Blog Action Day: Shalom and Poverty

"It is always the poor who pay the price for the unbridled greed and irresponsibility of the powerful." -Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockman of Nicaragua, the newly elected president of the UN General Assembly

In solidarity with the thousands of bloggers participating in Blog Action Day 2008 to discuss poverty, I want to share with you, dear readers, some reflections on a conversation I had (a propos) this morning with a group of my fellow (north american) cross-cultural workers representing diverse ministries and NGOs in Nicaragua. We were gathered to reflect on how we--as people who live in the daily tension between a "home" culture and a "host" culture--can be prophetic voices to our culture of origin as we are challenged to see new things about the beliefs and values we have brought with us through the eyes of Nicaraguans, living daily among them.

One of the (perhaps self-evident) observations we made about our own culture is the exalting of individual liberty and rights and even entitlement over a more relational or communal understanding of "success". What is required of me is to work hard, to pursue MY goals, to provide for my family, and whatever is "extra" perhaps consider how to help others or give back. (Let us put aside for the moment the critique of how we determine what really is extra versus necessary to live a healthy life).

What does this kind of thinking lead to in practice? Many things--and while it is dangerous to make generalizations, it occurred to me that one thing decidedly lacking from our current US culture is the idea of and commitment to shared sacrifice. (For evidence of this, one need look no further than a 2006 comment by the President himself--"Go shopping"--when asked how Americans could help with the economy and the war on terror). I'm not qualified to get into a deep economic analysis of liquidity of markets, but it's clear something is dramatically wrong with this picture. Somehow I am helping my neighbor and our soldiers and the world by spending more on myself? No, I don't think so.

We're in the mess we're in now financially worldwide because money and wealth is all people seem to be interested in. Accumulation of goods--things--experiences--anything that makes us feel better about ourselves and forget our mortality, our limitations, our sin.

Meanwhile, what's suddenly been rediscovered this week after it became clear that the Wall Street crisis was going global is that we really are all connected (though we like to forget it). The disaster that's being wrought has consequences not only for the people who lost money in the stock market, but for the economies of countries much poorer than ours. And when I say "economies" what that actually represents are people. People who are far away from me physically perhaps, but that I can no more deny as my sisters and brothers than my own flesh and blood.

This point was brought out by another young woman in the group this morning who talked about our interconnectedness. "I am not going to have perfect shalom--peace, and justice, and wholeness--in my life until every one else on earth does too," she said. Maybe that sounds like idealism and pie-in-the-sky thinking, but I don't think so. That's the shalom that Christ came to earth to bring--to every person, to every community. A shalom that includes and begins with my own good relationship with God, but also must lead to the restoration of relationships with neighbor and creation and myself. Relaciones justas, as we say in Spanish.

And while we live in the tension between the "already but not yet" and justice seems far off, let us resolve not to forget that we ARE connected, and the situation of people in India, the Sudan, Bolivia, and Nicaragua matters. Not just in the abstract "God loves everyone and hates poverty" way but in the "God has called me to be an instrument of His love and grace, and to act, to do His will on earth to bring the fullness of His kingdom, the fullness of Kingdom Culture, the fullness of shalom, one day closer to reality." THAT, to me, is what it means when Jesus told us to pray, "Let your Kingdom come, and your will be done, on earth as it is heaven." While we are on the earth, we are not just waiting for Christ. We, the body of Christ, are the ones we have been waiting for, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God in pursuit of a world free of hunger, disease, violence, and poverty....