When Did We See You?

When I tell people that I’ve been to Ghana, they often ask about the poverty that we see there.  After all, Africa is famous for being poor.  And yes, there is poverty in Ghana.  But there is also affluence.  Becky and I saw cars, homes, and clothes in Ghana that we could never hope to afford.  The prices in some of the stores we visited were way out of our range.  What struck us even more than the poverty was the contrast: well-heeled businessmen driving sleek black SUVs past people living in shacks by the ditch, and children with nothing but a ball of tape for a soccer ball playing outside a beautiful resort.  We asked ourselves, “How can such stark contrast exist in Ghana?  How can the affluent live with themselves when confronted with such desperate need?”  It baffled and bothered us.

As we talked about it, we realized that the gap between the rich and the poor is just as real in the US as it is in Ghana.  According to a 2011 study by Duke University and the Harvard Business School, the richest 20% of Americans own 84% of our nation’s wealth, while the poorest 40% own only 0.3%.  And the gap is growing: over the past 20 years, poor Americans have actually gotten poorer, while the rich have gotten richer.  Even more troubling is the study’s finding that most Americans have no idea how big the difference is between the wealthy and the poor in our country.

Becky and I saw the contrast between the rich and the poor in Ghana, while rarely noticing in the US, for two reasons.  First, we do a better job of hiding the poor from sight in our country.  The rich and middle class live in certain areas, and the poor live somewhere else.  If you don’t go to  certain neighborhoods and communities, you don’t have to see them.  And second, we’ve trained ourselves not to see them.  We’ve learned how to ignore the needy until we don’t even notice that they exist.  At the monthly deacons meeting, we struggle to identify people that we can help.  They’re in our community, but we don’t see them.  Becky and I noticed the contrast in Ghana only because we were in a different culture, where we didn’t know how to ignore what we didn’t want to see.

Politicians may engage in or accuse each other of “class warfare,” but for us Christians this is a wake-up call to do something.  In the parable of the sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46), Jesus cursed the goats because they failed to help him when he was hungry, thirsty, a stranger in need of clothes, sick and in prison.  Perplexed, they responded, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”  They did not help, because they did not see the need.  They were blind to the poor and distressed people all around them.  I’m ashamed to say that those goats sound an awful lot like me.

Thankfully, we worship a Lord who gives sight to the blind and wisdom to the foolish.  I urge you to seek the Lord’s help to open your eyes to the need that surrounds us, so that you may respond with the love and justice of Christ.