Monday, January 24, 2005

Ideas Worth Exploring

It may be that the ideas Ray discusses here are born of cultural imperialism or religious arrogance, as he concedes. But I suspect that he's a man of humility who really cares about people and works to avoid such attitudes or attributes. Check out this post and in succeeding days, continue to read his reflections on his recent trip to Mexico (to help build housing in an impoverished area) with an open mind.

I haven't formed any conclusions about what Ray raises here...and neither has he.

But his experience certainly should incite some fruitful discussion and hopefully, useful action.

My guess is that if the general squalor in which the world's poor lives was purely the result of not having good examples, there would be no ghettos or shantytowns. US culture, after all, which is unimaginably wealthy by world standards, is pervasive. Even the poorest of the poor see examples of it each day, if nowhere else in the billboards plastered in their cities.

Poverty, I think, immobilizes people through the despair it spawns and the fewer opportunities for economic advancement. In a world often financially-driven, those without are depressed in more ways than one. Their conditions feel like judgments over their lives--judgments, they perceive, that come from God and from others and judgments they come to see as irreversible.

Having said that, I do believe that when people know that they've been accepted by God, through Jesus Christ, just as they are, and come to believe in Him, there is a radical transformation that starts to happen in their lives. They have hope, something they've never experienced before. Through the witness of the Holy Spirit, people know that they are approved by God and given an imperishable future.

This clearly adds to their industry and gives them the requisite hope necessary to believe it possible to rise from the squalor. Jesus' words in Matthew aren't hollow rhetoric, but a real promise: "With God, all things are possible."

The end of apartheid in South Africa is one prime example of the lie of Karl Marx's assertion that religious belief acts as an opiate, causing people to accept their poverty and await reward in the sweet-by-and-by. In South Africa and in millions of other places, circumstances, and lives, surrender to Jesus Christ and the assurance of heaven haves incited people to throw off the dulling shackles of limited possibilities and to fearlessly confront injustice.

Just my two cents. Go to Ray's site and let's all continue this conversation.

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