Faithful in Small Things: How to Serve the Needy When You're One of Them

Introduction

WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, my parents shared our home with many different people. Our door was open to an often-revolving group of houseguests, most of them people my parents met who had no place else to go. Some stayed a few days, others a few weeks or months, and others for years. Every person’s situation was different, but they were all welcome to share whatever we had. We always lived in small towns, which meant that we didn’t see people living on the streets quite as often as one might in larger cities. Nearby urban areas had shelters, soup kitchens, and other resources that made it easier to survive, so those without a home would usually find their way there. I sometimes wondered how my parents came to know so many people in need in our small town, because just by looking at our housemates it might have been hard to tell that they didn’t have homes. They didn’t push shopping carts around town or sleep on public sidewalks in the middle of town. Their clothes weren’t fancy, but neither were ours, so I thought they were just normal people. They were just normal people, and many became lifelong friends. For the vast majority, their need for shelter arose from no fault of their own. Even so, they found themselves in the extraordinary situation of not knowing where they would sleep until they got their lives back on track.

Despite the way we helped others, we were not immune to poverty either, and just before my ninth birthday, we lost our home, my dad lost his business, and we were forced to move about eight hundred kilometers away, relying on my widowed grandmother until we recovered financially. I consider myself privileged in many ways, not just because my family had a roof over our heads to share with others—though we too lost that roof at one point and needed others to help us—but because I have so many friends with whom I have shared my journey of life. While we were often financially needy, I am privileged to have a wealth of stories, experiences, and relationships that have profoundly shaped who I am now. I learned from the lives of others who generously shared their stories with me, some by telling me about their journey, and others by walking with me for a while on a shared path. I believe that stories are powerful, and each one shared is like a precious jewel.

I have also learned a great deal from the people in the congregation where I serve as pastor. Most of our people moved to Canada from Mexico, and stories abound of desperate poverty—which was often the reason for their move. I have been privileged to get to know the amazing people in our rural congregation and to watch them live generously even amid their own financial hardships. Their stories motivate me and are also part of my inspiration for writing.

I am writing this book to ordinary people who may not be able to afford to take trips overseas but who read the words of the Bible and feel compelled by God to do something to make this world a better place. I am writing to those who may be living under the poverty line but who are still striving to make a difference in the world. Our culture often assumes that those with extensive financial means will be the ones to make the biggest difference in our world, but I strongly believe that ordinary people have the most holistic and long-lasting impact. I believe that God has a unique and powerful role for all of us to help others who struggle with poverty. Resist the urge to downplay your own importance in these matters simply because of the small number in your bank account—there is a good chance that you are positioned to do an immense amount of good, not despite your financial struggles but precisely because of them. Firsthand experiences with poverty provide us an education more comprehensive than a university degree, not to mention the fact that those with less are many, and this strength in numbers also makes us mighty.

My hope is that over the course of reading this book, you will take stock of your own life and offer what you can to help those around you. I want to challenge some unhealthy ideas that sometimes lurk in our churches, and I hope to inspire us all to live more compassionate and generous lives.

In a relatively small book such as this, there are certain complexities and nuances that will not be adequately covered, and as such I expect that this book might cause some rigorous debate. We all have wisdom to bring to the table, and I’m sure that I could learn much from every person reading this. Regardless of whether we are politically conservative or liberal, whether we are Mennonites, Pentecostals, or from the Salvation Army, if we are Christians then we have the common ground of being followers of Jesus and believing that we have a part to play in God’s work in the world. My goal is to add something to this conversation and bring this topic to the forefront of our minds, with the hopes that we can each resolve to live out our faith in all kinds of ordinary and profound ways to serve the world around us and so bring glory to God.

This book is divided into four sections. The first one is focused on biblical foundations that have shaped the way I think and teach on this topic. The second section is about challenging the way we think about poverty, and the importance of relationships and healthy attitudes in how we seek to address poverty. In the third section, we will discuss more hands-on principles that can be used in how we live and work in the world as we try to make a difference. The last section is about what can happen when we take the brave step of serving others, including some ways we can fail, and what to do when that happens.

While you will find a great deal of food for thought in the coming pages, my aim is to help expand and further this very important conversation, not to be the final word on the subject. The journey we are embarking on in this book is an important one, and I am honored that you have chosen to travel it together with me as your conversation guide.

PART 1: The Bible on Poverty

The Bible has a lot to say about money and poverty, justice, generosity, and selflessness. There are also many lessons in Scripture about the dangers of greed, oppression, and inequality. These messages in God’s Word help guide, motivate, and shape our actions and our character in relationship to money and poverty. In the words of community development specialists and professors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, Although the Bible is not a textbook on poverty alleviation, it does give us valuable insights into the nature of human beings, of history, of culture, and of God to point us in the right direction. ¹ This first section focuses on some of the very important lessons the Bible offers as we seek to serve our world.

ONE

The Poverty in Us All

WE’RE MOVING TO LA CRETE. The words hung in the air like my dad’s cigarette smoke as my eight-year-old mind grappled with all the implications of that statement. We lived close to Edmonton, Alberta, but my parents were from a small town in the far northern reaches of the province, close to the Northwest Territories, to which we were now returning. The bank was foreclosing on our home and my dad’s business was in a tough spot, so we were moving up north to live in my grandmother’s basement.

I’d always known that money was tight. I had memories of watching my mother dig through the couch for nickels and dimes so we could buy milk for my baby sister. Yet we always had food to eat, and other people often came to our home for a meal or a place to sleep. But after housing so many people, it was now our turn to ask for help and to sleep on the floor in someone else’s home. I was about to lose not just my physical home but my friends, church, and community as well. How could this be happening?

My questions about my own family’s experience of homelessness led, in later years, to questions about why poverty exists in this world and how to define it. Were we poor because we had very little? Or because we lost our home? Or were we rich because we were able to help others in a small way? How we define poverty is important if we truly wish to help reduce it. Fortunately, the first pages of the Bible offer some clues.

The Genesis story depicts four kinds of human relationships, and reveals how the root of all poverty can be traced back to the breakdown of those relationships. The Bible’s origin story informs us that when God made humanity, we were made in the very image of our Creator. So who is this God, in whose image we are fashioned? Bryant L. Myers is a professor, author, and development expert who used this very important question as the basis for a model about the causes of poverty.¹ God is a relational being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We too are relational beings, and it is the breakdown of our relationships that result in various kinds of poverty.

Myers outlines the four kinds of human relationships depicted in the Genesis story: the relationship we have with God, others, ourselves, and creation. In the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, we see that their sin drove a wedge into their relationship with God; they hid from their Creator. Adam blamed Eve, who blamed someone else still—which is evidence of their broken relationship with each other. They now felt shame about their bodies and guilt for their actions, revealing pain in the way they viewed themselves. Something was also broken in their relationship with the earth, which required that Adam and Eve toil to grow food and scratch out their livelihood. When any one of these relationships falls apart, the result is some form of poverty. Myers’s four-part framework has helped me make sense of a lot of what I’ve experienced of poverty in the world. While poverty does include a lack of money at our disposal, it is so much more than that. Let’s take a deeper look at each of these four aspects of poverty.

US AND GOD

When sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were cut off from their immediate access to God. Pastors and theologians talk about the history of the world as having several important events: creation, fall, and redemption. Some add consummation as a fourth category, referring to our hope for eternity when there will be no more poverty of any sort. The first two of these categories, creation and fall, take up only a few short chapters at the beginning of Genesis. God created the world, and we rebelled, allowing sin to enter the world. The redemption part comes about ultimately in Jesus, who came to earth to restore the relationship between us and God. From the perspective of the Bible, the relationship between God and people is of utmost importance. That relationship is one of the main points of the whole book—the origin of how our relationship with God broke down, warnings about what drives us even further from God, and stories about what is needed to restore that relationship.

What does our relationship with God have to do with poverty? First, it points us to the reality of a type of spiritual poverty, in which our spiritual selves are starving because we are not connected to the source of true spiritual strength. In John 15, Jesus describes our connection to God as that of a branch on a vine: without being connected to the vine, a branch will wither and die. In John 4, he describes what God offers as living water. There is something about being connected to God that nourishes us, strengthens us, and gives us life. It is our relationship with God that helps transform us into people who care more about the people God cares about and do the things that God wants us to do. Our relationship with God can be described as twofold. Getting right with God is good for us; it helps strengthen us, helps us face whatever life throws our way, and shows us that God loves us without condition. Second, being right with God begins to change the way we see the world around us. Our heart begins to break for the plight of those around us, and we begin to desire seeing God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

Throughout the pages of Scripture, there are accounts of those who stray from God, who pervert justice and embrace selfishness, who exploit others and create systems that keep people in poverty. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and God grows furious with humanity for doing this. Check out Isaiah 1, or Amos 5, and you will read about how deeply our relationships with others are connected to our relationship with God. Even a cursory reading of the Bible reveals many lessons about how to live in this world, lessons about not stealing from or oppressing others. Lessons about integrity and standing against corruption. All of this is part of following God’s plan for humanity.

US AND OTHERS

Poverty can be caused by broken relationships between ourselves and others. Think about a woman and her children who flee an abusive husband and father in search of safety. In many cases, the husband may be the primary breadwinner, forcing the woman to become for the first time the sole financial provider for her family. This while also having to seek security and spend time, energy, and money dealing with the effects of emotional trauma in her children, all the while trying to find healing for herself. The breakdown of marriage relationships often results in material poverty for women and children (and sometimes for men too), even while the broken relationship itself is a form of relational poverty.

We have all been hurt by others, and I suspect that we have all done something to hurt another person as well. The consequences of these painful choices can result in poverty. Consider a young person experiencing chronic bullying. These actions can cause depression, anxiety, or other mental illness, and it doesn’t take a college degree to know that mental illness is a significant cause of poverty in a financial sense.

The example of bullying helps us see another aspect of relational breakdown: the danger of victim blaming. When we talk about a breakdown in relationships, most of us will immediately think of two people whose actions are both equally, or nearly equally, responsible for the damage done to the relationship. The reality, however, is that there are countless scenarios in which a broken relationship between two people is the result of one person’s actions, such as in the case of the average schoolyard bully. As adults, we should have compassion on the young bully too, but this doesn’t mean that those harmed by the bully are at fault for the bully’s torment.

While there are many cases where both parties have made mistakes, it takes only one person to cause a broken relationship. When it comes to our relationships with others, we should also consider the relationship between an individual and the groups around that person, such as governments or other cultural groups. These relationships between ourselves and other groups can also be damaged and broken. This kind of breakdown in relationship is what we could call systemic injustice, because it often involves the systems we use as humans to organize ourselves. Just as in relationships between two individuals, a breakdown can be caused by both parties or just one, and it is important to figure out the underlying causes in order to properly address them.

Broken relationships are not the only cause of poverty; an absence of healthy relationships is itself a form of poverty. Mother Teresa famously talked about the devastation of loneliness. She said, There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. . . . There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.² She did not think that the most terrible poverty was leprosy or a lack of worldly goods, but rather a lack of healthy relationships with others.

US AND OURSELVES

At times we can be our own worst enemies. The beliefs we have about ourselves can cause or even entrench many kinds of poverty in our lives, be it financial, emotional, spiritual, or mental.

In Reckless Faith: Let Go and Be Led, author Beth Guckenberger tells a story that illustrates an impact of poverty on our relationship with ourselves that is devastatingly common. Guckenberger was working with orphaned children in Mexico, where she met a child named Isaac who was a very talented artist but struggled all through high school. Isaac struggled to finish high school for the same reasons many orphaned children do—Isaac was bullied, and felt that he didn’t belong at school and did not feel worthy enough to attend. His false sense of inadequacy ran so deep that he almost quit many times. Guckenberger writes that every day Isaac was walking into a school situation in which, over and over again, he had to prove that he deserved to be there.³ Eventually, he was given the opportunity to go to college, and while he did end up going, his profound sense of unworthiness almost sabotaged this opportunity before it even began.

For those who didn’t grow up in poverty, this struggle can be hard to understand. Society divides itself across all kinds of lines, including how much money you have. I took note of Isaac’s story when I first read it because it resonated so much with me. Compared to Isaac’s upbringing I would be considered wealthy. I had two parents and I never went hungry. Yet something goes on in our own minds that is a common phenomenon around the world, despite cultural differences and varying concepts of what constitutes poverty. While we will talk about this more later in the book, when we internalize our physical poverty, it changes our view of ourselves. Instead of boldly taking an