Angry at Poverty

When I first was coming to Thailand, someone close to me said, “I really respect your desire to go and share the gospel. But I don’t understand why you want to focus on the poor.” I couldn’t believe he said that and my anger burned at him. How could someone separate the poor from the gospel? This person later questioned whether focusing on the poor was a waste of time, energy, and resources. Oh my anger burned. God’s special concern for the poor is clear throughout scripture. How did he not get it?

Sometimes recently though, and especially today, I can understand those questions and the pessimism behind it. I’ve lived and worked among the poor in Bangkok for nearly four years now and I would have to say that a lot of the reasons that the poor are poor and continue to be poor are the fault of the poor. And it does seem sometimes that working to achieve holistic development among the poor is a slippery slope battle (not a downhill one, but an uphill one).

I was just today consulting with my Thai co-worker Gao about our microenterprise development program (small business loans to the poor who can’t access other credit). We’re at a conference with PeerServants, an organization that is supporting us in this work. Gao was sharing with me some of the cases of our clients and of the many obstacles that we face. Certainly one of the biggest is illiteracy among the poor. About 40% of our clients are unable to write on their own and fill out the forms we require. They might be good entrepreneurs, but Gao, as well as the other clients who can read and write, have to spend a lot of extra time helping them fill out the forms. The reason they are illiterate is not their fault. They come from upcountry where the schools in previous decades were simply inferior. Many of them had to quit school after 2nd or 3rd grade to help full-time with the family farm work. Besides having trouble filling out our forms, they also have trouble understanding the training sessions new clients must go through and practicing what is taught (personal budgeting, business planning, price setting, keeping records of costs and expenses as well as sales and profits, etc.)

Another big obstacle for many of our entrepreneurs is the addictions of their spouses. Our clients may be making enough in their businesses to repay our loans, but if their husband is an alcoholic, drinking multiple bottles of beer or whiskey every day, the business profits are whittled away in drunkenness. Attempts for the client to change the habits of their spouse are almost always unsuccessful and cause various strife. I can’t blame our clients for their spouses’ addictions.

But many other obstacles that cause some of our entrepreneurs to fail in repaying their loans and/or making their businesses successful are simply their own fault. They’re either lazy or just don’t know how to manage money. Buying lottery tickets is a huge waste of money that many clients are embroiled in. Use of loan sharks is another foolish thing that many clients get trapped in. Some of our folks will be applying for a second or third loan from us (they’re fairly likely to be approved if they’ve successfully paid off previous loan cycles with us) to improve their business and while waiting for the approval process (sometimes two to three weeks), they’ll get a quick loan from the loan sharks (who charge 20% interest per month). Then after they’re approved and get the loan from us, they’ll pay off the loan shark. But the high interest even in those two to three weeks eats up so much that they have less to invest in their business and aren’t able to make the same upgrades to their business that they proposed and then aren’t able to pay off the loan as planned. Simple impatience.

We’ve learned one of our most successful long-term repeat clients has a habit of spending 500 baht (~$15) on fishing everyday. That’s a lot of money here! He currently makes about 1000 baht per day from his multiple businesses (all taxi and transportation related) so he’s got a lot of income. But recently he’s started to claim he’s unable to repay his loan on time. How about cutting down on your fishing habit?

Another repeat client who has successfully expanded her business has a similar absurd habit. Now on her third loan cycle with us, she should be paying back 800 baht per week on her 8000 baht loan. (We charge 3% interest per month and also require clients to commit to some level of savings.) She’s now having problems making her payments on time, but she spends 1000 baht once a week getting a nice haircut and manicure at a salon. I’m glad she takes a Sabbath day off from her busy business, but hello! You’re poor, what are you doing spending $30 per week on your hair and nails?

One other man who is a close neighbor and friend of mine has problems getting bored with different jobs and businesses, so he’s always switching. He takes loans from our program for his businesses and eventually does repay the loans, but not before quitting that business and starting some other job. Then later he’ll ask for another loan for a new business. He’ll often take several days off from whatever work he’s currently doing, claiming he’s tired and sore. I don’t doubt his claims most of the time, he is a hard worker. But that causes him to lose the operational capital in his current business and have to quit it, moving on to a few other odd jobs to play catch up and make the money he needs for his family expenses. He never can persevere in a plan to build on his hard work and see the fruit of his labors develop.

Thinking on all these cases and others today just made me angry and also put me in a place of despair regarding the prospects of really seeing poverty transformed. Some things that impact the poor are out of their control. But other things are due to lack of diligence, priorities, or planning. I’m tempted to be angry at the poor for their addictions, laziness, impatience, etc. I’m tempted to think, “Why am I wasting my energies and my years in this endeavor?”

I learned during my second year in Thailand that grace, both for myself as well as for my neighbors was an essential key to incarnational ministry among the poor. Through reading Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel in the context of my slum community, I reflected on how easy it is to look down on the poor for their shortcomings and miss that I’m really in the same boat with my neighbors, no different, both just sinners in need of God’s grace. However, now, I can look down on my neighbors and acknowledge all their failings and even become angry and cry over how their own sin contributes to their poverty. I can look down on that and be tempted to give up. But I’m also reminded that God is also angry and heartbroken over all of our sin. Yet he doesn’t give up on us. He sticks through with us, even when we fail and fail again. Because he loves us, unconditionally.

So I’ll stick with it, even though I’m angry at poverty. Even though I’m angry not only at systemic injustices like governments that gave inferior education to rural farmers and economic systems that forced 3rd graders to quit school to head out to the fields, but also at the poor themselves for their own sin and foolishness, I’ll stick with it. Even though I can understand the pessimism of my close brother I shared about, I still believe that God clearly has a concern for the poor and downtrodden of this world. And I believe that unconditional love is the same unconditional love that has saved and is saving me.

I want to say something else: We (in the West or among the educated non-poor) often tend to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor. That is, between those who “deserve” our help and those who don’t – or in other words between the hard working diligent poor who are just up against a hard system and the sinful, lazy, “you’re reaping what you’re sowing” poor. Now, there’s a number of problems with this thinking, namely the paternalism and the unrealistic dichotomy it presents. But furthermore, from the perspective in the previous two paragraphs, it doesn’t matter if the poor are deserving or not. None of us were or are deserving of God’s unconditional love in our life that makes such a difference. God cares for people, and especially the poor, regardless of whether they are deserving.

We still have strategic stewardship concerns to consider, like how can we help the most people in the most efficient way. But, ultimately, no one is written off by God and nor should they be by those who claim to be his servants.