The question of the poor

I watched a child die. A little boy, maybe two years old, curled up on the edge of a hospital bed. His parents watched too. The clock ticked. There was nothing they could do. There was nothing to say. They would never get to know their son: never know his favourite food, hear him tell jokes, see him fall in love. He just dropped into a coma and died.

When a father has his infant son taken from him he feels the same about it; it doesn't make any difference if he has lost children before, or if his country has a higher rate of child mortality. As if he should have expected it, so shouldn't complain.

The father holding his dead child
in the smoking Beirut rubble

loves his child with a love

every bit as big as my love,

even though he has no money,

even though he has not read Shakespeare,

even though he was not born in the West. (Steve Turner, Fathers)

I've been thinking about the issue of poverty for years. My dad runs a Christian NGO, my uncle and aunt worked in Tanzania; I've been surrounded by it. I've observed it, talked about it, written songs and plays about it. I've actually got involved in doing stuff too: working with homeless people in London, rough kids in Southampton, young adults in Cape Town and Kampala. These days I lead a Sunday drop-in, participatory drama group, and other services for people struggling with homelessness, worklessness, mental ill health, addictions, and criminal records, as part of a church in Norwich. And nowhere have I found a more realistic and helpful response to the issues of poverty than in the Christian Bible.

The Bible describes people like the man above more bluntly than we might. My modern English translation calls them 'the poor'. There are many different words in the original Hebrew and Greek, which fit into three or four main ideas. The first very much expresses the experience of the father mentioned above: the word 'dangling' is often used, communicating the idea of extreme vulnerability; people living by the skin of their teeth. Similarly, 'the poor' are those who are destitute – they have been left with literally nothing. Think of refugees, trafficked women, rough sleepers. Thirdly, people who 'crouch', or are 'browbeaten'. Those who are perceived and/or perceive themselves as 'beneath' other people, and publically kept that way. Perhaps people of a lower class or caste, the unemployed or underemployed, even people with lower academic ability. Another expression for this might be 'the oppressed'. This is the word translated 'the poor' in the New Testament. Virtually every time Jesus, Paul, or anyone else refers to 'the poor', this is what they are describing.

Finally, there is a variation on that last term, conveying in some ways an opposite sense; voluntary humility. This is the word used in Isaiah 61.1, "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, because the LORD has appointed me to preach good news to the poor." These are Jesus' "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5.3); and the term is specifically used of those who will let God save them. If you've worked with the poor you will know that this is definitely not everyone! Although it does extend to anyone prepared to accept Jesus as Lord, the term still carries with it the emphasis of poverty, and so helps us to understand that from God's perspective, we are all poor (2 Corinthians 8.9). Equally, the term also emphasises the Bible's teaching that the materially poor are often also more 'poor in spirit' than the rich (Luke 18.25).

I know all this noodling around with language doesn't seem particularly productive, but answering the question of the poor is not another game of Bible Trivial Pursuit. People around us are swallowing more than their share of simple human tragedy. Their pain is real and there seems little hope that it will not keep happening. When I look at stats like 'half the world's population live on less than $2 a day', I think "I guess that's not very much. Maybe that's not very fair. But then, money isn't everything. Don't people who visit Africa always say how much happier people are there?"

I don't see what those figures look like in people's lives: every day a boy getting up, going to school, coming home, doing housework, playing with friends... and then having his only meal of the day, a small bowl of plain porridge. Or the father losing as many children as he keeps, the pain of every loss enduring through all the typical hardship of life long after I have forgotten him, never knowing when disease may take another away. That is what poverty means, in practice, in reality, in experience. Someone called it 'stupid poverty'. There is no reason why it should be allowed.

The Bible clearly shows that God doesn't want poverty. His intention is that "there shall be no poor among you."(Deuteronomy 15.4) A guy called Mike Pilavachi pointed out, "the only topic that has more teachings devoted to it in the whole Bible is idolatry."* Jesus expects every one of his followers to respond to the question of the poor – he says, "when you give to the needy" (Matthew 6.2). According to the gospels he spent the majority of his time ministering to them, and he promises that "whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do."(John 14.12) So the question of the poor seems to be directed to us: what are we going to do about it?

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I feel like too many preaches, books and songs on this subject only take us as far as saying 'something must be done'. If the Bible is 'profitable for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work' (2 Timothy 3.16-17), surely it must speak abundantly and potently into the practical contentions of working against the evil of poverty? I'm going to do a series of blogs over the next few weeks, not just to draw together the Biblical view of the poor, but begin to grapple with some Biblical responses to their need. I hope you'll join me.

*I wonder if, as idolatry is the opposite of the greatest commandment, 'Love God', accepting poverty is the opposite of the second, 'Love your neighbour' (Mark 12.28-34).