The Two Feet of Christian Service

Something has been lingering on my mind for quite a bit of time and I think that this is a good place to vocalize it. I know I haven't really discussed my faith in too much detail in this blog and I certainly don't really intend to. Faith in something greater than yourself can only be shown, and can rarely be found through words.

There is something that I heard of a couple of years ago that really struck my attention and that was "the two feet of Christian service." And although it was developed by Christians it certainly applies to everyone regardless of faith.

Idealistically, people who care about the world in which they live work in both of the sectors. One of the feet of Christian service is the alms giving part many people, including churches, businesses and individuals feel really comfortable with the first foot. This service means being in solidarity with the poor by giving them the things that they need immediately, (food, water and shelter) and this is really important. However, it is something that so many engage in. We feed the poor at food pantries and soup kitchens, we have clothing drives at our community centers or places of work, at Christmas time we even have programs where we donate toys to be given to underprivileged families. All of this feels good, were giving back to our community and treating the poor with dignity and respect. We go home after shopping at target and buying a few extra things to donate to our well heated homes, sleeping in our cozy beds, while a couple of people that we helped out sleep on hard floors, but with stomachs full of the food we gave.

However, tomorrow rolls around and when the calories are burned, the toys are broken and the jeans are tattered, the very people who we felt so good about helping out are in the same exact place as they were before we gave them the things they needed at that very time. At some point at some level we must ask ourselves why are these folks poor in the first place? Simple answers come to mind first...their lazy, they don't want to work, they just went to jail, there on drugs. But in the end all of these answers place the blame on the individual, as if their is something deficient about them.

We are called to use our brains, to think beyond these overly simplistic sort of answers. And this is the second foot of christian service, the why... why is it that they are poor, is it a result of not having jobs that they can make enough money to survive? Is it a result of not having parents that were able to raise them in good family situations because they were always working to not get the house foreclosed upon. If that is true, why were they paid so poorly? Why did the schools that they grew up in so poor? What effect did their racial status and class status have on them being able to succeed?

When we start asking these questions things seem to get a bit more complicated. They beg the question of why is it that there is such a disparity of wealth? Why is it that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. So much of the time we are afraid to ask these questions, to think that there is something beyond that surface... These questions create conflict because they challenge us to think, they question the very place that us, the affluent stand. But in the end, when we solve these oftentimes "dirty" issues, perhaps the family that we adopted for Christmas will have a good enough job to not depend on our alms next year. Maybe the programs that we advocated was the thing that gave them a leg up out of the cycle of poverty.

One cannot be done without the other, giving the poor food, shelter and clothing is really important as it serves people's immediate needs, but so is the questioning of structure, the questioning of the very beliefs that may have put us in the privileged position that we found ourselves in from the beginning.

Have you ever seen a runner win a race hopping on just one leg? Ever seen a bicycle racer cross the line in first with just one wheel on their bike. Ever seen a successful marriage with just one person? Just as none of these situations are highly improbable, so is the creation of a newer better world, without a combination of tactic.