Poverty of the Mind

There's something I've been thinking about lately and it has caused me to reconsider my perspective on the way in which I approach how I live my life day to day.  To explain what I mean I need to give a little background. 


While taking a trip recently to an area of the world where poverty runs rampant and there has been extensive efforts towards relief and development, I was struck but a conversation my husband shared with one of the development workers.  She mentioned that even though many of the people she works with now have jobs and could readily leave the slum life, many  have remained there and seem to instinctively choose to live in cardboard houses, sleep on dirt floors alongside steams of sewage, and rarely set foot outside the despairing reality in which they live – many don’t seem to fully understand what is available to them. They’ve been given the resources and now come home at the end of the day having earned wages tucked neatly in their back pocket, but they do not know how to make use of it. 

 

I found myself asking, "Then what's the point of it?" She then made a distinction between economic poverty and emotional poverty.  What they were learning is that it is much easier to transition them out of economic poverty because it involves dealing with issues that are more concrete, like skill building and the marketing of goods and trades. These are things they can engage and grow in.  However, helping them shift their thinking from one of scarcity to one of resource or abundance is much more difficult and will take longer.   

On top of that, even though many had the resources to leave the slum and find a different kind of life, most not only didn’t do it, but also took to guarding the slum’s boundaries so that even those who wanted to help could not get in.  They were held captive by the poverty of their mind because they did not have a vision for anything different.

Now here's where some ponderings come in to play.  I wonder if we do not have a similar perspective to those in the slums.  Figuratively speaking we have built our spiritual internal home in ways that can reflect an internal slum and we find ourselves impoverished.  At some point we have been introduced to God and have taken on some of the “skills” by way of Bible study, church attendance, etc…these are the concrete ideas that were easy for us to embrace early on and they are indeed the necessary place to begin and thereby grow – as was skill building and job acquiring for those in the slum.  But I wonder if we have stopped there? 

 

It seems we have resources but don’t really know how to use them and so we return to a "slum-way" of living.  For example, we have learned from studying our Bible that in our anger we ought not sin, and yet we may be accustom to “heart-sewage” in the form of yelling to get our point across.  We have had plenty of devotionals or heard motivational Christian speakers talk about the pain of slander yet we can often turn to gossiping to sooth our insecurity.  We know that we are uniquely created in God's image, chosen and dearly loved, but we may find ourselves accepting on-going mistreatment from someone and we allow that mistreatment to define us.  We have heard from the very beginning that there is a "God-shaped hole in our heart that only he can fill"  yet we set aside our self-worth in order to be “loved” by someone else and it never satisfies….The list is can go on - right?   The truth of it is, we want to move forward but sometimes we can't, and instead we return to the slums and find ourselves caught in a cycle of sin from which we cannot break free.  On top of that, we often guard the door of our internal soul-slum space while our own fear and pride/shame keep others at arms length and prevent anyone from really getting in and bringing help - including God. 


Sometimes (Now don't shoot me here) we are held captive by the poverty of our mind and we simply lack the vision for anything different.  Just like there was a good life just across town, outside the slums for so many in those impoverished areas; there is a rich, abundant, beautiful life in our midst as well.  Living in the ongoing presence of God's love and participating in HIs Kingdom as a child of the King is what we are made for.  It is life outside of the slums and it begins now...right here...


....But how do we get there? 



This is part one of a two -part post...tune in next time for thoughts on how we can begin to grow a vision for living outside the slum.