I appreciate the comment from Ashwin, below, following my recent posts on ministry to the poor and government social service programs. I’ve left out some of his comments about successful programs in India, where he was born, and will focus on his charge that Witmer, to whose comments I was responding, and other “leftists” and I don’t understand the poor. My response follows.
(September 16, 2010) “The problem here of course is that both you (Ms Mix and assorted leftists) and those you chastise (Pharisaiacal, legalistic Christians and assorted conservatives) are missing a crucial bit of information.
Neither of you know what the poor want.
Why not? Neither of you can understand them. Sure, you may talk to them for a bit – but you will only get the sound bites they reserve for patricians like yourself. The poor will tell you what they think you want to hear. They will not tell you what THEY want. You are not one of them.
But to be one of them you must give up your wonderful house and your expensive car and actually go live in the slums. And you must endure their distrust for a couple of years before they start trusting you. And then they will open up.”
My response:
Ashwin makes some important points, and I would agree with him that I don’t truly KNOW what the poor want or need because I’m not poor. I’ve written at length about the fact that while I may have been broke at various times in my life, I haven’t been, and will never be, poor. That’s not pride on my point, nor is it an assessment of my worth, skills, or work ethic. On the contrary. My secure economic and social position is the result of unjust and un-Biblical power structures that work to benefit white, literate, legal citizens of the U.S. from upper middle-class families — and God’s graciousness to me for his glory as I work to alleviate suffering and call for justice in the face of it all. It’s an indicator of how unjust the world is, and how unjust my own little corner of it is, that the lack of power, money, and education that define poverty hasn’t happened to me. I get no credit for my position, other than my trying to be responsible, honest, and discerning in my position.
But I think I DO know quite a bit more about poverty in the United States than, perhaps, most of my readers. I was raised in a relatively poor, ethnically diverse neighborhood, with parents who worked tirelessly to collect food and clothing and furnishings for those in need around us. And from 1989 to 2001, I devoted countless hours and many thousands of dollars working with the poorest of America’s poor — undocumented immigrants forced to live in squalor while working in dairies, farms, factories and fields under deplorable conditions, conditions that most Americans would find surprising and too many would deny exist.
I taught English (in Spanish, as most of my friends and congregants were sub-literate), translated in schools, hospitals, and other institutions, and advocated for their rights — and yes, Chris, the undocumented workers among us have legal rights and “moral rights” that were very often denied them. I co-pastored a church comprised of undocumented immigrants, rejoiced at births and weddings, grieved at deaths and abandonments and other tragedies, and opened my home to the people I worked among. They opened theirs to me, and I was pastor, friend, counselor, Auntie and sister to a couple of hundred people who escaped gross poverty in Mexico only to find gross poverty here in the U.S. I have stood ankle-deep in cow manure to fight for a worker’s paycheck more times than I can count, and I have eaten the most wonderful Sabbath feasts in stinking, rotting, unplumbed and unwired trailers that no human being or their dogs should ever live in.
Let’s establish right now that none of this makes me heroic, virtuous, or a paragon of decency. It makes me obedient. That’s all — the glory goes to the Lord of Righteousness. I followed God’s call on my life, and because of it, I think I have as clear a picture as I can of what some impoverished people need, because I worked and lived and celebrated among them, and I tried to listen as they told me what their hopes and dreams were. And while I provided a lot of help, practical, financial, and spiritual, I got back so much more than I ever put in — because these were RELATIONSHIPS. Very few of my friends got any government help; they worked, and worked harder than most of us will ever know to make a decent life for their families here and in Mexico.
The name of my one-person ministry, supported by my dear husband, was Vecinos, which means “neighbors” in Spanish. I was only affiliated with a church for about a year and a half; I preferred to work alone because I couldn’t accept financial or practical help from people who would’ve denied it if they’d known of my friends’ legal status. My mission statement or vision statement or statement of purpose or whatever strategic planners would call it was simply “Service, Empowerment, Relationship, Advocacy, only for the Glory of Christ.” The acronym, SERA’, means “It will be,” and by God’s grace, I think it was.
My point in writing all of this, and at the risk of provoking warm feelings toward Keely in doing so, is simply to say that I am more aware than some of what Christians ought to be doing and what government can and cannot do. I would never suggest that churches sit on the sidelines, enjoying Covenant-only Sabbath feasts and youth softball games and ladies conferences that stress grooming as a means of Godliness — while government does the dirty work. I simply recognize that the Church is equipped to do the SERA’ work of ministry, while government is equipped to pay for poor people’s medical care, housing, and education, both as a means for maintaining the order described in Romans 13 and as a vital, but not exclusive, part of the social contract that should exist in partnership with Christ’s people. Government can’t “do” relationship; churches can’t “do” Medicaid, Medicare, WIC, and other programs on the massive scale that reflects the need for them.
Predictably, Chris Witmer has left a long, critical comment on my earlier writing, and you can find it in the comments section. But I would ask him, when he writes of the “gun-to-your-head” thievery of the State in providing for the poor, to consider Hebrews 10:33-34:
“Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.” (TNIV)
You know, I’m not sure that I’m strong enough to “joyfully” accept the confiscation of my property, if that meant the occupying government’s seizure of my home and all of my possessions. But it’s not. The government is exacting taxes, which the Lord expects us to pay, in order to maintain order and promote the security of our society. We — Jeff and I — pay a lot in taxes. I’m not at all “joyful” that so much of our money has gone to this obscene war in Iraq or to exploring space while people on Earth are suffering. But while I pay my tithes and offerings to the Lord, through my church, the ministries we support, and our own individual efforts, I’m grateful to God that my government — which, by the way, has thousands of dedicated Christians working in it — has programs that aid the poor, and that do so with my gladly given money. It has programs, too, that build roads, hospitals, schools and parks and provide national defense, however mistakenly it does so. I think we’re not “piglets suckling at the teat” of government — you can direct your grimace towards Doug Wilson for that colorful phrasing — when we enjoy the wonders of Yellowstone or drive to Pullman on something other than a mud skid.
The government, regardless of what the Recons and the Libertarians among us think, isn’t likely to seize all of my possessions and my home because I’m a Christian — which is the context of Hebrews 10. I’ve never been persecuted as a believer and I very seriously doubt any of us has; the Christian witness in this country, my own included, is far too impotent to pose much of a threat to the secular world around us. And while there was a time, not so many years ago, that Christians could be counted on to enthusiastically do their part in supporting the social contract living in community requires, there are pockets of ugliness and indifference in Christiandom that believe that this sort of thing couldn’t possibly have anything to do with love of one’s neighbor and is instead a vicious, sinful accommodation of a vicious, sinful occupying force.
Much of this has to do, I’m convinced, with the excesses of post-millennialism and Calvinism. After all, if you’re convinced that some are damned for all eternity because they were damned before all eternity, it becomes easier to practice studied indifference to the poor outside your church. And if you believe that the Second Coming will happen only after the Church ushers in a real period, a thousand years or otherwise, of theocratic (not democratic), patriarchal (not egalitarian) majority rule by Covenant males, I suppose you’d have to hate the government that comes before it and that you eventually will vanquish. There is, I’ll admit, a real-world benefit in holding to the hope that Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” thing will be done away with, as Gary North asserts, when Christian theocracy ushers in a Jesus who bashes in the faces of his enemies. I mean, calls for government aid to the poor do look suspiciously gentle and liberal and feminized and pacifistic. No wonder Witmer and his pals hate government and long for the return of an ass-kicking Savior.
I just wish that hating the government didn’t look so very much like hating the poor, and I wish that poverty and oppression were seen as the enemy, not the poor and oppressed themselves. Because Jesus identified with them, and it’ll be hard to rally to his side at the parousia when he’s surrounded by all of these “others” who hunger and thirst not just for righteousness, but also for food for their kids.
I did you an injustice in thinking you were a run-of-the-mill leftist who “herded goats from atop a camel.” You clearly have been among the dirt and grime. I am glad.
In you various and deep interactions with the poor labourers and their families that you have had, have you ever heard them articulate a desire for Government handouts? Do you think these will actually improve their lives?
Or would they not prefer to be able to pay for the various services they avail of?
Comment by Ashwin — September 17, 2009 @ 8:52 pm
To answer your questions:
1. Yes, many times I heard people wish, or be grateful, for “handouts.” The Food Bank was a vital source, although my friends tended to donate to it once their situations became more secure. And if it meant getting care for an emergency, the priority was always as it should have been — get help, especially for children (many of whom were born here and are thus citizens). For non-emergencies, most simply made payments on medical bills. Please remember, Ashwin, that “handouts” is not accurate; they paid their taxes and worked hard, long hours. They weren’t beggars.
2. Yes, I think social services improved their lives when those services were needed. Any parent who would choose between “principle” and emergency care for a sick child is unworthy of the title.
3. Again, they paid for social services through payroll and sales tax. Virtually all employers deducted payroll taxes, and sales taxes are unavoidable. The ugly practice of deducting for payroll taxes but then pocketing the money themselves was widespread among employers; workers were told they had to have a huge chunk of their paychecks taken out for coverage they never received.
4. I can count on one hand, maybe, the people I met who were content to rely on either government or ministry. In fact, I can’t think of any. I was blessed beyond measure by the integrity and work ethic of the people I ministered among. You would have been, too.
And yes, Chris, I used “integrity” to describe my undocumented worker friends. Without apology or equivocation.
Keely
Comment by Keely Emerine Mix — September 18, 2009 @ 4:23 pm