This is my first time posting on our book that we are reading together.  This is for a couple of reasons.  Partly, because it was Kim’s idea to post on the book and share with our blog community.  For the most part, though, it’s been because I haven’t been extremely excited about the book up until this point.  I had pretty much agreed with everything it has been saying in it’s main points and really didn’t disagree with it.  It was more just where I felt it was placing emphasis and I felt it was a little too much one sided in it’s approach.

However, after reading chapter 3, everything has changed.  I’m now sold on this book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to get an understanding behind why poverty exists and what can be done about it or what are the best ways or attitudes to have in going about attempting to eliminate poverty.  Let me share a little bit of my reactions from chapter 3 to illustrate.

One of the main points put forward by chapter 3 is that poverty is a result of sin in the world- the sin of humanity, the brokenness in relationships between humanity and God and humanity with each, but also the brokenness in creation in general.  Because of the fact of this, the answer can only come from God through his reconciliation.  In Colossians Chapter 1, the Apostle Paul talks about God’s desire to reconcile “all things” unto Him, so Jesus Christ is the reconciler and since poverty is caused by these broken relationships, the solution to poverty is in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.  This means that we, his creation, and our actions are not the source reconciliation but through God alone.  But it’s our job as his created beings to be ambassadors of reconciliation.  Again, the Apostle Paul says it best:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).

In this way, in working to alleviate poverty it is a ministry of reconciliation where we assist in doing God’s work of moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, self, others and with the rest of creation.

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs from the chapter:

The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world into middle-to-upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness.  Nor is the goal to make sure that the materially poor have enough money…. Rather, the goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be, people who glorify God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation. (p. 78)

As one may conclude from this and is stated later in the chapter: “Ultimately, the profound reconciliation of the key relationships that comprise poverty alleviation cannot be done without people accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.”  Amen brother!!!

Now, I must say the chapter was very balanced in that though all this was said about the reconciliation of people to God, it also talked much about the need for reconciliation in systems.  And very short but well written explanations of systems that are broken and in need of reconciliation.  For example, they explained well what happened in the 70’s with OPEC and the rising oil prices and how so much of the developing world is still in debt because of those events.  As well as, a little more thorough and well laid out explanation was provided of what happened in the African American communities after slavery was abolished and how there have been many broken systems that have all played a part in that story.

Finally, and I will end with this thought, I loved how they gave emphasis on the local church and that the local church is the main conduit for God’s reconciliation with his Creation.  Parachurch ministries are important of course but it is only through the local church that lives can truly be transformed in community and poverty can truly be alleviated.

Everyone should read this book!!!

Report This Post

For More information about The Divine Office visit:

http://divineoffice.org/

Report This Post

The 1st part of Chapter 2 starts with asking the question: What is poverty? In the 90’s, the World Bank asked this question to the poor themselves to try to get a better understanding of poverty. Those results, FYI, were published in a 3 volume series of books called, Voices of the Poor. Before I give a couple quotes from the poor themselves, I ask YOU who are reading to take a couple of minutes and write down your thoughts about what YOU think poverty is…
From Cameroon, one person explains poverty as: “{The poor have} a feeling of powerlessness and an inability to make themselves heard.”

From Vietnam: “If you are hungry, you will always be hungry, if you are poor, you will always be poor.”

And from Uganda: “When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior. She has no food; so there is famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family”

I’m interested to know how YOU in your few minutes to think of what poverty was described poverty. I think the tendency is to think of poverty in terms of material things, or lack thereof. Did you notice that the way that the poor described poverty, although they discuss lack of material things, they also discuss their poverty in psychological and social terms such as inferior, no progress, powerlessness, and lack of being heard.. This is probably different from how you desribed poverty.

An important focus of this chapter can be summed up in this quote:

“This mismatch (the one I talked about above) between many outsiders’ perceptions of poverty and the perceptions of poor people themselves can have devestating consequences for poverty-alleviating efforts.”

A different way to look at it is looking at it like going to the doctor. If you see a doctor and they misdiagnose you or treat only your symptoms and not the cause of your illness, will you get better? It is similar in working with the poor. If only symptoms are treated or if the problems are misdiagnosed, the poor will not improve their situation, and their lives might be made worse!

For more information on this book you can check out this website:
http://www.whenhelpinghurts.org/

Report This Post