My apologies for not writing for the past 3 Sundays. I emerged from several hard work weeks without any writing ideas or much desire to write. I was going through a spiritual dry season as winter wound down here. It is good that I do not live in northern Canada, where it snows every month but July. :-) For the past several years, winter has been a very hard season for me. Two winters in a row, I went through layoffs at work. In winter of last year, I was going through the end of a courtship - recurring despondency that was only starting to heal in the fall, but by then the despondency merely shifted focus toward my poor performance at work, where it stayed through this winter. Also, due to health reasons, I could not hike or fast during the winter this year. Yesterday was the first day that I could fast in 3 months. And how good it was to be back on the trail!Over time, I'll write more about my trip to the Philippines. For now, I want to zero in on one recurring thought that I have had since before I went. It has only gotten stronger since I came back.
There are no poor people in America. Or, at least, there are very, very few of them.
I pay little attention to politics. People all over this country get very riled up listening to talk show hosts, whose job is merely to make people mad at the government when they have only an infinitesimal capacity to change anything about it. So I don't really know much about the Occupy protests except that they are "the 99%" - the "poor" people in America - protesting against "the 1%" - the richest people in America.
This is where it helps to have a worldview that includes as much of the world as possible - not just your own country or your own friends.
In the Philippines, I got to meet both of my current sponsored children and my past sponsored child, who had left the program because his family's financial situation improved. The two youngest kids met me in the Mall of Asia. This was like bringing them into my world. With my oldest sponsored child, who is now college-age, I went into his world and visited his home. Compassion/World Vision sponsors, this is a significant experience. Do it if you have the chance.
The only way to get to this young man's house is on foot. My driver, his assistant pastor, parked his van outside the neighborhood after he had driven it as close as he could. We walked back down a road that could barely accommodate the van - really more like an alley. And then we found his house.
Many houses here in the States have decorative front doors with windows that let in light but are not designed to be seen out of or into. My sponsored young man's house doesn't even have a door. He has a gun that he uses to shoot stray animals that walk into the house, as well as a mosquito zapper. A makeshift door separates their bathroom from the rest of their house. The rest of the house is one room with a dirt floor. The roof is made of tarps. Where the tarps have failed, many buckets are tied up to collect rainwater. One of the few things they have going for them is that they live at a higher altitude than the surrounding area, so they weren't flooded out by Typhoon Ondoy a few years ago.
The house has two wooden beds in it with no mattresses. Eight people live there: the father and mother, plus their six sons. All the clothes they seem to have remain on two clotheslines outside the house. When his father's company closed last year, my sponsored young man had to stop going to college to take a five-month temp job to support his whole family, because two of his older brothers are also in college and closer to graduating. His mother works at a canteen in a school in their neighborhood, selling refreshments. She makes 100 pesos a day, which is about $2.50. This is only enough to pay their light bill in a small house with a minimal amount of electricity. I spend three or four times her daily wage to go out to dinner - several times a week.
Even more staggering to me is that $2.50 is actually two times the World Bank's most recent figure for the international poverty line: $1.25 a day. If my sponsored young man and his family of eight have to only live on this, how can so many people in the world live on less? They'd practically have to be starving. Over 20% of Filipinos and over 60% of people in many countries in Africa live on less than $1.25 a day. And most Americans think "poverty" means that they can't afford an Xbox 360 or the best TV on the market.
Also surprising is the high level of division between the haves and the have-nots in Philippine society. It's true in American society too, but we notice it less because our "poor" people, in most cases, have everything that they actually need. Many rich people in the Philippines live in gated communities with security guards who have to know who you are in the neighborhood to see. They don't seem to want anything to do with the poor people that surround them in Metro Manila and the neighboring provinces. Poor people there tend to, at best, be househelps who get to stay with rich people in houses that they can't afford to buy themselves, so that they can take care of the children of these rich people who often work much harder than they need to in order to provide both their needs and their wants. Americans do the same thing with daycare. But most of the poor people in the Philippines go mostly unnoticed - or at least unnoticed in positive ways - by the rich people. There seems to be a division in their body of Christ between churches that try to minister to rich people and churches that try to minister to poor people, but don't we also do that to some extent in America?
Getting back from the Philippines was a hard adjustment. I took an airline that I fell in love with during this trip and ate great food as I made the difficult journey west to east. After two days with no sleep during the travel, I slept in my own bed again, which I did not have to share with anyone else. I went back to work the day after I landed and received some difficult words in my annual performance review. And my way of thinking became American again rather quickly: why did I get such a small raise?
There are heart issues here as well. Hebrews 13:5 directs us to "Keep yourselves free from the love of money." I think God has used this trip to the Philippines to expose my own love of money, when I thought I was being generous in giving to the poor and practicing wartime living. In reality, I have some of my dad's tendency to give a lot to charity and missions so that we can pay less in taxes to the government. But Jesus said, "Whose image is on that coin?" When we file our taxes, we watch our estimated refunds go up and up until we are done and wonder what we will blow the money on when we get it. So in giving to others, we really want to just bless ourselves.
In my case, the ATMs I use always tell me my account balance when I take money out. Single and saving for a house, I am looking to pay cash for a small house so that I can live below my means and use as much of my income as I can to advance the gospel. But as my balances get bigger, so does my head. So does my pride in what I have accomplished so far. So does my desire to invest and reach my goal faster. So does my mentality that money is a significant motivator for my being in my line of work. So my testimony in the workplace degrades to, "Man, my dream car is an Aston Martin One-77!" You could sell a new Aston Martin One-77 or Bugatti Veyron and take almost everyone in my sponsored young man's entire city out to dinner. And his city has over half a million people. Why do we chase things that are so useless and excessive?
My pastor has been preaching through the book of James in our Saturday night services for young adults. Last night, he preached through James 2:1-7, a text about favoritism:
1 My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. 2 For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, 3 and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? 5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? 7 Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?
Several of his points included:
1. You can hold the faith that God saved you with in a way that does not please God! (v.1)
2. Do you care about people outside your own generation or small group in your church?
3. God chose poor believers to be rich in faith toward God and heirs to the Kingdom of God. (v. 5)
4. The fact that you dishonored this poor man negates all the books you read (Piper, Sproul, etc.) and all the Bible studies you go to. (v. 6)
A gold ring and fine (like sequins and bling) clothes reflect a super-rich status. These are celebrities. "Come to my church because Manny Pacquiao goes here." "Come to my church because so-and-so is preaching today." A poor man in shabby clothes is "dirt upon dirt upon dirt". If we favor rich people over poor people within the body of Christ, or make any other kind of favoritism distinction within the body, we become hypocrites - judges with evil motives (thoughts) (v.4).
These poor believers are "rich in faith" toward God. Their God is the same God as the God of the people who are rich in finances. But they are more able to see that God is more valuable than possessions. Living in America, we are more (or only) concerned about what we can get. "See what God is doing with the have-nots!"
These poor believers are also "heirs to the Kingdom of God." One of the most beautiful chapters in the Bible, Romans 8, begins with the precious statement, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." It spells out several facets of our common identity in Christ that we cannot ignore. We have the Spirit of Christ in us (v. 9). We are adopted as children of the Most High God (vv. 15-16). And we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (v. 17). Regardless of our income level, our ethnicity, our intellect, our spiritual qualifications, our popularity - God has made us co-heirs with His only begotten Son. "God prides Himself in saving you."
But what can poorer believers gain from us if all we do is spout doctrine? We can have all mysteries and knowledge and yet be nothing if we show it without love (v. 2). What can they gain from our slactivism, changing our Facebook profile pictures in support of their cause so that we feel good about it and make people sad about it? These people have real needs which must be met. If you are in America, you most likely do have the resources to help them.
"I don't want to just talk. I've got to show,
'Cause I've got a couple brothers in the hospital
And I've got a couple brothers from across the globe:
Poor or sick, with joy - you've got to know.
Feeling bad, you tell them, 'I want to pray for you'
But they feel worse, saying they want to pray for you.
Oh, you're thinking we've got it worse? It's a mistake for you.
Living in America is what's great to you.
No hating you. Prosperity's replaced the truth
When God is only enough, when He's gracin' you.
Y'all don't value faith. You only value what your faith can do.
Y'all love to eat, but hate on the Person who made the food.
So I'll pray for you, but let's make a truce:
When famine hits, you won't ignore the light like an ambulance.
Hold on to the Savior, even in the midst of your affliction.
Remember our condition. Your affliction's your chance to witness!"
- KB, "Enough".
