Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Reducing Poverty, Not the Poor: Reclaiming Community with the Victims of Oppression
By Christopher L. Heuertz
September 2007
When we allow scripture and Christ’s example to penetrate our hearts and minds, we can do no less than commit to relationships. We realize that people rather than programs must be central to all that we do, and the poor are human persons like ourselves, with names, stories to tell and lives to share.
A Call to Submission: Following Our Friends to God’s Heart
We have a friend named Tuna. He sleeps on the street outside the Government Art College in Kolkata, India. With his blanket, change of clothes and other personal belongings, he weighs ninety-six pounds. Tuna looks like he could be forty-five years old, but in fact he is only twenty-six. His clothes are dirty, his hair is full of lice and his belly is full of worms. Tuna has tuberculosis. If you saw him on the street, you might give him some change, but most of us wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Our community first met Tuna in 1995, but it was not until a few years later that we really started to get to know him. People who live and work in the area where Tuna spends his time have filled in some of the mysterious gaps about Tuna’s past. They say that Tuna was a very talented and successful art student until something terrible happened to his brother. Whatever that crisis was, it was so traumatic that Tuna broke under the burden of it and went to the streets. He has never been the same, and it seems very unlikely that he will ever be the same again. His life is all but destroyed.
Over many meals, we have sat with Tuna and tried to get him to talk about himself. After several years, it seemed he began to recall things from his “old life.” He said that he had three brothers and sisters. His last name was Pal (a typical Bengali name). He seemed to want to remember more, but there was something that wouldn’t let him.
Tuna was a Shiva-devotee (in Hinduism, Shiva is referred to as “the Destroyer”). Every time we sat down to eat, he would say his prayers to Shiva and make a small offering to the god by setting part of his meal aside as his gift. It was sadly ironic to see this man whose life is destroyed worshipping “the Destroyer.”
In our efforts and prayers to help liberate Tuna from his physical, emotional and spiritual poverty, we have found ourselves being liberated by his presence in our lives.
On one occasion, we were sharing lunch together when he began to go through his ritual offering to Shiva. One of our community members suggested, “Pray to Jesus, Tuna.” He replied, “I only pray to Jesus now.”
As Tuna continues to learn how to pray to Jesus, he also teaches us how to learn. Being friends with him has allowed us to move from a mentality of programmed ministry to one of relationship. For so long, our mentality has been one of ministering to the poor as objects and recipients of compassion and charity. But Tuna has reminded us of our need to include the poor in life through intimate relationships—to see the poor not as those we “minister to,” but as those whom we identify ourselves with. He reminded us to open ourselves up to be ministered to by the poor.
Being in relationship with Tuna has allowed us to move from donor to receptor. When we view him as a person with intrinsic dignity that points to his proper identity, we can receive so much from him. In our efforts and prayers to help liberate Tuna from his physical, emotional and spiritual poverty, we have found ourselves being liberated by his presence in our lives. Although we may have hoped to give to Tuna, he always seemed to give more.
We must remember to be intentional and focused on authentic relationships based on love for our suffering friends as Jesus is for us. When our acts of generosity and kindness first spring out of a desire to love humbly, sincerely and courageously, a new and intimate relationship is able to be found that births hope and transformation for the greater good of all humanity.