Today is Blog Action Day: Poverty. Bloggers, podcasters, and videocasters across the globe are addressing the issue of global poverty so that together we can raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. A Nun’s Life blog is participating today by hosting a discussion on poverty in light of faith by using Jon Sobrino’s book No Salvation Outside the Poor. This morning, I’d like to start off with a simple” question:
What does “no salvation outside the poor” mean to you?
Special Note:
For those of you on Plurk or Twitter, Denise205 will be covering the comments on A Nun’s Life throughout the day.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I found it a rather difficult phrase to get a good understanding for–a serious, deep understanding. The bit from Matthew comes to mind: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Mt 19:23-25 and that one is always hard, too.
Is there anything wrong with having “stuff”? Not really. It’s that the rich young man that Jesus addressed that to (or about) loved his “stuff” more than he loved God. Do we?
Does it mean that you have to be poor to be saved? No, not that either. But does anything about being “not poor” contribute to anyone else’s poverty? That would drive a wedge in your relationship with God. Do you make the poor invisible? That would drive a wedge.
The rich young man, loving his stuff as he did, could not have embraced the poor of his time. That’s part of the wedge.
I ramble. And I did say it was hard to grasp…
hmmmm… what does it mean? :O
for my part, i turn to sites like freerice, kiva, and goodsearch, as ways to help alleviate poverty online.
saw this post via the front page of blog action day. it’s great that you’re participating.
The Matthew story you mentioned, Katney, is a good one to use to try and grapple with this statement. I agree about the issue of stuff — it’s when it comes at the cost of others, contributes to the poverty and/or oppression of others, or stops us from being free to follow the Gospel — that’s when it becomes problematic.
I think we have an absolute duty to attend to people who are poor. The statement “no salvation outside the poor” reminds me of Catholic Church teaching: “no salvation outside the church” (meaning the Catholic Church). It’s an often misunderstood teaching and can often be difficult to address within ecumenical and interfaith dialogues. (For a fuller understanding of this teaching, start with Wikipedia which has the relevant references from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.)
So Sobrino may be suggesting that just as Jesus Christ is present through the Church, so Jesus Christ is present through the people who are poor. To neglect the poor then, is to set ourselves outside of a relationship with Jesus Christ and therefore salvation.
Hi kouji haiku, Glad you found me here. You raise a most excellent point. There are simple, immediate steps we can take right now in order to help people who are poor. No matter how much discussion we or any one has, we must never forget to attend to other ways of acting on behalf of peole who are poor.
The links from kouji haiku are here:
Free Rice – Give free rice to hungry people by playing a simple game that increases your knowledge.
Kiva – Lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur in the developing world empowering them to life themselves out of poverty.
GoodSearch – Give to charity just by searching the Internet.
I think one of the biggest issues is that for many of us we don’t put a face on the poor. We don’t recognize them. They are invisible. We think that by dropping a few coins in the kettle at Christmastime, or sending our castoffs to St.Vincent’s and we’ve done our part.
I recently retired from teaching at a pretty affluent school. In recent years, our middle schoolers have taken part in service to the poor not just by, say, collecting cans for a food drive or leaving off their outgrown coat for the Coats for Kids drive, but by going to the Union Gospel Mission for the day, doing yard work or cleaning there, and then sitting down with the homeless at lunch. Those kids came back from that day with a very different attitude.
We can talk about poverty. We can talk about the poor. We can drop our coins in the kettle or take a can of beans to the food drive. But without actually looking poverty in the eye and grappling with it, it is really invisible. We don’t think about what is invisible.
Yes. Invisibility. That is a major social problem.
With our own difficult economy, it really has made me look inside myself. I had to realize what is really important in my own life. We have to really live the gospel by doing more to help the poor. This Sunday is Mission Sunday, it’s a great way to start.
Say more about looking within yourself as a way to address the issue of poverty …
I think a lot of the time with poverty, it’s schadenfreude. For instance, in my city you have the 40 Days for Life people protesting a Planned Parenthood, but they completely ignore the fact that not blocks away from them is a tent city that’s been in the news as of late. It’s easy to ignore the sanctity of life, when it isn’t a cute baby. Let’s face it, in this economy any of us are one big medical bill away from living in a tent city, ourselves.
To me, it means…if you do not recognize your total reliance on God, you will not spend eternity with Him.
“Poor” to me does not necessarily mean literally poor, as in, no possessions no nada. It means poor in spirit, a total love and trust in God. A hakuna matata sort of lifestyle.
Hi, Julie and all,
For me the phrase is clear. If we do not let poor persons and their situation stand between us and every decision we make, we are lost. They need to haunt us until we have less focus on ourselves and more justice for the them, through systemic change. Nowadays, there are beggars in greater numbers everywhere. It is well worth a coin in order to look them in the eyes and take that picture to our prayer and daily life. They will not give us guilt; rather they give us meaningful challenge.
I agree with Jen and Lucia. Poverty is living the simple lifesstyle, it is our dependence on God for all we have. We are all poor in more ways than we admit. I often think, “There go I if it wasn’t for the grace of God”
I don’t think that living a simple lifestyle is all there is to it. We can live a simple lifestyle and not necessarily be poor in spirit. We can live more affluently (for lack of a better word–but I am not meaning needless extravagance) and be poor in spirit.
But Jesus said, “The poor you have always with you.” I don’t think that was just to indicate that the person who spent money on oil to annoint him was doing something okay. I think it also pointed out that we ALWAYS have the poor and ALWAYS should be doing something in their regard.
As some have alluded, poverty, or the state of being “poor”, has many faces. Material poverty is only one facet of it. Some folks are spiritually poor. Others suffer from physical or mental illnesses and so on. What would make us better Christians? (a) we donate peanut butter and spaghetti to a local food bank, or (b) we volunteer at a local nursing home to cheer up seniors who have enough money but are suffering from severe lonliness. To me, both are important. All people in need are deserving of help. One of the best ways to illustrate that is to observe the heavy drug usage among teenagers in affluent communities where they have everything they need materially but their parents are seldom around to spend time with them.
dee
Hi Sister Julie! I saw your headline on the Google news feed, and decided to check in on a blogging “neighbor.”
My Blog Action Day post at Monroe on a Budget isn’t as thought-provoking as yours, but I like the concept you’re running with.
Sister Julie,
I believe that you are right..the modern face of Jesus Christ is the poor. But I also like Katney’s and Deerose’s observation that poverty has additional states, incluidng poorness of spirit, mind, hope, charity, and love. For me the challenge of the statement, “there is no salvation outside of the poor” suggests that we must not simply rest in the knowledge that accepting/ acknowledging Jesus leads to paradise (ie the man who also was crucified alongside of Jesus) but because we do have time on Earth that me must step outside of our comfort zones and serve the others. To me the challenge of the statement is to work, to work to help and serve others, so that we can demonstrate the love that we have for our savior for providing salvation. The challenge I think in my own life is to do this consistently, to continue to see Jesus in the very people whose circumstances I do not understand or that frighten me and to show them love and service. The second challenge becomes the how…particulary because there are so many different appeals on time and resources how do you answer all of those calls for help? How do you love them all?
I am new here. And I want to say Thank You all. I needed your dialog today as I search for the direction I am to take. Marriage or serving those, I quote, “The second challenge becomes the how…particulary because there are so many different appeals on time and resources how do you answer all of those calls for help? How do you love them all?”
I know I am to serve, but where? how? in what? I have made so many mistakes, I can’t think of disappointing Him yet again.
God Bless
Regina and others:
I too have always struggled with the questions you posed. “How do we answer all the calls for help?” “How do we love everyone?”I used to think that we were so helpless and could make no difference. But now I know we can. It’s just that we make a little bit of difference at a time, i.e., baby steps. And if you add them all up, it can and does make a big difference. It can be frustrating though. We want to see a lot of progress all at once. But it usually does not happen that way in my experience.
dee
Hi Theresa, I’m glad you came by A Nun’s Life. Many of us have those same questions as deerose noted too. And ALL of us have struggled and failed miserably at serving God and others. But take heart, Theresa. No matter how many times we mess up, God is always there for us, helping us and guiding us, and loving us thoroughly all the time. So try not to let that fear of disappointing God get in the way of stepping out of yourself to help others. If something doesn’t work, try something else.
Thomas Merton has a great prayer that I often pray and quote, especially this part: “I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.” Pray this prayer, Theresa and others (myself included), and know that however you seek to answer these questions, you are already responding to the Holy Spirit’s inspirations.
Blessings.