In the last post, I talked about Bart Campolo. In the blog post I linked to about the war in his neighborhood, Bart said something I thought about all day yesterday. Here, he is talking about how the residents of the neighborhood have no choice but to live there. Then he says
But Marty and I, Ric and Karen, Donna and Jeff – we all could go if we chose to, which is probably the most important thing that sets us apart in this neighborhood, for better and for worse. We’re educated and connected in ways that mean we can never really be poor, no matter how little we may make or live on. Poverty, after all, is not so much the absence of money as it is the absence of choices.

Look at that last line again.

Poverty, after all, is not so much the absence of money as it is the absence of choices.

I have, many times in my life, had no or very little money, yet I have never felt poor. I have choices. When I eat in the soup kitchen to meet and talk with the homeless, it is a choice; I have food in my cupboard. When I sit on the street corner and talk with my “unhoused” friends while they wait on the mission to open so they will have a bed tonight, I am there by choice. No matter how economically trying things get, I have the near certain knowledge that because of my education, my skills and my contacts, I need never go to bed hungry, I need never sleep outside, I need never be lonely. If I wanted to, I could get a “real” job tomorrow, or at the latest, by next week.  In fact, that I am where I am by choice helps with the decision to be here when things get tough.

My homeless friends have no such choices. Their choice of where to eat lunch today consists of  eating in the soup kitchen or going hungry. They have the choice of sleeping outside or fighting to get in the mission. They have the choice of working today or having a bed to sleep in at the mission tonight

(The mission opens up at 3:30pm, all beds are gone by 3:45… if you work today at the day labor agency, you have no chance at a bed in the mission tonight. Would you go to work today if you knew it meant you had to sleep outside tonight?).

When people have no choice in the education they receive, in the opportunities that are available to them, poverty is the result. The exceptions are so rare that we laud them and hold them up as paragons (Colin Powell, for example). Even these examples that my conservative bretheren hold up as “proof” that you can overcome your surroundings usually can point to someone who showed faith in them, who showed them an alternative to life as normal, who gave them choices.

Poverty is about the absence of choice.

One of the people who inspire me in the work we do is Bart Campolo. Bart is the son of Tony Campolo, another hero of mine and the person most responsible for me coming to understand that Jesus saves us to change the world (in other words, it is not just about what happens after we are dead). Bart lives in inner city Cincinnati with his wife and two teenage kids.

Bart’s neighborhood has turned into a war zone of late. There is gunfire, there is innocent “collateral damage”, there is fear. For the residents of this neighborhood, this is life; they have no real choice. However, Bart and his family choose to live there.

Bart believes (as do I and countless other “urban missionaries”) that only by living among those you serve can you understand them, can you understand their problems, can you learn what obstacles stand in their way.  When hear about a neighborhood with a “bad” school, you think that is sad. When you live in a neighborhood with a bad school, that is now not just sad, it is now your problem as well.

However, Bart has to balance the call to serve with the safety of his family.

The first thing you learn in urban missions is to not confuse your comfort with your safety. Often you will go into places where you do not feel comfortable; everyone is a different color than you, everyone is bigger than you, they speak a different language than you. Fear is the instinctive response; we fear the different. Often, these fears are ungrounded.

Most inner city violence is between lovers or between users or sellers of alcohol and drugs. Random violence is pretty rare. Generally. However, when you are in a war zone, accidents do happen, and if your daughter dies because of a stray bullet, she is just as dead as if the killer targeted her.

I admire Bart for his choice to stay. I wonder if I would if I were in his shoes.