Crossing the Canyon

This country has always assumed, either openly or just beneath the surface, that people are poor because they are worthless and worthless because they are poor. But at no time in the last 50 years has this assumption been as blatantly and popularly expressed as it is now in the Reagan budget.

Our preparation for this month's issue on the budget and the poor has been very depressing work. It is hard to look at page after page of numbers and know that each figure represents a hungry child, a homeless family, or the death of a young person's hope. But it is harder still to realize how easily the Reagan plan has been accepted by the American people. Poor people have very few allies and even fewer friends in this country today. It has never been more important that Christians heed their biblical mandate to make the cause of the poor their own.

In light of our Christian responsibility toward the poor we wanted this issue of our magazine not only to inform and analyze but to include some suggestions of political responses Christians can make to the Reagan budget. We have done some of that, but frankly it was hard to get excited about it. In the present environment the best political efforts likely won't work, and even if they do, they will only keep a very bad situation from getting too much worse.

Some people think that possibly the Reagan plan will create such economic chaos in the next few years that people will be ready to accept a program of radical change. But any possible radical alternatives are in an embryonic stage at best. More probably, the failure of Reagan's economics will only pave the way for something worse. Standing with the poor is going to be a very unpopular position in the days ahead.

Cardinal Paulo Arns of Sao Paolo, Brazil, was in Washington, D.C., recently and gave a talk titled "The Church of the Poor--A Persecuted Church." He told his audience that when the church in Brazil began speaking out against the military government and calling for free elections, freedom of the press, and other basic civil rights it had a lot of allies. Many journalists, politicians, academics, and professional people were with the church all the way. But the cardinal said that as his church's commitment to the poor deepened and Christians began to stand with poor people and help them organize around economic issues, suddenly all the old allies were gone, and the church found itself all alone with the poor. Cardinal Arns spoke very movingly of the joyful spirit of community and the renewed and deepened worship life that had resulted from his church's "option for the poor."

The way things are going in this country Christians who really stand with the poor may find themselves becoming just as marginalized and powerless as poor people already are. Christians should do the lobbying, letter-writing, demonstrating, and all the rest against this budget. It is a survival issue, and anything that might relieve the suffering a little bit is worth trying. But the real work before us is to begin finding ways to give up our prerogatives of race, class, and education and listen to the poor people who are such a despised and abandoned minority in this country.

Years ago Rev. Jesse Jackson preached a sermon in which he said, "It may be that God sent black people to this country to save America's soul." That comment has stuck with me for almost eight years now because, beneath the rhetorical flourish, it contains a very real truth. Jackson was saying that God brought African people to this land of slavery and oppression so that white, affluent Americans would always have the face of the poor, beaten, imprisoned, and crucified Jesus looking back at them, and so always have the possibility of redemption.

Of course, Jackson could have said the same thing about the Native American Indians who were here first or about millions of poor whites. It is a biblical fact that the face of the poor is the face of Jesus. When we shut ourselves off from poor people, we shut ourselves off from God's life in this world. But when we unite ourselves with poor, suffering, and oppressed people, we can find the joy of union with the eternal God.

And only from a posture of listening to poor people and learning to share their struggle can there come any political response that could begin to free this country from its greed and cruelty.

In the Gospels Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God is a two-edged sword. He simultaneously proclaims liberation for the oppressed poor and calls for repentance and restitution from the rich and powerful. But just beyond this two-edged proclamation is the possibility of a new order in which liberated poor people whose pride and humanity have been restored and rich people who, like Zaccheus, have relinquished their privileges and redirected their lives, can meet in a fellowship of justice, peace, and love that knows no end.

Then, as now, very few of the affluent and powerful were willing to take up their crosses. The early church was predominantly a church of the poor. For white, educated, and relatively affluent people like ourselves, standing with the poor is still a very difficult and complicated thing. A wide canyon of conscious and unconscious privileges and assumptions separates us from the real world of people's suffering and oppression. At our best moments we are still spiritual voyeurs drawing inspiration and strength from Christ's suffering but not feeling it or paying the cost. If there is any salvation for our American souls, or any light for these dark times, it will come from a few middle-class Christians beginning to strip off their privileges, give up their prerogatives, and slowly, tortuously pick their way across that canyon. It won't be an easy journey; it may not even be possible. But if we set out on it we may discover the deepest truth of the life of Jesus, one that poor Christians have always known: that at the powerless margins of human society one finds the unfathomable power of God. That power raised Jesus from the dead and will liberate his sisters and brothers.

Danny Collum was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.