Value?
I know this is a theme I keep revisiting, but I just can't get the idea out of my head that we need to change how we value people. Something has to change. Stories from the Bible like the one Jesus tells in Luke 15 about the lost sheep present a radically different approach to someone's value then I have learned growing up in the evangelical world of America. Apparently the lost one was worth leaving the ninety-nine behind. The context is that the lost sheep did something to get lost, in other words it was his own fault.
Too often we blame the poor for their own poverty. Is it really all that important to assign blame? When Jesus was presented with a woman caught in the very act of adultery, he let her go without assigning blame. He asks her; "Where are your accusers?" Since they had all left and no one is around he proceeds to tell her that He also did not condemn her.
Now Jesus was for sure the one guy who could bring a charge against her, or me, or you, or the millions of poor in our world. Yet he does not do it. Why must we insist on playing the blame game?
How come we cannot help someone without first trying to shame them, or teach them the error of their ways? Trust me if you caused your own poverty, then you know it and constant reminders are not really all that helpful.
I know many of us are changing the way we approach the issue of poverty, and how we feel about people living in that state. I run into folks who really desire to reach out and love, and that makes me feel all warm and mushy inside.
When I say we need to change how we value people, meaning we need to assign worth and dignity to people, who according to the world's economic system have no value, it sounds easy. Yet in my heart I keep finding myself needing to work on this issue. I find myself avoiding those people who I feel deserve their poverty, yet Jesus when presented with people who deserved their separation from God, did not avoid them.
So how do you assign value to someone who earns less than two dollars a day? Do we need to give them money? Perhaps. Do we need to help them with interest free loans? Perhaps. Do we need to give them food, clothes, medicines. Perhaps. I think all these are great ways to transfer value to those without any, and we do them on a daily basis. Yet the best way to give value to someone without value, is to stand face to face with them.
We have to equalize ourselves. I'm not talking about wealth redistribution, I think that is just not practical. I mean come on what rich person is actually going to follow the words of Jesus and sell all he has and give it to the poor? Not a very big percentage I suspect. No I am talking about the way we speak with people, the way we think about them, the way we eat with them, the way we walk with them.
Too often even when we are trying to assist the poor we do it from a position above them. They come to us or we go to them with the air of one who has something to give. Sometimes you need to interact with the poor without giving them anything except a handshake, hug, kiss, or other human contact.
I believe we can transfer value to the valueless one person at a time by simply becoming equal, or realizing that as far as God is concerned we are equal.
Missionary to Nakuru, Kenya. Co-founder of A Future and a Hope, a home for girls.
