claims to be a follower of Christ. It was these types of understandings that led me to sponsor a child through Compassion International, to travel to Ghana and work with a children’s home there, to become involved with our campus chapter of International Justice Mission, to participate in other types of service ministry, and eventually to sign up for MissionYear and move to Chicago. My experiences in these types of things have taught me a lot and molded me in a lot of ways – probably a lot of ways that I’m not even yet aware. I don’t bring up these things as a means of trying to boast – heck no – I’m very aware of the many ways I still fall short and am certainly inadequate to accomplish anything without the power of the Holy Spirit within me, and probably even more often in spite of me.

Actually, I’m bringing up these things in some ways to point at the risks of the emphasis of social justice, service, caring for the poor and needy, ministry. Here’s an excerpt from Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman that gets at what I’m talking about. (I highly recommend reading the whole book.)

“It is not a singular thing to hear a sermon that defines what should be the attitude of the Christian toward people who are less fortunate than himself. Again and again our missionary appeal is on the basis of the Christian responsibility to the needy, the ignorant, and the so-called backward peoples of the earth. There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another’s need out of one’s fullness and plenty. One could be selfish, using his possessions -material or spiritual – for strictly private or personal ends. It is certainlyto the glory of Christianity that it has been most insistent on the point of responsibility to others whose only claim upon one s the height and depth of their need. This impulse at the heart of Christianity is the human will to share with others what one has found meaningful to oneself elevated to the height of a moral imperative. But there is a lurking danger in this very emphasis. It is exceedingly difficult to hold oneself free from a certain contempt for those whose predicament makes moral appeal for defense and succor. It is the sin of pride and arrogance that has tended to vitiate the missionary impulse and to make of it an instrument of self-righteousness on the one hand and racial superiority on the other.

That is one reason why, again and again, there is no basic relationship between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of our faith. It as long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. I ay this without rancor, because it is not an issue in which vicious human beings are involved. But it is one of the subtle perils of a religion which calls attention – to the point of overemphasis, sometimes – to one’s obligation to administer to human need.”

The danger in emphasizing the calling or the Christian faith in caring for the ‘poor and oppressed’ is that they are simply that – ‘the poor and oppressed’. They become very other. They are somehow very different. The danger is in becoming very self-righteous and getting so caught up in the grandeur of meeting someone else’s need. It sets up a have’s and have not’s dichotomy in which the have not’s almost become less human. They are the other to which I am responsible to give from my plenty to help them – poor and stricken as they are. 

When I read that excerpt it messes with me, because there is the calling to care for others and I do truly believe that God blesses people in order to be a blessing to others. But how do I care for others without them being so ‘other’? 

I’m not going to knock organizations like Compassion International or World Vision or other similar relief agencies. I think they are good ways of redistributing wealth and resources. But there’s something a little disturbing about such efforts becoming so big business. The even more unsettling thing is how easy it becomes for well meaning people to write a check and feel noble and grand about fulfilling a calling to care for the widow and the orphan without any real connection. It has that great danger of setting up that schism. I do appreciate the efforts to encourage letter writing and communication, but the whole thing is still quite impersonal. 

That is one of the things that I think I am learning through my travels and especially through my experience in Chicago. Granted, I still think that self-righteousness and arrogant pride are still some of the most dangerous traps that I find myself getting caught in. There are harsh realities and fist-shaking frustrations about living and working in low-income neighborhoods. But one of the things that I’ve noticed about my time among the ‘poor and oppressed’ is that they aren’t so much ‘the poor and oppressed’ any more. They aren’t a label and they are much less ‘other.’ They are real people. They are brothers and sisters. They have things to offer and teach me as I have things to offer and teach them. It becomes less about my giving and more about our sharing.  Its not always that clear and beautiful to me, but its something I’m learning.

I think that fellowship is the type of thing that Jesus intended when he called his followers to care for the the poor and oppressed. I think there’s a reason why Isaiah 58:7 says “I want you to share your food with the hungry and to welcome the poor wanderers into your homes (NLT, italics mine).” It doesn’t say to set up world food banks, to write a check to someone around the world, or set up a homeless shelter. By no means am I saying that those things are bad – they can help a lot of people, but I wonder if they would be necessary if we all really took that verse to heart. Thats the dreamer in me. But when we invite someone to share our meal with us, or come to stay in our own home, its much easier to see the humanity in them and we can begin to see ourselves as brothers and sisters rather than have’s and have not’s.

It builds the relationship that Thurman was referring to between the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life and the ethical pretensions of faith. Maybe that’s why Jesus said in Matthew 25 ‘…when you did it to one of these my brothers and sisters… I also think that it’s interesting that those who are called to inherit the Kingdom were clueless about what the King was talking about. They didn’t know what he was talking about when he said they had cared for him. They didn’t do it for nobility or grandeur, it was just such a part of their lives as brothers and sisters caring for one another.  

The world does so much to separate people from one another. Even our acts of charity can bring about division. However, our faith should help us to see people as brothers and sisters sharing the good gifts of God, instead of objects of our righteous giving.