This post is drawn from chapter 2 in When Helping Hurts; How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself.

What is Poverty?  Take a second and jot some words down.  Open a new word document or scribble on a post-it note near you.  What are the words, phrases, images that come to mind?

What are the roots of Poverty?  Do the same for this question.  Where does poverty come from?  What causes it?  Why are people poor?

Last week my small group threw a birthday party for the clients in a transitional shelter in Uptown.  We came in, put up a few “Happy Birthday” banners and strung a few streamers to decorate.  We loaded up trays of homemade cup-cakes and began scooping ice-cream into bowls, and the festivities began!

We introduced ourselves to a room of 50 and invited anyone with a birthday in August to come forward.  Three men cautiously and courageously came forward.  One by one I introduced the men to the group – and asked them a few simple questions about themselves.  

After each guy was “celebrated” individually, we presented them all with a cupcake topped with a sparkler-candle and sang the slowest version of Happy Birthday I’ve ever heard!  The applause and smiles were breaking any last bits of ice left in that room!

Then we took our trays of cupcakes and ice cream and began serving the rest of the room.  We came with cup cakes, we came with ice cream, and then we came with a trash bag to gather their trash – attempting to make even gathering trash an act of loving service.  Through the 20 minutes of passing out cup-cakes and cleaning up, spontaneous applause erupted 3 times!  It was evident this group was authentically grateful for the first edition of a monthly tradition.

Remember the questions I asked at the beginning of this post?  Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert did some global research presented in When Helping Hurts on this topic.  Their study reveals;
“when poor people mention having a lack of material things, they tend to describe their condition in far more psychological and social terms than our North American audiences.  Poor people typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.  North

American audiences <non-poor> tend to emphasize a lack of material things such as food, money, clean water, medicine, housing, etc.”  

About American poverty they specifically point out; “a loss of meaning, purpose, and hope that plays a major role in the poverty in North America.  The problem goes well beyond the material dimension, so the solution must go beyond the material as well.”

This brings me to my 2nd initial question.  What is the root of Poverty?  Where does it come from?  Corbett and Fikkert liken dealing with poverty to dealing with a mysterious illness… and it is this imagery that has inspired me to put into context our birthday parties at the shelter.  Corbett and Fikkert explain that doctors often make two mistakes when dealing with a sick person; “1) treating symptoms instead of underlying illness; 2) misdiagnosing the underlying illness and prescribing the wrong medicine.”

Anyone who has ever been treated by a doctor who lacks compassion knows, it is far easier to trust the medical advice of a doctor who first meets the needs of you as a person.  I would suggest that the heart of a GOOD doctor is moved with compassion for the sick.  It is first COMPASSION, not statistics that moves the heart of a doctor to alleviate the suffering of an individual or a group of people.

Most of us are not “doctors”, and I’m not sure I want to be (theoretically speaking or literally).  So what’s our role?  Why do we even concern ourselves with the “sick” if we are not trained to help heal them?  Someone needs to tend to humanity of the poor.

Do you remember when you had mysterious illnesses as a child? Or maybe you are a parent and you’ve experienced the helplessness of a sick child and nothing you can do to help.  Or so it seems.  What DO you do?

You crawl in bed with that child.  You hold his head in your lap.  You rub her back and sing songs to her.  You assure him of your presence; “I’m here… momma’s here.”  You don’t shut the door to the bedroom and say; “Sorry you don’t feel well, the doctor will be by in an hour, maybe he can fix it.”  No, you hold that child, healing parts of her that no doctor can treat with medicine.

That’s what we’re doing with these birthday parties.  That’s what we’re doing when we take time to get to know a lonely, marginalized person.  That’s what we are doing when we reach out to the person sitting awkwardly in the corner of the room.

So often we squelch that God-driven compassion with defeating thoughts like; “I can’t really help them.  I don’t have what they need.  Their problems are too big for me.” Compounded by the reality that we misdiagnose what’s really wrong all the time and see poverty through lenses shaped by media, personal experience, education etc.  I would suggest if we can push those things aside and strive to see people again, we will begin to uncover the root systems of all sorts of poverty, and be used as healing salves to see lives transformed in our communities.

I’ll let you know how things continue to progress in Uptown.

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