What is poverty?

It's interesting to see the reactions various people have when they first visit La Carpio, the slum we work in. Besides commenting on the fetid, rotting-diaper smell wafting over the property from the dump across the street, most responses fall into two categories.

The typical response (common for youth groups) is that there should be a sign hung over the entrance that says something like, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here!" These individuals usually leave with a romanticized image of the people they meet, thinking, "wow, what amazing people that can endure living in such a place without adequate food, water and financial resources. They must have great faith!"

The other group is comprised of the worldly travelers, the people that confidently state that they've witnessed firsthand much worse suffering in the squalid slums of Brazil, the refugee camps of Sudan or any number of hellish places tucked into the dark corners of the earth. I can't argue; in fact, I agree, there are worse slums here in San Jose, Costa Rica.

However, the interesting thing for me is that both viewpoints are primarily based in the evaluation of a place and the suffering of the inhabitants--that is, the level of poverty--primarily from the viewpoint of the severity of lack of money and the things that it can buy. Sometimes it feels like the people are on display in a dehumanizing "poverty zoo" for North Americans to observe and photograph.

I've begun to challenge our missionary team and volunteers at New Horizons, where I serve as director, that the lack of material goods, while severe, isn't the real poverty we are confronting. The real poverty is lack of relationships--especially healthy, life-giving relationships that are based on trust.

This relational and emotional poverty stands evident all around us. To a girl, the participants in Andrea's Bible study all confessed that they don't have a single family member or close friend in whom they can trust to share what's in their heart, or what they're struggling with. To a man, the participants of my study fear sharing weakness or need, knowing that the usual response to these things in their community is mockery and attack. So, people live in a mentality of "wound others before they wound you," be it with words, casual indifference or outright lies. This creates a cycle of relational aggression.

The apostle Paul addresses this behavior in more than half of his letters. When he calls people to holy living, to live as "children of the light," or to live righteously, he addresses this poverty of relationship. He calls out the sexual immorality, idolatry, anger, hatred, envy and covetousnous of the world and encourages his readers that "in other times" or in the past "you USED TO practice these things."

Typically we read these verses and feel chastised. I know I do when I read about anger or selfish ambition and I feel convicted. But Paul wasn't writing these things only to chastise and reprove, he wrote to ENCOURAGE that there is another way to live. If we live according to the flesh, we'll live in a poverty of relationships, in the horrible poverty of estrangement from our Father, and alienation from those around us. But if we live according to His spirit, we'll have a new way to live, we'll have the option to live in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Isn't this what we all desire at the core of our being? Isn't this the universal poverty that strikes at the heart of our common, shared existence regardless of our financial situation? Aren't we really the same inside with respect to the poverty inside of us? This is the heart of the Good News: that we can be reconciled, forgiven and restored--replacing our poverty with the abundant life Jesus promised.

Lord give us eyes to see past the dirt, the worn clothing, and the tiny shacks to the suffering and poverty inside: lack of a voice, broken families, feeling like a spectacle, oppression, loneliness and isolation, feeling that there is no one to trust or turn to for compassion. These are the primary things the Lord wants to address in their lives, and the things we strive to work with Him in.

Peace and grace,
Seth