Who Is My Neighbor?: Being a Good Samaritan in a Connected World

by Steve Moore

  Crisis that induces or exacerbates poverty goes beyond acts of God to acts of war. One of the most widely reported examples of war-induced crisis is the Darfur region of southern Sudan. Since 2003 the Jinjawiid militia has embarked on a campaign of murder, rape, threats, and organized starvation that has left more than four hundred thousand dead, and displaced over 2.5 million people.4

  Armani Tinjany is a twenty-nine-year-old college graduate and schoolteacher who told her story to a Washington Post reporter. She had lived a comfortable life with her family in a village of stone compounds until the Jinjawiid militia galloped into town. They burned buildings, killed the men, raped the women, and left a once bustling community in smoldering ruins. She fled for her life to a Chadian desert that had been converted into a refugee camp. It was anything but an oasis. She had not seen her husband or parents and had no idea if they made it out alive.5 Like the man with a sick daughter I met in India, her story is not unique. There are millions just like her in the northern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a second holocaust has claimed five million lives and left many more deeply entrenched in poverty due to the crisis of war fueled by conflict minerals.

  Poverty Resulting from Corruption

  Some people, in addition to crisis, are impoverished by corruption, tossed aside like leftovers at the banquet table of the rich and powerful. The prophet Ezekiel spoke to the power brokers in Jerusalem, expressing the righteous anger of God, saying, “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). We use the saying “where there is smoke, there is fire.” Where there is chronic injustice, there is almost always systemic poverty. We'll take a closer look at oppression and injustice in the next chapter.

  Poverty Resulting from Consequences

  A common misconception about poverty is that a majority of the poor are reaping the consequences of their own lack of initiative or bad decisions. In fact global poverty is more about the lack of options than poor decisions. Robert Chambers, a British researcher, said it bluntly: “People so close to the edge cannot afford laziness or stupidity. They have to work and work hard, whenever and however they can. Many of the lazy and stupid poor are dead.”6 People who work today to provide food for tonight are far less inclined to “call in sick” for frivolous reasons tomorrow.

  I am not suggesting that personal responsibility is irrelevant to this conversation. Some people are poor because of ill-advised or even sinful choices. Alcoholism and drug abuse are like economic parasites that ravage the creativity and productivity of addicts. Even value neutral but self-defeating decisions such as dropping out of high school can put people on a steep incline that greatly impedes their social progress. Out-of-wedlock pregnancies, criminal activity, and other missteps are speed bumps that slow the journey of upward mobility. To state it positively, in the United States today, one who completes high school, does not have a child out of wedlock, marries and remains married is very unlikely to be poor.7

  Even when poverty results from the logical consequences of poor choices, Jesus compels us to show mercy and compassion. Who among us would not admit that but for the grace of God, there go I? We are commanded to love others who don't like us, can't repay us, and won't thank us. This kind of Good Samaritan activity is not easy; or as we discovered in Luke 6:27-36, we will need grace for that.

  Poverty Resulting from Choice

  The final face of poverty, and seemingly least relevant for this conversation, is those who are poor by choice. We often describe people in this category as having taken a vow of poverty, embracing the simplest of lifestyles. Speaking of Lady Poverty, Francis of Assisi told his comrades, “I am about to take a wife of surpassing fairness.”8 He believed he was following in the footsteps of Jesus, who chose a simpler path, saying, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Few in the Protestant tradition have embraced this calling, nor do we spend a lot of time reflecting on the implications of Jesus' instructions to the rich ruler, saying, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Luke 18:22). I believe there are veins of truth we can mine from those who have embraced poverty by choice and will revisit this idea later in the chapter.

  STUPID DEATH

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  To explore the stupid death caused by HIV/AIDS, consider downloading the Global Status of HIV/AIDS webinar interview with World Relief from the online store at www.TheMissionExchange .org. Use the one-time discount code chapter7-neighbor to download this Global Issues Update webinar for free.

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  One of the most captivating images from the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti was the rescue of a seven-year-old girl buried in the rubble of her collapsed house, captured live on CNN. Rescue workers heard the girl's cries for help and dug through the debris only to discover her right leg was trapped. Millions watched the fear, agony, and pain on her face, while workers struggled to decide if they should amputate her leg or keep working to remove the remnants of the fallen structure. Once freed from the rubble, she was transferred to a first-aid station that did not have the capacity to deal with her injuries. She died about an hour after being rescued before she was able to receive treatment at a better-equipped facility outside the city. I remember looking into this little girl's face as her mother stroked her hair and whispered comforting words into her ear. I had a similar life-shaping experience that heartlinked me to poor children in India more than fifteen years earlier. But this time I was sitting at my kitchen table, trying to decide if it was immoral to eat my dinner while watching something so tragic unfold in real time. This is the power and complexity of a connected world.

  CNN journalist Anderson Cooper was one of the reporters covering this story. In an interview with Larry King, he described what was happening:

  There's just stupid death happening here now. It doesn't have to happen, and it's really upsetting to see. A little girl is dying because her leg was crushed. Someone doesn't have to die of that. A leg can be amputated if there's a doctor there to do it. If there's an infection, they can take antibiotics to be treated. It doesn't have to spread through the body and kill somebody. It's really stupid. It's infuriating. People died today who did not need to die. People will die tonight, in the next hour, who do not need to die.9

  We live in a world filled with stupid death, and it strikes the poor more than anyone. For the more than 3.5 billion people who live on less than $2 a day, poverty is like an accelerant for a raging fire, increasing the chances they will die prematurely of starvation or preventable disease. Approximately twenty-five thousand people die every day of hunger-related causes.10 Another five million die annually from water-related illnesses.11 In Africa, 165 of every one thousand children born will die before their fifth birthday. And almost all of it is stupid death, ranging from diarrheal diseases (17 percent) to malaria (8 percent) to AIDS (3 percent).12

  The World Health Organization reports there are over five hundred million cases of malaria annually, resulting in 1.5 to 2.7 million deaths. Though few of us in the West ever think about it unless traveling to an “exotic” location, some scientists have postulated that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria.13 This one-celled parasite, known as plasmodia, may be the poster child for stupid death, considering medicines are available to stop the progression of the disease and a mosquito net costing $10 greatly reduces the risk of getting it.

  The AIDS pandemic, especially in Africa, is nearly impossible to put in a context that is comprehensible. This treatable but incurable disease kills eight thousand people every day. Like a hurricane-force tidal wave, it is leaving a wake of orphans, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, projected to reach twenty-five million in 2010.14 In an attempt to put this tragedy in perspective, Richard Stearns describes a chain of children holding hands and stretching out across
America. This chain, starting in New York, would stretch all the way to Seattle, back to Philadelphia, back to San Francisco, then east to Washington, D.C., back again to Los Angeles, and finally to about Kansas City—more than five and a half times across the United States!15

  MONEY VERSUS PROPERTY

  Life in a connected world puts stupid death on the side of the road in a way that cannot be ignored. One of the four faces of poverty is those who are poor by choice. I am not campaigning for a revival of asceticism accompanied by a vow of poverty, but I do believe we can learn an important lesson from this stream of spirituality about how to embrace a lifestyle of simplicity. Living a simple lifestyle does not mean arbitrary limits on income or net worth, nor does it generate a uniform list of what Jesus would eat, wear, or drive. I know this subject deserves a much fuller treatment than is appropriate here, but I want to highlight one specific worldview shift that fosters simplicity and opens a gateway to generosity and compassionate action on behalf of those suffering in poverty.

  The Bible clearly teaches that we are stewards and managers of what God has entrusted to us. Though we struggle to apply this principle, most Christ followers would acknowledge all we have comes from God and belongs to God. But practically speaking we live as if stewardship applies to our money but not our property, as if cash that has been converted into stuff belongs to us.

  Imagine the following example. You spend a few hours online paying bills and balancing your checkbook and are pleasantly surprised to discover an unexpected cushion of $600 after your tithe and savings. (I know you may find that hard to picture, but as I said, imagine.) You have been eying a sale on flat-screen televisions for some time and know you can purchase one for $595. In a matter of hours you have converted cash into stuff and are enjoying a movie in full HD with popcorn in the comfort of your living room.

  The next morning while making coffee, you turn on the new big screen to watch the news before heading off to work, only to discover a 7.0 magnitude earthquake ravaged Haiti, leaving more than one hundred thousand people dead and two million homeless. An already stumbling economy has been brought to its knees. Before the day is over you have received emergency appeals from trusted relief and development organizations along with a dozen Facebook status updates from friends pointing you toward practical ways to help. And you know they are not exaggerating because you can see the destruction in real time, with full HD.

  For most of us, one idea that would never even enter our minds while sorting out how to respond to this tragedy is that God might actually want us to return the television in order to free up funds that could be used to help. We view money differently than property. Forget about recent purchases and just think about all the “stuff” in your house (never mind the garage). How could any of us really look into the face of poverty, whether caused by crisis, corruption, or logical consequences, and say I can't afford to do anything to help? God's ownership stake does not end the moment cash is traded for a sales receipt. In spite of the fact that our connected world, with online services such as craigslist and eBay, has made it easier than ever to turn stuff back into cash, we tend to view money very differently than property, and it greatly limits our options.

  This is an unbiblical worldview when contrasted to how the early church viewed property. “There were no needy persons among them. From time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need” (Acts 4:34-35). The apostle John would later write, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18). Perhaps we have too quickly and easily taken the exit ramps of rationalization and justification enabling us to pass by on the other side.

  We quote Psalm 50:10, affirming God owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” as a word of encouragement that He is not at a loss in providing for our needs. That is true. But in an agrarian society, cattle represented a business owner's inventory. We might paraphrase that verse for our time, saying, “God owns the inventory in a thousand warehouses.” Why is that important? Because this verse says as much about God's ownership stake (100 percent) in my property as it does about His commitment to my prosperity. Every time our connected world offers us the opportunity to be Good Samaritans, we need to prayerfully process the decision about involvement based on total inventory, not just available money. This subtle but powerful change in worldview opens the door to a life of open-handed simplicity and generosity, empowering us to engage more deeply with the issue-based passion of poverty.

  PRAY LIKE A ROCK STAR

  On February 2, 2006, Bono, the front man and lead singer of U2, addressed the group gathered for the annual prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C. Just a few brief excerpts from this unlikely prophet left me wanting to pray, and serve, like a rock star:

  God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.

  “If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and the speaking of wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire even in scorched places.”…

  And finally … this is not about charity in the end, is it? It's about justice…. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties; it doubts our concern, and it questions our commitment. Six and a half thousand Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

  Because there's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we would let it happen anywhere else — if we really accepted that Africans are equal to us…. Look what happened in South East Asia with the tsunami. One hundred fifty thousand lives lost16 to the misnomer of all misnomers, “mother nature.” In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month — a tsunami every month. And it's a completely avoidable catastrophe.

  It's annoying, but justice and equality are mates, aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain….

  Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market … that's a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents … that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents … that's a justice issue.17

  A few weeks before his prayer breakfast speech, Bono challenged our generation to be history makers on behalf of the poor:

  We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies—but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? Fifteen thousand people dying needlessly every day from AIDS, TB, and malaria. Mothers, fathers, teachers, farmers, nurses, mechanics, children. This is Africa's crisis. That it's not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency—that's our crisis.

  Future generations … will know whether we answered the question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what's written is up to us. We can't say our generation couldn't afford it. And we can't say our generation didn't have reason to do it. It's up to us.18

  Everyone has the same need for food; not everyone has the same access to provision.

  Chapter 8

  GOD'S PASSION FO
R THE OPPRESSED

  Everyone has the same need for freedom, but not everyone has the same access to justice. By freedom I am not referring to democracy or capitalism but to a liberty that transcends economics and politics. Freedom in this sense is a self-evident truth that all people are the image-bearers of God, who created them. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, we have been “endowed with certain unalienable rights,” including not only the right to live, but to do so in freedom. Liberty is a human right, rooted in eternal rather than civil authority. As a plant needs sunlight, rain, and nutrients from the soil, we need freedom in order to blossom, flourish, and reflect the beautiful fruitfulness intended by our Creator. Everyone has the same need for freedom; not everyone has the same access to justice.

  In 1983 I was arrested, twice, for the same crime in less than two months. Though I've done many things in my past to make you think less of me, this is probably not one of them. I was part of a short-term mission team serving in a Muslim country in Asia. Our primary focus was selling Bibles and books about life based on the teachings of Jesus from store to store in major cities. All the material had been printed locally, and though we had been advised that distributing it freely would be problematic, it was perfectly legal to sell. At least that's what we thought. We memorized some phrases and took to the streets.

  The first time our team got arrested, the charges were dismissed within two days and we were asked to leave the city by officials in the police department. The circumstances surrounding our release were every bit as miraculous to me as anything I read in the book of Acts, minus the shaking of the prison and angelic escort (see Acts 12 and 16), but that is another story. The second go-around was more by the book, including fingerprints and mug shots along with an official ruling by a judge. We were sentenced, one by one, to three months in jail. But the judge commuted the sentence on the condition that we agreed to pack up our van and leave the country.