heightened sensitivity

It seems everywhere I turn these days, I'm confronted with the problem of poverty, and the soul-searching questions that go along with it, regarding my own love of stuff, comfort and a life ease. It's not just the series of snippets I've been getting this week from Stott, but literally, everywhere I turn. The sermons I've been hearing, the content of the personal Bible study I'm doing...the book I started on the train yesterday.

I think it's a subject I've thought I addressed well (or reasonably well) in the past, but I'm finding that I can barely look myself in the mirror these days for the way I have personally rejected and abandoned the poor, needy and hungry of the world.

John Stott Daily Thought
17 May 2007

Work, Wealth, Poverty and Human Rights (cont'd.)

876. Three approaches to poverty

How should Christians approach the harsh fact of poverty in the contemporary world?

First, we could approach the problem *rationally*, with cool statistical detachment. Indeed, this is where we must begin. There are over five billion inhabitants of planet Earth, one fifth of whom are destitute ... Whereas one fifth of the world's population lack the basic necessities for survival, rather more than another one fifth live in affluence and consume about four fifths of the world's income. In 1988 the 'total disbursements' from these wealthy nations to the Third World 'amounted to $92 billion' (less than 10% of worldwide spending on armaments), 'but this was more than offset by the total debt service of $142 billion, resulting in a negative transfer of some $50 billion' from the Third World to the developed countries.(1) The gross disparity between wealth and poverty constitutes a social injustice with which the Christian conscience cannot come to terms.

Secondly, we could approach the phenomenon of poverty *emotionally*, with the hot-blooded indignation aroused by the sights, sounds and smells of human need. When I last visited Calcutta airport, the sun had already set. Over the whole city hung a pall of malodorous smoke from the burning of cowdung on a myriad fires. Outside the airport an emaciated woman clutching an emaciated baby stretched out an emaciated hand for *baksheesh*. A man, whose legs had both been amputated above the knee, dragged himself along the pavement with his hands. I later learned that over a quarter of a million homeless people sleep in the streets at night, and during the day hang their blanket - other their only possession - on some convenient railing. My most poignant experience was to see men and women scavenging in the city garbage dumps like dogs. For extreme poverty is demeaning; it reduces human beings to the level of animals. To be sure, Christians should be provoked by the *idolatry* of a Hindu city, as Paul was by the idols in Athens, and moved to evangelism. But, like Jesus when he saw the hungry crowds, we should also be moved with compassion to feed them.

The third way, which should stimulate both our reason and our emotion simultaneously, is to approach the problem of poverty *biblically*. As we turn again to that book in which God has revealed himself and his will, we ask: how according to Scripture should we think about wealth and poverty? Is God on the side of the poor? Should we be? What does the Scripture say? Moreover, as we ask these questions, we have to resolve to listen attentively to God's Word, and not manipulate it. We have no liberty either to avoid its uncomfortable challenge, in order to retain our prejudices, or to acquiesce uncritically in the latest popular interpretations.

(1) The World Bank Annual Report 1989, p. 27.

--From "Issues Facing Christians Today" (London: Collins/Marshall Pickering, 1990), p. 230.
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--Excerpted from "Authentic Christianity", pp. 363-365, by permission of InterVarsity Press.