poverty « Wondering Fair

Social Justice

27 01 2012

I was taking a walk at a park when I saw Claudio from the distance. I walked toward him to begin a conversation. He was clearly a ragamuffin and seemed to have some level of mental disorder. I greeted him and asked his name. I remember asking: “Do you have any food to eat?” “I knock at people’s door and eat what they give me” Claudio calmly replied. His eyes seemed distant and his answers were concise. We spoke briefly and I offered help. He refused any assistance and soon decided to walk away.

A few days later my heart sank once again. My brother told me he had given a pair of shoes he no longer wore to the man who watches over the cars parked on the streets near a university campus. The man’s reaction was one of overwhelmed joy and gratitude (perhaps the same as the one most of us would have if somebody gave us us us a Ferrari).

You and I live in a world marked by profound social injustice.

According to a study commissioned by the United Nations food agency, about one third of all food produced for human consumption in the world today is wasted or lost. At the same time, according to the World Health Organization, hunger is the single most serious threat to the world’s public health. Around 25000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day, including 6 million children every year.

How does this make you feel? I guess one of the most common reactions in people who genuinely consider or face social injustice is a sense of revolt and revulsion. We want to rightly shout: “This is not fair!” Don’t you agree?

But why is it not fair? Who are we to say this condition is unjust? Though it may seem cruel to even ask these questions, I do it for the sole purpose of reminding us that an absolute outside pattern is necessary for any situation to be considered just or unjust.

As C. S. Lewis expressed: “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”[1]

The reality of God, therefore, is what offers humanity a criterion to live by and enables us to determine what is and what is not just. This includes social issues. If the global social injustice breaks our heart, it is because first and foremost it breaks God’s heart. When we cry: “it’s not right!” We are but echoing the cry of God.

There are literally hundreds of references in the bible to God’s concern for social justice. Among them are: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”[2] “For I, the LORD, love justice”[3]. “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”[4]

God not only speaks against social injustice, he also chose to immerse himself in this reality through the incarnation of Jesus, the God-Son. And moreover, through the death and resurrection of Jesus he inaugurated an injustice-free kingdom which will be fully established after Christ’s second coming. When this happens, the bible affirms, there “…will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.”[5]

Undoubtedly we must do whatever we can, wherever we can and whenever we can do to eliminate any form of social injustice in the world. But we are not alone on this mission. There’s a God through whom we know what social justice should look like, who has spoken so clearly regarding it and who is establishing a fully just kingdom for those who belong to him.

Hélder Favarin

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

[2] Isaiah 1:17

[3] Isaiah 61:8

[4] Zechariah 7:9

[5] Rev. 21:4

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Tags: faith, God, hunger, justice, mercy, poverty, social justice
Categories : Making a Difference

When the Living’s Uneasy

18 11 2011

A friend of mine, married with two children, once confessed that he felt a bit guilty about buying a three bedroom house in a leafy, desirable London suburb. It wasn’t that he felt it was the wrong place. On the contrary, it was exactly the right place. Almost too right; a more comfortable, more suitable and more desirable dwelling than the majority of people in the world could ever afford or even imagine calling ‘home.’ My friend had previously worked in Africa and come face to face with serious impoverishment. How now could he justify his well paid job and comfortable lifestyle? What was he supposed to think about these things? And how was he to escape his sense of unease?

There’s a fine line between living well and living rightly. The problem is not that wealth doesn’t satisfy, the problem is that wealth satisfies way too much. It fulfils so many human longings—security, comfort, influence, choice, identity… it seems to make everything ‘alright’ but it can blind us to the fact that hardship is the norm for most of the world’s inhabitants. Too much comfort and security can push us away from those who have the opposite, from those who have less or nothing, and who live in fear as a result of material lack.

A parallel problem is that Jesus chose to identify himself with the poor. This means that, for Christians at least, the extent to which we remove ourselves from the poor is, in some sense, the extent to which we remove ourselves from Christ, from God.

My friend was concerned about all these things. Some kinds of tension are incompatible with Christian spirituality, but some tensions, I believe, are entirely appropriate. It’s not a bad thing to worry that one’s house is too big or one’s personal expenditure too large. Perhaps they are! And perhaps they can be used differently. Uneasiness on its own does nobody any good. But if unease becomes the seat of fresh vision, and if that vision effects positive change, then there is a place for disquiet in the Christian life.

Madi Simpson

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Tags: Africa, home, Jesus, lifestyle, living, London, mission, poverty, suburb, wealth
Categories : Making a Difference

Pastel Dreams and Apartheid

12 01 2011

Desmond Tutu has a little children’s book called God’s Dream.[1] In soft pastel paintings of kids from all nations, we discover that God dreams about people sharing and caring, “that we reach out and hold one another’s hands and play one another’s games and laugh with one another’s hearts.” Yeah, right. Tell that to victims in the Soweto riots or Sharpeville massacres: “Sure, the big boys were a bit rough, but brush it off, accept their apology, and play together as good kids should.”

Facing legitimated racism, ‘forgiveness’ seems naïve at best, and unjust at worst. Such religious drivel enshrines platitudes in place of pragmatism. What we need—sceptics and sufferers alike insist—is cold, hard justice.

What are we to make of such objections? Did Mandela take a wrong turn in appointing Tutu to chair the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC)?

The TRC, you may remember, was established in 1995 to investigate politically and racially motivated human rights abuses during apartheid. It sought to restore victims’ dignity through recompense and rehabilitation, and grant amnesty on a case by case basis to any person—whether black or white, to avoid “victor’s justice”—who confessed the full extent of their atrocities. This had to be done within a grace period, after which point the full weight of the law would fall on the head of the impenitent.

Was the TRC warm-hearted but soft-minded; the kind of fairy-tale we tell our kids but ignore as adults?

I think not. As Tutu once said, “Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.” Cold, retributive justice may be one such sham, as both the African and Biblical understanding is “far more restorative—not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”[2] But if we reject the icy logic of retribution, what hope have we of reaching final restoration? How can we not slip into weak sentimentality and passivity before evil? Tutu, I suspect, would see truth and grace as South Africa’s two feet on the long walk to reconciliation.

First, truth. Tutu experienced apartheid. He knew first hand that “God does not force us to be friends or to love one another. … Dear child of God, it does happen that we get angry and hurt one another. Then we feel sad and very alone. Sometimes we cry, and God cries with us.”[3] Reconciliation is never at the expense of truth. We don’t move forward by forgetting the past. God is “notoriously biased in favour of those without clout,” so the TRC disarmed the powers by bringing all injustice into the light.

Second, grace. Forgiveness follows admission of fault. It is both altruistic, and “the best form of self-interest” as Tutu explained. For in forgiving, you are no longer locked in victimhood, chained to the perpetrator. But this grace—returning good for evil—goes deeper yet: “When we say we’re sorry and forgive one another, we wipe away our tears and God’s tears too.” Why? Because “God dreams that every one of us will see that we are all brothers and sisters—yes, even you and me.”[4] Judgment begets judgment, but what if “my humanity is bound up in yours”? What if “freedom is indivisible,” and that the enemy is in reality another child of God: family? Surely, then, even as judgments must be rendered, our arms should remain ever open to embrace the other as part of ourselves. In Xhosa, this is called ‘ubuntu’ (oo-BOON-too): I am what I am because of who we all are. As the “rainbow people of God,” ubuntu extends to all.

The TRC’s resolution, as novel as it sounds, was not new. It was always God’s dream to reconcile all people to Himself as one family (2 Corinthians 5:14-21). And this dream moved from platitude to pragmatism when the Creator of the Universe called down from the cross to his crucifiers, “Father, forgive them, for they do not understand your dream.”[5] Truth declares our solidarity in sin. Grace offers amnesty for a time to the truly penitent. Justice is ultimately delivered to all who refuse to turn from their complicity in evil. And God’s dream of reconciliation is eternally realized for all those humble enough to forgive and be forgiven. May we in 2011 live toward this dream depicted in Tutu’s children’s book, that one day we will all join hands and play together under the tree of life from which flows healing to the rainbow nation.

Dave Benson

[1] Desmond Tutu, God’s Dream (Melville, SA: Jacana Media, 2009).

[2] Tutu, “Recovering from Apartheid,” in The New Yorker, 18 November 1996.

[3] Tutu, God’s Dream.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Desmond Tutu, “God Suffers for Us,” in Children of God: Storybook Bible (Malaysia: PrettyInPress, 2010).

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Tags: Africa, apartheid, Desmond Tutu, grace, justice, poverty, reconciliation, TRC, truth
Categories : Making a Difference, The Heart of Faith

Poverty, Oppression and Freedom

1 12 2010

“The people shall share the nation’s wealth.” Really?

This optimistic slogan—painted post-apartheid—spanned a 20 metre bridge I recently crossed on the outskirts of Cape Town. Pastor Phumezo picks me up in his struggling 4WD from a comfortable Villa near the ocean and boutique shops, drives us toward Mandela Park Community Church. This white Australian boy wasn’t quite prepared for where he was going: Kyelitsha.

Kyelitsha, Phumezo informed us, is a sprawling township of around two million people, second only to Soweto. Seventy percent of people live in corrugated iron shacks, below a subsistence income of $250 USD per family per month. The vast majority are unemployed. Crime is at epic proportions. Hospitals are almost nonexistent to support the 30 percent of residents with HIV/AIDS.

As we enter the township, rubbish lines the streets, and a few cars are overturned next to a pile of burning tyres. Phumezo explains that this is the remnant of recent riots; locals protested the lack of basic services. We skirt around the mayhem, and pass over this concrete bridge. It mocks the people with its empty promise: “The people shall share the nation’s wealth.” I later asked Phumezo’s congregants if this promise had come true. I didn’t need the translator to interpret seventy Xhosa people shaking their heads. How do we make sense of post-apartheid poverty?

Mandela is a hero in South Africa, and remembered for this struggle against the apartheid. But he was always a realist. He recognized that “the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.” Further, he knew that abolishing political apartheid was not full freedom: “we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed.” In Mandela’s analysis, he left South Africa ready to take the “first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”[1]

I suspect Mandela is not surprised that post-apartheid South Africa is no utopia. The subsequent battles with
bureaucracy and crime are perhaps even more fierce than what went before. That said, I wonder if the problem is deeper than even Mandela suggests. Perhaps our predilection for labelling and segregating ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ in neat categories obscures the path to the deepest type of ‘freedom’?

As Miroslav Volf insightfully observes,

“The longer the conflict continues the more both parties find themselves sucked into the vortex of mutually reinforcing victimization, in which the one party appears more virtuous only because, being weaker, it has less opportunity to be cruel. … [The ‘oppression/liberation’ schema] betrays an ideological blindness because it fails to entertain the idea that when the victims become liberators, it is they, and not only the oppressors, who might need to change. … [L]iberators are known for not taking off their soldiers’ uniforms.”[2]

In other words, problems don’t go away with a change of administration. ‘Apartheid’ is entrenched in the heart of each and every person. “To live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others …” is the pressing need. Yet the project flounders because “I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners.”[3] We are all broken, and we all break. We were designed for good: to love God, love each other, and cultivate this garden planet. Yet we’ve turned inward, self-righteously seeing the problem as ‘other’ than us. We’ve despised and ignored our Creator, abused the other, and vandalized the world. We have each missed the mark for which we were created. We are radically segregated from God, each other, our planet, and even ourselves, blind to our “solidarity in sin.”[4]

So what am I suggesting? Simply this: the first step toward respecting and enhancing the freedom of others, is to recognize that none of us are innocent. We all share the blame for a world gone wrong. We are all in need of forgiveness and redemption. And as cliché as it sounds, the heart of the human problem truly is the problem of the human heart. But who can ‘fix’ this?

I guess that’s why Phumezo and his parishioners will group together in their simple concrete shack this Christmas. Amidst the squalour and empty promises of post-apartheid South Africa, they brim with hope. For in recognizing their own brokenness, they can humbly accept the coming of a liberator born as a powerless baby out back in the shed. As the only truly “innocent victim,” God-in-the-flesh willingly embraced our poverty as one of us, so that in His love all the nations may genuinely share in His Kingdom’s wealth. And as these folks each enter this deeper freedom from sin, they walk beyond the apartheid of oppressor and oppressed, black and white, rich and poor, toward true reconciliation.

Dave Benson

[1] Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Lancaster Place, London: Abacus, 1994), 751.

[2] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 103-4.

[3] Ibid, 124.

[4] Ibid, 84.

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Tags: Africa, AIDS, apartheid, blame, Cape Town, Christmas, freedom, innocence, Nelson Mandela, poverty, sin, solidarity, South Africa
Categories : The Heart of Faith

God Listens

10 11 2010

One of the most common things people identify with God is that He isn’t deaf. That’s why people pray at all. We love the idea that God listens – even the sceptic might give it a try occasionally. God’s ability and willingness to listen is one of the most endearing facets of His character as revealed in the Bible. But it’s also one of the most confronting at times. That’s because God listens to everybody’s prayers to Him, even those we don’t want Him to.

I once heard a missionary from Ethiopia say that poverty actually had very little to do with money – it had to do with nobody listening to you. Money is just one mechanism among many we have for getting people to listen to us. In some cultures, certain people who don’t have money at all are certainly not poor. If you have the cash, a gun, or the presidential seal, people might disagree, but they’ll listen. But without them, your voice is worthless. And then, you’re poor.

The thing is, the Bible makes it abundantly clear that God does listen to the poor, and especially because nobody else will listen to them. God actually said that the central Old Testament redemption story, the Israelites’ rescue from Egyptian slavery, occurred because “I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers.”(Exo 3:7) Some quasi-historians ridicule the Exodus story, because there is no evidence of the Israelites ever being in Egypt. Real historians know there wouldn’t be any evidence – the slaves were too worthless for everybody to listen to them. Everybody was too busy listening to the Egyptians. But God listened. And soon the Egyptians had to listen.

God even listens to dead people, who we usually don’t think say much at all. When Cain killed his brother, then tried to deny it, God said, “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.”(Gen 4:10) Cain had tried to shut his brother up, permanently. But God listened. And then Cain had to listen.

This is one of those things we admire about God, that He listens to all those poor ol’ poor… until we realise that there are actually poor in our midst. We didn’t notice, of course, because well, we weren’t listening. We figure they’re not worth listening to. They’re worthless. But God listens – precisely because nobody else hears, He listens. And then we’ll have to listen.

I think this is an aspect lost on both sides of the abortion debate, for example. Some people argue so much about what God says with His mouth, they forget what He’s doing with His ears. In the debate, one major demographic involved in it doesn’t really get to have a say. They can’t speak, you see. They never make a sound. They are, undoubtedly, poor. Sometimes we tell ourselves they’re not actually human, anyway, and so wouldn’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation. They’re worthless. But despite the fact we think they can’t speak – no, precisely because of the fact we think they can’t speak – maybe, just maybe, God listens. He’s heard the dead before. And then the living had to listen.

Mind you, on the other hand, sometimes the protesters’ shrill screams at a 15 year-old girl walking into clinics drowns out her voice, too. I wonder what she’d say? We can’t ask her parents, since she’s too terrified to tell them. We can’t ask her boyfriend, since he’s too busy making jokes about her with his friends. We can’t ask her school, because the PTA got her expelled because of her “bad influence” (the boy can stay). She is, undoubtedly, poor. In fact, she feels worthless.

What about her church? I guess if they’d listened – not lectured, just listened, the way God listens – she might not feel the need to be going to the clinic anyway. I suspect that the other teenage mum, who still stayed at the church down the road, found people there listened to her. In fact, I suspect she’d be able to tell us that when they listened, it was the first step to her realising God listened too… and that listening was priceless.

Matt Gray