Thursday 14 June 2018

They thrust the needy from the path and force all the poor of the land into hiding. – Job 24:4


Today’s Scripture Reading (June 14, 2018): Job 24

There is a rumor that the Royal Wedding between Harry and Meghan (May 2018) actually displaced many poor and homeless people from the parade route that the couple took following their wedding. I have not been able to verify the truth of the statement, but it would not surprise me. Any major event in almost any city on the planet requires the poor and the homeless to be sent somewhere else. We just don’t want to see them as the parade passes. We don’t want to be reminded of their existence as we celebrate life. Almost every night, beat cops in the major cities of the world are armed with the same phrase – move along. We don’t want you here. You create a nuisance. We need to be able to protect ourselves from the knowledge of our existence.

Some years ago I took some teens on an emotional scavenger hunt in the downtown area of a city of just under a million people. The task that was given to them was to see what emotions they could observe on the streets of the city. We passed the poor and the homeless. We saw prostitutes of the cheap (economically) variety trying to eke out an existence. We saw drug deals going down just off of the path on which we were walking. And when I say we, I mean to say that this is what I saw during the first part of our evening walk. The teens, on the other hand, were blissfully unaware of everything that was around them. Their attentions were caught up in the glitzy displays of the store windows and in the conversations that they were having with each other. They saw none of the poverty and pain that was on display all around them. And so at the halfway point, we changed things up. We banned conversation and I began to point out the poverty that existed all around them; the poverty that they were missing. And, yes, I was criticized for the event from both sides. Some wanted to protect the teens from the idea of the poor and the homeless living in their city. Others believed that I was unfairly placing the poor and homeless on a stage as entertainment for a group of rich kids. But I defended the event because I know we will not change what we cannot see.

Job tries to present his friends with an image of real evil. And for Job, evil lurks in the desire to hide the poor from our eyes; evil is found in those moments when we displace the poor and homeless because of some other event when we just don’t want to be confronted with their existence.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta made this comment about poverty.

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”

But the truth might be that, in the West, economic poverty is often accompanied by the disease of “being unwanted, unloved and uncared for.” And there is a deep truth in her statement. We need to set ourselves to the task of curing the disease of loneliness and poverty in our world. But to cure it, first, we need to be willing to see it.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 25 & 26

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