It struck me recently that I have a tendency to read a Scripture verse and then immediately think: okay now what does this mean for me? So for example, whenever Scripture states that the poor are blessed, it does not say “and those of you who are not poor, go and make yourselves poor, so you can be blessed too”.
In some ways, I don’t think such a statement addresses me at all. It seems to say: “Wait a sec, that passage is not about you, it says nothing to you, it is about the poor and it is for them, it is them that have a right to know just how blessed they are, it is not yet another self-improvement injunction addressed to the rich. It is not a message for the rich to ‘get poor’; in fact it is not a message for the rich at all.”
So when we Western Christians hear this, maybe we shouldn’t immediately translate into – “mmm yes… I need to become poor so I can be blessed”. Maybe we should hear: “and the poor do not know it! The news that they are blessed is just as shocking to them today as it would have been two millennia ago”.
By it, I am not negating the other stories (about the rich young ruler, Lazarus etc.) that seem to directly address the rich. I’m just questioning my own tendency to look for a meaning for myself in things that have a meaning primarily for others.
4 comments:
Rather than engaging in a personal reflection related to this post, I feel that it tells me something about you.
In particular, I feel like it tells me that you are walking on a slippery, but important, slope. Have fun with that.
Mmmm, I'm still miles away from the health-and-wealth stuff, and I actually do believe that we need to make ourselves poor.
It's just that much of the Gospel is good news for the poor, it's theirs, primarily theirs, and that if we hear it as a message to us who are not poor, we have a problem.
That doesn't mean I'm going to go off proclaiming the Gospel to "the poor" from a position of privilege. I think that's Horrible with a big fat H.
As for walking a slippery slope. I'm getting a bit worried about that too. I know one's not supposed to put that sort of thing off, but once I've submitted my thesis, I'm giving all of this a big re-think.
D.
Truth is that all of us already are 'proclaiming the Gospel to "the poor" from a position of privilege.' I am, anyway. No point in kidding ourselves on that account. Perhaps we don't want to be in that position, but we first need to recognise that that is the position that we are in.
That said, if the the message of much of the Gospels is not for the rich, but for the poor, the message may not be 'the rich need to become poor' but it could carry the implication that, if we would like to receive this message, then we need to become poor. Thus, I can agree with your point, and I agree that we still end up making ourselves poor -- not because the message is addressed to us, but perhaps because we would like it to be?
Anyway, my point about that 'slippery slope' didn't just pertain to the health-and-wealth gospel. That was just one side of it. Perhaps it is more like you are walking a slippery, but important, ridge. On one side, there are echoes of the health-and-wealth thing, on the other side, you've got the whole shit-show that academics refer to as hermeneutics. How do we determine the audience of a text? Is there meaning in this text? Is there meaning in this text for me? And so on. In my own research and writing, I've discovered that hermeneutics, if honestly confronted, it a Pandora's box. That's the slope on the other side of the ridge.
The point is, I’ll never be poor, even if I live very simply and give of myself and my time. Nobody will take away a loving family, an extensive network of great friends, and a fair bit of cultural capital. How could I lose these if I wanted to? How do I make myself poor in these aspects? I’m not a punk; I haven’t got a hardcore background, at most a bit of teenage angst and some empathy. The best I can do is be authentic and hope that the poor don’t hate my guts.
I totally get your point that the message may not be addressed to us, but we would like it to be. In fact, that was much of the substance of my post. I was excluding myself; I was refusing to appropriate a message that is a message for the poor. And it made me cry that I was on the wrong side of things and plainly still didn’t get it.
But even Jesus and his immediate disciples weren’t dirt poor in that sense. They had loving families, houses, cultural capital. Were they proclaiming the Gospel to "the poor" from a position of privilege? You bet. But they sure as hell weren’t proclaiming it without sharing their lives and their stuff.
This said I don’t proclaim much Gospel to the vulnerable these days because I assume that they have it, and I’m the one that needs to hear it. If I’m ever a channel of God’s grace it is after I’ve learned that. And again my approach is to let people steal what they would like from me. The other day, I was in the pub and a woman stared at me from across the room. She has a speech impediment and by the looks of it, a potentially abusive alcoholic boyfriend. After staring for half an hour she came over and put her tiny dog in my arms. I stroke the dog, remembering what you said about animals being an easy channel to demonstrate affection. So I lavished some love on the dog, I was longing to lavish some love on the woman too, but that was the way to do it. After another half hour she took the dog back and went back to her seat.
I’m glad she stole that from me. I’m glad she deemed me worthy and wanted to get close. And she’s got Gospel because she knows how to love her difficult, insecure and addicted boyfriend. Something I struggle with. When I observe her, she understands him on a very deep level, while the rest of us only make him feel incredibly insecure.
Finally, on the slippery slope of hermeneutics, I don’t apply it all the time, but I like playing around with concepts from time to time. And in this instance I felt that I’d dwelled for too long on the ‘we need to become poor’ side of the message, and not enough on the ‘Jesus was talking to the poor, the lonely, the sick and the forsaken and his message is for them, for them primarily’.
D.
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