There
is no shortage of desperate people in the world.
On
any given day, Melissa and I might run into a situation in which we come face
to face with the reality of poverty—poverty, in all of its many forms. We see
beggar children standing in the intersections dusting off windshields in
exchange for a few cents. We see mentally handicapped men sitting on the street
corners, their agonized cries drowned out by the clamor of traffic. A student
apologizes for missing class due to rampant flooding in their neighborhood. An
elderly woman breathes heavily from pulling her cart of recycled trash. A guard
stands in the sweltering heat outside an air-conditioned café or office.
Today
on our way home I passed some of these very people, and I began to wonder what
it would look like if we tried to practice more generosity with them. I
wondered, perhaps with a certain degree of idealism, what it would be like to
give more, to do more, so as to assuage their condition. And as I thought about
it a familiar notion entered my mind:
“Don’t
create dependence.”
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| There are more than 280 slum communities in Phnom Penh (UNICEF) |
I
have always agreed. Melissa and I have seen first-hand the effects of simply
pouring out resources to those in need. In many cases, it only exacerbates
their poverty. We see children forced by adults to beg on the streets—in the
pouring rain, the heat of the day, or late at night—and we know that they
continue to beg in part because people continue to give. We know that money
isn’t the answer. It’s never that simple.
And
yet, at the same time, today I found myself pondering a question I don’t
believe I’ve ever asked.
What’s
really wrong with dependence?
I know the answer. I’ve heard it spoken from
all kinds of trustworthy sources. If people are ever going to walk out of the
cycle of poverty, if they are ever going to learn to take ownership of their
lives, if they are ever going to find the resolve to reach out to others, then
they cannot become dependent. They are simply trading one form of poverty for
another.
And
yet, something still unnerved me in thinking this, because even after I’d said
it, the poor remained poor.
After
two and a half years in this country, I’ve never been able to completely
wrestle away the angst I feel when it comes to seeing poverty. The truth is,
poverty haunts me. When I read the words of the Good Teacher, it haunts me even
more. And I wonder how many times I have used the mantra of “Don’t create
dependence” as a way of excusing myself from the things I know I ought to do.
 |
| There are more than 33,600 families classified as "urban poor" in Phnom Penh (Advocacy NGO Sahmakum Teang Tnaut, 2013) |
And
then I began to think of the good news. The Father’s aim in saving me was that
I never save myself. He never frees us from one burden in order to subject us
to the next. And he never refrains from saving us or answering us for fear that
we will become dependent on him.
The
good news is a message of utter dependence upon something given by one from
whom we deserve nothing. It is a message of our utter neediness receiving that
which was impossible for us to acquire.
I
could not help myself from seeing the irony of my situation. I desired to share
a message that says, “Come and be dependent upon someone who offers you a
freedom you could never gain on your own.” At the same time, I was refraining
from inviting the poor to become dependent upon the people who live in such
freedom.
I
felt that something was wrong with my way of thinking. There was a fundamental
disconnect between how I viewed my dependence upon Him and the dependence of
the poor upon others.
I
faced a dilemma. On the one hand was the blatant reality that fostering
dependence keeps the poor where they are. On the other hand was the ugly fact
that many of the world’s poor have, quite literally, no way to escape poverty.
And
then the good news spoke to me again.
The
Father has set us free from something we could never break free from. He gave
us a way out of the slum of our former lives. We’re now totally dependent upon
Him. And we’re totally free.
Many
who are poor cannot walk out of poverty until someone brings them out. That’s
the first implication I began to see. And as I continue to wrestle with it, I
don’t believe there is a way around dependence. The poor will become dependent on whoever decides to bring them out of it.
And that’s where things have gotten messy. That’s where the issues have
started. The problem isn't that the poor become dependent. It’s that they stay
there.
Enter
the good news. When we come to the poor, we are not just coming to bring them
out of physical despair. At the end of the day, all the wealth and comfort of
the world won’t protect them from desperation. That’s why I said there is no
shortage of desperate people in the world. It’s because we all are. And
anything we do for the poor apart from the reality of the good news seems only
to cause more trouble. If we shed the centrality of our message of grace, we
cannot help but fear that our giving will create mere dependence.
But
if grace is at the center of our paradigm, we will find ourselves moving the
needy from poverty to dependence, and then from dependence to something
greater: interdependence. The universality of what grace we have received leads
us collectively into a place where there is neither Jew nor Greek, Cambodian
nor American, slave nor free, poor nor rich. We become united in a life that
now hinges on meeting one another’s needs and in extending our reach to the
needy who are around us. The truth of the good news is the only tie that binds
this process together.
So
now, here we are, feeling unraveled again by the power of the message we have
believed. Here we are, beginning to ask, with greater anticipation, how the
Father would use us to bring people out of spiritual and physical poverty and
into the great community of grace. Lift us up as we continue to pursue what the
Father is teaching us and leading us to do.
-R
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