How Would You Define (and Solve) Poverty?

What is poverty?

That is the question asked at the beginning of chapter 2 in When Helping Hurts (Steve Corbet and Brian Fikkert). So take some time, and write down a few words or phrases that come to mind when you think of poverty.

More than likely, if you are from a middle-class (and especially Caucasian) culture, you think of poverty as being centered around a lack of material resources — money, food, health care, infrastructure, jobs, etc. This mindset is how the World Bank set out to rebuild ravaged Europe and low-income countries (such as India) after World War II.

But whereas investing capital in Europe proved successful, in places like India the economy failed to thrive, or even grow at all. What’s the difference?

Their efforts proved that poverty is more complex than having physical needs. Therefore, solving poverty is more complex than charitable donations.

What Is Poverty?

Poverty is more than just lack of physical resources. It’s about shame and embarrassment, due to the failure to be able to take care of oneself and one’s family. Poverty is about a lack of opportunity, and being burdened with feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. Poverty robs you of your God-given sense of worth.

And according to When Helping Hurts, a biblical worldview will lead you to understand that poverty is also about broken relationships. God designed humans to have four types of healthy relationships:

1. Relationship with God:  This is our primary relationship, from which the other three flow.
2. Relationship with Self:  We have inherent value and dignity because we are created in God’s image.
3. Relationship with Others:  “We are made to know one another, to love one another, and to encourage one another . . . .”
4. Relationship with the Rest of Creation:  We are called to be stewards of creation and to be able to sustain ourselves through work.

How would you rate your relationships in each of these four categories? Can you say that you are perfect and complete in any of them? No, me neither.

What Are the Effects of Poverty?

Poverty involves having one or more of these relationships being incomplete and broken. By definition, then, we are all poor! The effects of these broken relationships can be manifested as follows:

1. Poverty of Spiritual Intimacy:  denying God’s existence and authority, materialism
2. Poverty of Being:  having god-complexes (thinking too highly of oneself) or low self-esteem (thinking too lowly of oneself)
3. Poverty of Community:  self-centeredness, exploitation and abuse of others
4. Poverty of Stewardship:  no sense of purpose, laziness or workaholics, materialism

Because of the fall (Genesis 3), our economic, religious, social, and political systems are all broken. It’s important to see that not all communities, cultures, and countries have similar manifestations of poverty manifested. If we want to help alleviate the effects of poverty, we need to pinpoint the primary causes (i.e., which broken relationships) in that particular setting.

How Do We Solve Poverty?

Why does it matter to pinpoint the problem? Because what we believe to be the primary cause will determine our primary actions.

In Table 2.1, the authors give a series of If/Then statements, according to this formula:

If we believe the primary cause of poverty is ___, then we will primarily try to ___.

For example:

• Cause:  A lack of knowledge.  Solution:  Educate the poor.
• Cause:  Oppression by powerful people. Solution:  Work for social justice.
• Cause:  The personal sins of the poor.  Solution:  Evangelize and disciple the poor.
• Cause:  A lack of material resources.  Solution:  Give material resources to the poor.

Western civilization focuses on this last cause and solution. But it’s obvious that diagnosis is not always simple, and poverty is usually caused by more than one factor. Therefore, a proper diagnosis will necessitate long-term involvement and caring relationships (and perhaps even a little trial-and-error).

Conclusion

If you are from a North American, middle class church, you probably have been locked in to this definition of poverty:

• Material Definition of Poverty, plus
• God-complexes of Materially Non-Poor, plus
• Feelings of Inferiority of Materially Non-Poor, equals
• Harm to Both Materially Poor and Non-Poor

We need to think of poverty from the mindset of relationships. You can learn more from this follow up post, and from the book When Helping Hurts.

More Resources

These posts have great videos that will help you understand poverty, and what actions steps can truly help:

• Poverty Cure.  The poor need development more than free handouts.
• Stop Serving the Poor.  From The Chalmers Center, who helped to provide many of the ideas in When Helping Hurts.
• Circles.  A program to empower families and communities to resolve poverty.

Other helpful links:

• A Tale of 2 Churches: What Different Cultures Can Learn From Each Other
• My Coin Laundry Experience
• Poverty and Power
• Real Poverty
• The Gospel Gives Me a Heart for the Poor
  
• The Humiliation of Homelessness and Poverty
• The Context for Hopelessness (CBC Talk — Part 1)
• It’s a Small World
• Poverty Poll
• Poverty: Facts vs Misconceptions
• Review: The Weight of Mercy