The Poor You Always Have With You

By Dave Barnhart @ http://www.davebarnhart.net/writing/

Confession time: I'm one of those well-intentioned, socially-concerned preachers who seems to love beating up white, middle-class, guilt-laden listeners with images of "the poor." It's a moral failure, I'll admit it - not just a rhetorical one. It probably ranks up there with using other stock images: the working single mom, the rich fat cat driving his luxury car, the malnourished child in a developing country, the soccer mom in her SUV, the homeless lady pushing a grocery cart. We use them as a kind of rhetorical shorthand. We dress up socioeconomic anxiety in Christian clothes and make it do tricks.

I've become more circumspect using such images as I've actually gotten to know some of these people, rich and poor alike.

Here's one image of "the poor" - A guy works two jobs to make ends meet and raise his two kids. He has no health insurance. His extended family has either died or become addicted to drugs. He drives a 1988 Honda hatchback with 200,000 miles on it. He admits he has made some stupid financial decisions, like using one of those payday cash advance places (the profits from which help supplement the income of several state legislators). One day the transmission goes out on his car. Because he cannot make it to work, he loses both jobs. Because he loses his income, he cannot pay his electric bill. The milk and meat in the refrigerator spoil and makes the whole house stink. He doesn't ask his church for help. He just stops going. Prayer doesn't seem to be doing the trick anyway.

Here's another image - A guy "between jobs" conveniently runs out of gas in the church parking lot. He says he is trying to make it to the next state where he will become gainfully employed. Though he reeks of cigarette smoke (what do those cost now - 4 bucks a pack?), he says he doesn't have enough money to buy gas. He holds in his hand a well-worn Bible. As he talks to the preacher (who looks like an easy mark) he makes abundant references to how he believes God will provide, but he's running out of faith because the last three churches were stuck up and didn't believe in helping someone who was hard up. But certainly, he implies, this preacher will be different.

Anyone who spends any time in a church and feels any sort of conviction that the gospel should be "good news to the poor" has to run up against the very practical problem of who is the poor and what kind of Good News should it be? Idealists say that you should reach for your wallet because Jesus said, in the Sermon on the Mount, to "give to whoever asks of you." It is your responsibility, they say, to give, and God's to mete out punishment or reward. What the person does with the money you give them is between them and God.

I would cling to that ideal if it didn't feel like a cop-out. Scam artists have an interesting strategy. They use a mixture of guilt, pity, fear, and annoyance. I've found that if I address my own emotional reaction to the situation, I can sometimes find a real person under the scammer. I told one con artist (the "out of gas" variety) that I would be happy to drive him where he was going. I've offered to buy such people lunch if they will simply sit down with me and tell me their story - the true version. I have very rarely had anyone take me up on my offers. I figure that if I am supposed to see the image of the Living God in people, I may have to wrestle it out of them. God never takes offense at the challenge of greater intimacy. But I think God would be royally pissed if I gave him money just to get out of my face. Fear and pity are not the same as love.

On the other hand, I think it is also a feature of living a (mostly) privileged existence that we're always afraid of getting cheated. I try not to act out of such fear, but pastoral care for the scam artist is a tricky thing. The people who see churches and pastors as marks do need something. Sometimes they are really poor.

Working with the - shall we call them the sympathetic poor? - can be just as frustrating. Some folks learn helplessness and figure why try to live on a budget when life will simply kick your legs out from under you? Why bother trying to save something, or get out of debt, or expect anything better for your children than you got? Sometimes they find ingenious ways to sabotage themselves. Conventional wisdom says that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Often I've felt like throwing my hands in the air and giving up, because if the man keeps eating the bait and leaving the fishing pole at home then how can you teach him anything?

Then again, perhaps it is not my place to teach, but to learn.

Anyway, I would like to issue a challenge to preachers, especially those preaching to middle-to-upper-class congregations. The next time Satan tempts you to trot out an abstraction of "the homeless" or "the poor" to make your homiletical point, try to have someone in particular in mind. Who is the poor? Give them a face, a situation, a name.