The Passion Of The Poor
What is it about passion that causes us to admire it in those that seem to carry it with fervency? There are many types of passion - the passion of desire; the passion of creativity and one’s purpose. I’ve been made aware of a new type of passion that has no creative reason and no connection to success or material gain. It is the passion of the poor.
The Bible speaks much about the poor and gives us instructions on how to help the poor and oppressed of our society. Every culture has its own brand of poverty and those that are unable to break its cycle. Those of us that know success are usually unaware of the cycle of poverty. We are unaware that poverty is imposed on those who are born into it. For everyone who is able to break out of this cycle there are at least one hundred more who are not able to escape its oppressive clutches. I’ve heard friends talk about how the poor are lazy and if they would only work harder they would be able to improve their lives and get out from under the grasp of poverty. After many years of working with the poor and disadvantaged I’ve come to understand that the poverty cycle often cannot be broken, even with harder work. In fact, the harder some of these people work the farther they descend into poverty. The answer to poverty is not a simple one, nor is the consequences of poverty easily explained or understood.
The type of poverty I’m speaking of is inherited. Inherited poverty is the by-product of nations who have been made poor by economic and political decisions that stem from empire strategies’, greed and selfish posturing. Over the years this type of selfish government produces a form of poverty that breeds squander and ghetto conditions. It becomes a culture that you are born into with little hope of getting out of.
We here in the west have a sanitized view of the poor. They are the people we need to feed, house and clothe. As long as we make an effort to care for the poor we feel good about ourselves. I’ve heard people say they “need to help the poor” but have no idea beyond the soup kitchen or giving clothes to the local shelter on how to actually help the poor. These are stopgap reactions to poverty and will only keep the poor fed and clothed. It will never solve the problem of poverty.
Is it possible to stop poverty? Are the poor that bad off in the first place? After some time with people I would consider poor I have asked myself these questions. These people are not starving to death nor are they running around naked because they have no clothes. No, they are the economic orphans of the developing world. They are the direct product of years of oppressive rulers and economic systems that have failed to bring equality to these citizens of the world. They have become the victims of our success. They make our high-end shoes and handbags. They harvest the food we eat and manufacture most of the products we purchase at discount prices. We all love a “deal” and want to save a buck. Have we considered the cost of all of this? The bottom line is the old principle that has unfortunately been given new approval and is the new business plan of many companies. They make their money off the toil of the poor and impoverished. I’m not talking about slavery that dates back to ancient times, but business trends currently operating in emerging countries. Countries that are becoming economically stable. The cost of this stability has a price tag on it and it hangs on the necks of the penniless.
These are the people who work and live under the weight of economic burden. I’ve seen the faces of these people, spent time with them personally. They carry this tonnage well. They still smile and live life with dignity and honor. I saw something recently that has opened my eyes to what I call “the passion of the poor”. These people are passionate about life despite the resistance it imposes. They have a resilience that keeps them coming back day after day to the same task, no matter how difficult that task might be. Their faces are road maps of despair and travel guides for hardships.
I met an aged man at our clinic (he was my age, but seemed ten years older than me). He had very few teeth, his skin was weather beaten and scared. His wrinkles were canyons of suffering that have overflowed with tears from years of sorrow. Yet he wanted to tell me how happy he was to meet me. I had never met this man before he had somehow heard about our clinic work in Hue and wanted to come and meet us. He was not visibly sick nor did he wish to be examined by a doctor or dentist. His opinion of himself was that he was OK. He only wanted to meet us. He was extending a hand of friendship and not one of want. He was dressed in what we would assess as rags. He was all smiles, a toothless smile, from ear to ear. This man had no burdens, no liabilities. All he sought was friendship. His needs were elementary, with no request other than to be seen and heard. All he could say was thank you. Few words were spoken but you heard him speak volumes of gratitude and appreciation.
This man had a quality of life that that was beyond what we would term the good life . The poor have a code they live up too. They live with a dependence on each other. They have developed a need for guidance. Their understanding of dependence has spilled over into the simple faith they possess. They have a strong sense of hope and belief in an after life. The people I’ve meet have no difficulty listening to conversation about God. I detected no bitterness or anger amongst our dialogs together.
I’ve watched the poor worship. It is with an abandonment that is rare in our successful, lucrative culture. They do not have a hope in the present, many have known no other way of life. They are not looking for nirvana in this life. Do they desire to stay in poverty? I do not think so. Are they all thinking of ways to abandon the garments of their poverty? I do not think so. The needs of the poor are simple -food, water and friendship. A place to work or a piece of land to cultivate, this is a full life for the poor. Do I worry about the poor? No. I worry about us that will some day answer the question of how we regarded the poor. Did we respect them? Did we make room for them to develop as a people group. In the Bible when Jesus spoke of the poor He said, “we would always have them”. That is why I think we will never solve the heritage of the poor. I do think we can understand them and learn something of value from them. We must also make room for them to improve.
Being poor of is not a character deficiency, but a condition. We can treat the poor with dignity and courtesy. They do not want our hand-me-downs nor do they want those things that did not work for us in the first place. We can give them a fair chance to improve and begin the process of climbing out of the deficit of poverty. We can learn a lot about real freedom from the impoverished. The freedom to be free from what the Scriptures call “thirsting again”, that constant desire for something else, something new. We can learn to live with a passion for what we have instead of what we want to have.
