The Poor Zoo

In my fifteen years of working with poor families, I’ve seen churches treat poor neighborhoods like zoos and poor people like zoo animals.  What I mean is that we objectify them, seeing them as interesting while we conjure up pity for their situation.  It helps us feel like we’re engaged but keeps the relationship at a safe distance.  

Of course, our intentions are good.  “I want my children to see how less fortunate people live.” or “ We want to serve the under-served.”  We have an afternoon free and we want to do as much good as we can pack into the short time we have to offer.  I’d love to see a giraffe, tiger, elephant and lion in Africa but I don’t have the time. We sign up for the mission weekend at church and we take lots of pictures.

When I press into the rationale church leaders use for this approach it’s usually summed up around the desire to get their congregants engaged and that “something is better than nothing”.   The assumption is that there is no harm done and people really enjoy serving together.  It’s an extension of the American Church’s approach to poverty that spends the majority of it’s effort on material distributions using the available casual labor of church attenders. We’ve got stuff, they need stuff…it’s a perfect fit. 

In Acts 3 Peter and John come across a beggar that cannot walk.  The beggar asks them for money.  This seems a legitimate request and the Apostles would be right to hand over a material prize.  There is one problem, they don’t have the money. In fact, Peter says “Silver or Gold I do not have…”.  Given the lack of material support Peter elects to instead pray for, and heal, the man from his physical bondage.  Imagine if Peter had an extra denarii in his pocket and chosen instead to give the beggar what he asked for rather than what he needed.  Peter and John would have left feeling good about their own generosity, the beggar would be happy about the extra money.  It would have been the perfect Instagram post. #usedbyGod #matthew25.  Instead Peter leaves the beggar with something much more powerful…freedom.  Freedom to walk, freedom to work, freedom to contribute and freedom to worship the God that healed him. 

This Acts 3 scenario is walked out thousands of times a day at places all over America but, unlike Peter, we do have the money.  So we do the easy thing and hand over the gold, the silver, yesterday’s Panera bread.  Of course, we don’t see our actions are harmful and no doubt the material support does help.  If the moment matters, it satisfies the moment. The problem of course is we’ve fixed the perceived crisis but have not disrupted the beggar’s grim future. 

We must start by realizing poverty in America, in this century, is like no other place or time. It is typically not a temporary crisis but usually a generational cycle that has been normalized by institutional, cultural and spiritual systems.  These systems that claim to help often feed off the cycle and perpetuate the bondage.  It’s a codependent relationship that allows the givers and receivers blind to their roles in the dysfunction.  The motives are not malicious, but fifty years of The Great Society have left no doubt that these systems are making things worse.  Americans have succeeded in elevating the standard of living for the poor but failed at breaking the cycles that predict a child born in poverty will likely stay that way. 

The War on Poverty was not a bad idea, we needed to address the trends of unequal distribution of opportunity.  However, European Social Welfare philosophy is built on the foundations of lack.  A system driven by scarcity and bent towards creating victims rather than promoting change.  It assumes human nature is good, so we will naturally do good things with short-term help.  The evidence shows the opposite, when we get material support based on our personal lack and limited stability we tend to stay in lack and become dependent.  It creates consumers and has destroyed the nuclear family but still it continues.  Sure, we’ve had iterations of change that attempt to realign the motivation structure.  Governments implement drug testing for welfare recipients, work programs to receive food stamps and increase spending in education. Band-aids instead of tourniquets.  

But that’s the government, surely the Church has adopted more hopeful methods.  If we believe that material needs exist but the root problems are deeper, more relationship based, the Church seems the obvious source to bring healing.  We have plenty of money to help with material needs, we have plenty of people to engage in sustained relationships, we understand hope that changes and frees.  The freedom and hope we have is available to all and the transformation and order that the Holy Spirit brings can break the chains of poverty, addiction and hopelessness.  With all of that working toward the problem, poverty in America doesn’t stand a chance!  Instead we mostly offer food pantries and day-old bread to feed people already trapped in cycles of obesity and diabetes.  We have so much more to offer. 

I write this article realizing I will offend and draw criticisms from the Institutional and Religious systems that work with the poor.  The governmental and secular non-profits will say I’m blaming the victim.  That this is more “pull yourself up by your boot straps” ideology.  They will point to studies showing that hunger and homelessness in America are huge problems.  They will say their solutions are the pathway out of this cycle.  More food, more money, more gold and silver.  They are partly correct, we cannot offer help without bringing material solutions.  There is hunger, there is homelessness but by their own studies they show that after decades of the current approach, poverty has gotten worse. 

The churches doing the zoo trips will be offended at my characterization.  They will point toward other services they provide to justify their short-term mission trips.  I accept and believe that the heart is right but believe that we are falling well short of the healing that we can fully bring. 

I’m not here simply criticizing, I’m offering solutions.  For ten of the fifteen years I’ve helped build a faith organization that has struggled with these tensions (www.joshuasplace.cc).  We’ve worked through the balances of material support and relational immersion.  We’ve done a lot of things wrong and pivoted often.  We have had to wrestle with our own motivations and be honest about the outcomes.  Mostly, we changed the prepositions of how we do our ministry.   We decided to minimize the “to”, “for” and “at” and instead use “with” whenever possible.  Poor people are not sinful, broken and desperate…we all are.   It is from this recognition of mutual brokenness that we connect.  Not seeing the poor as lacking but as loving. Not objects of our scorn and pity but of our expressed love.  A love willing to be honest about what help really looks like. 

If you’d like to learn more about how your church can do help that doesn’t hurt email me kpeyton@joshuasplace.cc.