Poverty

Poverty

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Luke 6:20

I covered some impacts of poverty in my Life Notes on homelessness over the past few weeks. Certainly, homelessness is a subset of poverty, and many of the challenges of homelessness remain even after one becomes housed, but now under the guise of poverty. Poverty, however, is the broader issue and encompasses a wider range of sources of suffering. Where living unhoused threatens one basic need for physical protection, a whole host of other unsettling vulnerabilities remain for individuals, families, and communities even after the housing issue has been remediated.

I will begin with a detour from poverty per se to the more general issue of marginalization, which is the exclusion of certain persons due to their race, ethnic background, financial and/or social status, among other issues that differentiate them from those in power. Marginalization results in various forms and degrees of discrimination against those marginalized, sometimes overtly, but often in covert ways entrenched so deeply within the systems of society as to be nearly invisible to those not victimized by it. Regardless, marginalization creates a modern-day, American caste system. While we tend to consider caste systems as antiquated social structures limited to past times in India, they are still present in many parts of Indian and other cultures in various forms of social stratification, oppression, and privilege. And like most social structures that directly oppress one group of people to the benefit of others, there are efforts to mask the outward appearance of castes even though the resulting injustices continue unabated, as if putting lipstick on a pig…

Underlying India’s caste system is the Hindu belief in reincarnation – that one’s current life is but a single manifestation of a sequential series of lives through which a soul matures toward the consummation of their being toward that of a perfected, universal Being. The nature and conditions of one’s current life is determined by the degree to which one matured in their previous life. As such, one’s current life-experience is understood to be the experience one needs, regardless of how abysmal and unjust that experience may appear. In other words, we get what we deserve; or in agricultural terms, we reap what we sow. Attempts to break free from one’s caste assignment, whether by the individual or society, must ultimately fail because one’s current situation was predetermined in another stage of life.

When I refer to marginalization in the West as a modern-day caste system, I mean to say there is a common, if usually unspoken, misconception about the marginalized in society – that they are getting what they deserve. That if they had worked harder, if they had studied better or gone farther in school, or if they followed the same strategies for success as the non-marginalized folks have done they would find themselves in a better life-situation. That misconception stems from the assumption that opportunities for success and advancement established and maintained by the historical majority function equally well across all genders, ethnic backgrounds, races, and socio-economic realities. But research consistently shows that to be inaccurate. Those in the majority fail to see how their biases and privilege are embedded in the foundations of education, employment, law enforcement, and other social systems and skew their benefits to favor those most like the designers of the systems. Those design flaws result in caste-like tiers of social environments where it is difficult to rise to higher caste levels but increasingly easy to fall lower.

As long as poverty is believed to result from the lack of individual effort – that everyone is rewarded in ways consistent with their labors – those living in poverty will be treated as if their life-situation is entirely their own fault. This belief ignores the masses who have fallen into poverty from higher socio-economic levels because of corporate downsizing, medical bankruptcy, disabling conditions, jobs being automated or shipped overseas, and other unfortunate situations completely out of the control of the individual. These downwardly mobile people are, instead, casualties of antiquated capitalistic and social systems skewed to benefit and perpetuate those in power.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus claims that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor (6:20). It is an interesting and perplexing statement given the degree of suffering of the poor in Jesus’ day, not to mention the suffering today. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “For you always have the poor with you…” (14:7), implying to some that there is nothing we can do to eliminate poverty. Throughout the gospels, Jesus encourages folks to give money and be merciful to the poor, which creates a direct connection between following Jesus and caring for and about those in poverty. Thus, the core dilemma of poverty is our dilemma, meaning what are we going to do about it? Because Jesus did not ignore the poor, we cannot ignore them either, at least not if we consider ourselves his followers. Or his disciples. Or Christians.

This is the 9^th in a series about The New-Old Social Pandemic. The opinions expressed here are mine. To engage with me or to explore contemplative spiritual direction, contact me at ghildenbrand@sunflower.com.