Poverty

- Dave H

Part of our church vision is to engage with the world at different levels. One level is the global community, or ‘the wider world’, and for a few of us that involves working in the developing world. A while back I was in Ethiopia and wrote down a few thoughts:

"I walk down the pavement in Addis with my colleague, discussing our work at the end of a long day. Like most days, we casually side-step the young mum with a baby on her back who begs us for money for food. My time here is spent writing documents and having meetings that I hope one day, somehow, might help someone get out of poverty. Because I care about these things I keep working long into the evening, sitting in a hotel bar with my laptop on my knee. Every chilled beer I drink costs three times the average daily wage. The irony of my situation makes me shudder. I wonder why I’ve been given so much stuff in life; why I have a family, friends, a job, a home, money for beer – stuff that loads of people on our planet wish for and will never have. People tell me these nagging questions go away once you’ve been involved in development work for a few years. I’ve been doing it a little while, and they haven’t gone away yet. I hope I never reach a place where I kid myself that I understand; where these things don’t keep me awake at night."

Two peculiarities define our generation. Firstly, in the history of humanity there has never been a generation as wealthy as ours. Secondly, there has never been a generation where that wealth is distributed as unevenly as it is in ours. We will be judged on our response to this situation, by history and by God.

There are many theories about poverty: why it exists, whose fault it is, what someone else should do about it. This is fine. Poverty is complicated, but it can’t be ignored.

God talks throughout the Bible about how I should approach life and spend my energy. He says that if I work on behalf of the hungry then he’ll make sure my needs are met and he’ll even make me prosper. Despite this, I often spend my energy making sure my own needs are met. The things I worry about losing are things that most people in the world only ever dream of having. I wonder how God feels about this...

Thankfully he is gracious.

The global situation is both exciting and sobering. It’s exciting because the time and place we are born into has given us huge choice in how we live our lives; what we do with our time, money and energy. This choice gives us freedom to structure our lives in a way which benefits others. But I also find it sobering because I’m pretty good at ignoring the responsibility that accompanies the choice. When I’m back in London the distance helps me to forget. It scares me that if I let God give me more of his imagination then my comfort could be challenged.

This is a continuing struggle for me, but when I return from abroad my church helps me deal with the tension. The initiatives and programmes we’re involved with are one part of this. However, what helps me more is the intangible assurance that I belong to a community with a shared worldview and a common commitment to work against injustice in the world.

I’m grateful that as Christians we live in hope: hope that one day there won’t be any more rape, starvation, trafficking, or injustice. It’s exciting and sobering to know that we each have a role to play, proclaiming God’s alternative Kingdom through our daily choices, whether at home in London or walking the pavements of Addis