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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