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by eric lange

Jesus’ words about ‘the least of these’ are often repeated among those who are more ‘service-oriented,’ and are interested in caring for the poor:

‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40)

It’s a pretty sentence, and it’s also a nice idea. No one’s against serving the poor as concept. The problem is when it stays at this idealistic level – when the poor begin to have names and faces, serving them can become far more difficult.

Sometimes, the ‘least of these’ are inarticulate. They can be slow to “get it.” They aren’t pretty. They can even smell really bad. Even worse, they’ll take advantage of your good nature. They don’t really want help – they just want to use you.

So how do we respond in that situation? Some might say that these weren’t the type of people Jesus mentioned, and that “you gotta be smart” to make sure that you’re dealing with the right people. It’s too easy to waste time, energy, and money on people that will never change.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?” (Matthew 9)

Certainly one thrust of this criticism is that Jesus has chosen to identify with a group of pariahs, social outcasts and marginalized peoples – and that Jesus is somehow dirtied or changed in the process.

But this question can also be read as a type of warning. Ask a typical Jew of the time who, of all the people in society, is the greatest cheater, he/she would undoubtedly say a tax collector, someone who cooks the books to increase personal profit by selling out their national heritage to collect money for Rome. The fact is, Jesus was associating with people who, in essence, made a living out of using people. Why would they treat Jesus any differently?

So what was different about Jesus? What makes him able to interact with tax collectors and not be cheated, to be around drunkards and suddenly they all magically sober up? I’m sure Jesus had a finely tuned sense of divine discernment – he could cut to the core of every person, see through their crap, and transform their lives.

“Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, ‘Jesus, Master, have pity on us!’

When he saw them, he said, ‘Go, show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were cleansed.

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

Jesus asked, ‘Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?’” (Luke 17:11-17)

So, even though Jesus ‘helped’ all ten people, only one person had the goodness to return to Jesus. Did Jesus’ healing simply not work?

Fact is, it’s much easier to only focus on ‘the good ones,’ giving up on those bad eggs that just don’t seem to get better. But that’s the major challenge – as we become more and more like Christ, I suppose we get better at seeing the beauty in every person, acknowledging they were made in God’s image and are deeply loved by their Creator. And it’s my own personal sinfulness that most often keeps me from seeing that.

Make Poverty History (3 of 3)

Poverty is a deep issue beyond simple material needs, and therefore it cannot be overcome through simple economic development alone: even as world hunger is eliminated, this basic ideological and social reality of “poverty” will remain unchanged. The divide between rich and poor is growing, and the poor are still ignored and marginalized.

Any attempt to end poverty must realize the depth of this issue. Sobrino’s says that these efforts must help the poor resolve - “Not only as the insatisfaction of their basic needs, but also as the ignorance and indignity to which they are condemned; the depredation of their cultures and the deviant offense which is done to them with respect to peoples of abundance.”

When faced with those situations of acute human suffering, it is all too easy to become numbed to the overwhelming horror of it all. People become statistics, and they lose their individuality, uniqueness, and humanity. Often, it takes those impassioned expressions of human emotion for us to realize the depth of their suffering - and to see them as human again. It took a mother’s impassioned grieving for her 2 murdered sons finally convinces the king to allow them a proper burial (2 Samuel 21), or the grief of Queen Esther to make the Babylonian king to realize the horror of his plans of genocide. Voices like Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel make it is possible to move past the overwhelming and sickening statistics to understand the full depth of the Holocaust.

Many people claim that, as advocates for the poor, they must be “a voice for the voiceless.” They must bring the concerns and stories of the poor to a society who cannot (or chooses not to) hear them. An important contribution, but it ignores the fact that the poor already have a voice and it is being ignored. Whatever work must be done must therefore help “Amplify their voices” as much as possible. Those who wish to help should not “champion their cause” but instead to work with them to enable the means to tell their own story.

The poor must be given the means of self-expression that will allow the rest of humanity to realize the reality of their sufferings and rediscover their inherent beauty and value as human beings - and the best way to do that is by encouraging and empowering their capacity for artistic expression. Through art the poor can tell their stories of marginalization, poverty and oppression in a way that allows the world to understand the reality of their experiences - making it human. It sounds a bit silly, but art just might be the next great means of fighting poverty.

Of course, this is not to say that “art,” as a pure form, will solve anything. Brutal poverty, starvation, and illness still exist today, and each demands pragmatic and creative solutions (the kind of program that an economist might develop). James had a similar criticism against people that ignored physical needs: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16)

Even within James’ words is the implicit requirement to care for the lost humanity of the poor - from the beginning, he takes for granted that his audience will see the needy as “a brother or sister,” an assumption that should not be made today with our social systems that create distance between poor and non-poor. Even more, plans for economic development operate all too often as if those involved are simple “cogs in the machine,” where they fit into a master plan that ignores the cultural context or worldview, thereby reinforcing the ideology that the “Developed World” knows best, and that all others should take notes and abandon their ways of life.

Make Poverty History (2 of 3)

Throughout the Hebrew Bible there are commands to defend the poor. Laws were designed to feed and protect them: Israelites were instructed to leave the edges of their fields unharvested so that the hungry could gather what food they needed (Lev 23:22), and after a period of time they were supposed to cancel all debts owed to one another and return the land to its rightful owners (Lev 25:8-54). Nonetheless, as the kingly elite took control over the country, it became easy to overlook and ignore the plight of the poor. During these times God’s prophets rose up to remind those in power that God chose to defend the poor and to take up their cause:


The LORD takes his place in court;
he rises to judge the people.
The LORD enters into judgment
against the elders and leaders of his people:
“It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
What do you mean by crushing my people
and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty. (Isaiah 3:13-15)

The prophets held the unique role of being God’s voice for the society: while the nation ignored and marginalized the impoverished, the prophets reminded the powerful that their wealth came through “grinding the faces of the poor.” The use of the word “face” is significant: those in power live at a distance from the poor and therefore they cannot cross the barriers that have been created to dehumanize their relationships with the poor. In ignorance (or perhaps downright malice) they cannot see that their actions harm and damaging fellow human beings. The oppressed have faces, stories, and are loved by God. The prophets’ voice made sure that they remembered that.

Ultimately, when Jesus came to earth he chose to live among the poor, (2 Cor 8:9, Php 2). He explained that he was sent for them in particular (Lk 4:18-21). And, in his life and teachings he aimed to humanize the poor, to know their names. Of all the characters Jesus mentions in his parables - a prodigal son, a shrewd woman, friends and family members - only one has a name: the beggar Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), while the rich man in the parable remains nameless.

Jesus’ work with the poor cannot be reduced to the fact that he fed five thousand people, or that he was able to heal the crippled of their illnesses. What is most remarkable about Jesus was not these healings and miracles, but the fact that he removed their anonymity and restored their humanity while the rest of society ignores or marginalizes them. “It isn’t that Jesus healed lepers, it’s that he touched lepers.”

Make Poverty History (1 of 3)

Jesus statement, “The poor will always be with you,” has been understood as a near-universal truth throughout human history. Poverty and hunger have defined life for the vast majority of the inhabitants of our planet for as long as human beings have walked the earth.

Spurred on by a remarkable combination of improved global infrastructure, creative thinking, advanced problem solving, and marketing appeal by Bono, there has been a recent departure from this view. Suddenly, those who strive to “Make Poverty History” aren’t ignored or dismissed as pie-in-the sky dreamers or idealists. Economists and policymakers are making pragmatic and well-executed plans to eliminate global hunger.

And, in many ways, this approach has done great things. Programs in many Latin American countries, and especially China & India, have grown healthy middle classes, and development plans have successfully fed the hungry, created jobs, and improved the quality of life for millions of our world’s poor. As the world begins to focus its energies on these major humanitarian crises, they are achieving results. Has Jesus’ observation been proven wrong?

One of the major issues that this program faces is a very simple one: exactly what is “poverty?” It’s a question with no easy answer, but certainly it goes beyond a simple materialistic definition of “lacking” some basic good. Jon Sobrino says: “We indeed believe that the generic term ‘poverty,’ with all its historical fluidity, has no substitute that expresses the negation and oppression of humanity, the shortage, the disdain, and that many millions of human beings do not have a voice or name.”

And that issue is far deeper than simple issues of hunger – that kind of poverty deals with long histories of prejudices, conflict, and exclusion.

***The contributor responsible for the above is Eric Lange, a Wake Forest graduate who is an avid reader of books both ancient and modern on Christianity, and whose perspective is uniquely informed by his time spent in Christian communities in Sierra Leone, Louisiana immediately after Hurricane Katrina, and his travels to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and more.***

starbucks and guilt

How often do you think the average street person hear's the gospel? Bryant Simon is a historian who has devoted himself to an "ethnography of Starbucks." He points out how prevalent guilt is in white society and how that motivates vain attempts at social justice.

Starbucks is actually a very responsible company. Starbucks instituted C.A.F.E. practices in the 1970's before Fair Trade was what it is today. They also sell Fair Trade Coffee, donate food to local charities, and have begun an alliance with Magic Johnson to start strategically planting stores in low income neighborhoods to create jobs and offer health care. Simon makes the argument that while well intentioned, these stores, not necessarily for Starbucks itself, but for its customers, can offer a sense of relief from guilt. It allows the patron to indirectly free himself/herself from the burden that the cost of a $5 cup of coffee could possibly contribute to someone's quality of life increasing.

Taking the Starbucks motif in another direction, what must it be like to be a homeless person who hangs out near a Starbucks? If you think of the number of Christians in the world and the number of homeless, you realize homeless people must encounter a lot of Christians in their day. Further, a few Christians would stop and do the proper evangelical thing...stop and pray a 30 second prayer over the person, tell them the story of Jesus through some sort of systematic approach, buy them a small amount of food or give them some cash, and walk away.

Now imagine this scenario from the perspective of the barista. They stand behind the counter all day, watching the street person be approached throughout the day by different middle class people who do the same exact thing. The barista must think to himself/herself, this is an incredibly impotent system.

Lastly, think about when a Christian conference comes to town. People walk by with the zip up Bible cases, their national Christian ministry Nalgenes, and hundreds of them pray for the same people each day and maybe toss some bread at them. But no one ever takes someone home, showers them, feeds them, gets them clean, actually enacts change by spending relentless hours with one individual.

As Christians, we want to buy the figurative latte, support the company that builds the stores, promote the institution that will battle the injustice, go on the one week mission trip that costs $3,000, but no one wants to move to the neighborhood, or bring someone home, because we are motivated by relieving our guilt. Basically, have our cake and eat it to, by keeping our life static and tracking, but free from guilt over our prosperity's expense. We do the minimum we possibly can, motivated out of shame that we live better than others, but we won't kill our day, die to the problems of others, forget the latte.