I recently read a disturbing article about poverty.
Bring Back the Welfare the Stigma
In my opinion, this is an unacceptable perspective for Christians. Here's why:
First, all people are made in the image of God. As a result, the whole witness of Scripture expects that God's people treat all people with dignity. Any
stigma that fails to live up to this ideal falls short of what God expects. I'll just say it:
It's sinful.
I could stop the post right there. But let's explore this a little more.
Christopher Wright says that one of the worst things about poverty is that it is dehumanizing. How so?
First, it's dehumanizing because it limits one's means of providing for oneself and one's family. That includes those who cannot (or will not) work and those who work really hard and still can't provide enough. Theologically, God created humans for work. When there’s no work or not enough comes from hard work, it is less than God’s ideal for humans. This is dehumanizing in the profoundest theological sense.
Second, Wright suggests that it's dehumanizing because stigma converts persons into a political topic. This article suggests that we bring the stigma back. Read it. It’s full of convincing points. But notice what the author doesn’t do: he doesn’t talk about the poor as poor men or poor women. He comes close when he talks about children. But even here it’s a category, a label that fails to recognize the little one who needs to eat––three times today. In other words, the author puts a whole group of people in a category. But this isn’t his greatest dehumanizing sin: he then uses the category for his own political gain. He’s writing to win the reader to his position.
Wright discusses this removal of personhood as he explores
Deuteronomy 15. Here Israelites are forced to sell themselves into debt-servitude. They can’t make ends meet, and so they have to sell themselves to another Israelite. Wright explains that the point here is that these people should always be treated not just as persons but as one of the people of God. After working for six years, the Israelite is to be released from his debt. But this isn’t all. He is to be supplied liberally from what the lender/master has. This is the Israelite welfare program and it’s an intensely personal welfare program. There’s no stigma here––only caring for the poor among you. (Notice, too the language that expects the Israelites to care also for the non-Israelites living in their towns throughout Deuteronomy.)
It’s clear that, as Christians, the only stigma that we should have for people is: this is a person who God made and loves enough to die for.
So, what is the alternative to this article’s diatribe that advocates for stigma? I have three thoughts:
FIRST:
If you think that the poor should be shamed, then I challenge you to spend a couple of afternoons this week at your local DHS office. Just take a book and hang out for a few hours. Here’s what I’ve seen at mine:
- I’ve seen some of what I expect. You know, the guy who’s freeloading on ‘Mer’ca. But …
- I’ve seen scores of elderly women––doubtless too old to compete in a tight job market––or just too old to work.
- I’ve seen scores of moms with young children. I suspect that they probably don’t have skills to get a high paying job. But even my stigmatizing friends must give them credit for their arithmetic: If she goes to work at McD’s for $9/hr and then pays someone $10/hr/child for child-care… Isn’t it better for her to stay home and raise her own kids than to go into debt so she can work at McD’s? (It seems to me that we should rejoice in the fact that she kept her children in eutero instead of condemning her for standing in line at DHS.)
- There are also men. I don’t know their stories. But their faces tell a different story than the freeloaders. And when you listen to them go to the window, you can overhear their stories. Maybe they’ve been laid off. Maybe they made a dumb mistake like wrecking the company truck or failing a drug-test. But, again, in a tight job-market, who’s going to hire a guy like that when they have other options?
What are these folks supposed to do? For a moment let us (perfect-people) forget the fact that they may have made mistakes (getting pregnant––if you’re of the sort that thinks this can be a “mistake,” wrecking the company truck).
Right now they find themselves stuck. How should the mom feed her children this evening? How should the young man care for his family if he can’t get work? How should the elderly woman feed herself?
SECOND:
I know many people who work hard––really hard––yet find themselves just unable to make the payments. These aren’t people who have squandered their money or made poor decisions like driving new cars. They’re people who are trying their best to put food on the table, a roof over their head, and care really well for their children by spending time with them rather than excessive time at work. (When you work ¾ of your week so you can send your kiddos to daycare, it’s hardly worth the money.) These are people who are doing what they can to make ends meet––at the expense of doing stuff like saving for college or retirement.
I know many of these people who are ministers to the body of Christ.
I know many seminarians like this. They feel God’s call on their life and they make the financial sacrifices to follow in faithfulness. These folks can stretch a dollar as far as anyone. These folks go into debt. (Seminary isn’t cheap.) But these folks also feel guilty about “taking the handout.” Many of them choose an unhealthy amount of debt instead of the handout.
I don’t think I can judge them either way––handout or no. But it’s hard for me to not pass judgment on the communities of Christians that sent them to seminary, fail to support them while they’re at seminary, and then pay too little for them to pay their school loans and care sufficiently for their families when they graduate from seminary. The story is that the low-paying youth-ministry gig is “entry level job.” And other seminarians feel called to non-lucrative ministries like church-planting or missions. Yet, sadly, I find that these conservative Christian communities are the same ones who shout the loudest about shaming the poor.
Over their shouts I hear Moses’ admonition, picked up later by Paul, ringing: care for the Levite, who serves YHWH and doesn’t have an inheritance of land. In other words, his vocation is the ministry; make sure he has enough. I hear Moses, picked up later by Paul, who admonishes the people of God to not muzzle an ox while it treads the grain.
THIRD:
If
1.) you’re a Christian and
2.) you don’t know people in this kind of poverty and
3.) insist that we should stigmatize “the poor,”
then you should be quiet and listen. You can speak up after you’ve had some time to listen
to people. It's not that we can't understand the issues without entering into poverty. But that's just the point. We don't need to understand issues, we need to know
people.
By “know a poor person” I mean: come alongside that person financially, emotionally, professionally.
- The financial piece is obvious.
- But I add “emotionally” because poverty is a dehumanizing experience. It is the result of work corrupted: whether the work is long and hard and doesn’t provide enough or whether the a person doesn’t work (one’s choice doesn’t matter––there’s emotional damage either way). Not participating in meaningful work is dehumanizing. We were created for work.
- And I say “professionally” because we should be advocating for and teaching and training and offering meaningful work to (if we have the means) those who are impoverished.
I’m not talking to Republicans and Democrats here––both commit the stigma sin. No, I’m speaking to my brothers and sisters in Christ––those of us who say, along with our King, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” To my brothers and sisters: If you don’t know someone who’s poor, then be quiet. Spend some time listening. And––it’s important that we do this AFTER listening––walk enough miles
with a person to own their poverty for yourself.
- - - - - - -
The political answer is complicated and easy. But the Christian answer is simple and difficult: We are called to treat people as … well, people.
And
we certainly know what that means.
Each poor person is a person made in the image of God, a person for whom Christ died. A person who is standing in a food line must be known––not stigmatized. Political parties don't have time for knowing; they have time for votes.
But followers of Jesus must take time to know people. After all, we know something truly amazing about poor people already. We know that whenever we take the time to shut our mouths, open our ears, and fulfill the needs of food, drink, clothes, work, … to the least––we do these things for Christ himself.
It seems, then, that our task isn’t to stigmatize the poor, but to train ourselves to see stigmata in the poor, to see the wounds of Jesus in the pain of the other. The King and his Kingdom is close to us in these places.
