Speak

Chair in Empty Room © Arnold Kastenbaum

To speak a word into space -- into blank page or open airwave -- is as terrible as it is awesome.

It's made me wonder if God didn't feel butterflies before he spoke a Word into the void. If the adrenaline and vulnerability of that pregnant moment didn't give him pause. If he didn't close his eyes and breath deep once before speaking the world into being.

It was December the last time I hit publish on something original for this blog. Everything since then was recycled -- thoughts from old papers or my thesis. Half-hacked drafts sit back in the files here and there, but nothing found its way outside a Google server.

The longer the space the more terrible that moment of speech becomes. But troublesome as a void may be to the 'pen,' it's harder still to speak into a world chock full of contentious words. Of course, some say it wasn't a void God spoke into at all. It was Chaos. And through the Word, Chaos was brought to order.

I respect him all the more for it.

But what of the times when speech must be made in places sodden with pain, when every word feels hollow and far too weak to heal? Most treacherous of all, where can we find courage to speak when the roar about us finds agreement in lies or evil? How do we tear free from silence to speak truth to power?

Still, I can remember when my Lord did all these things. And so, for all the possible stumbling blocks and pitfalls, we must speak.

The Christian tells a different story. Like the one we follow, we're those who speak and act to bring an alternate sort of sense to things.

For me, that vocation has grown into a craving to write. Now that all the required lines of school are behind me, the desire to put words together on my own terms lives on. The time feels ripe to turn my itch into a habit -- a discipline. I think I still need to learn how to write, and it's as good a moment as any for that lesson to begin.

That will take a couple forms which will become more clear over time. But, for the present, a few things are plain.

First, I plan to structure writing into every week. That won't necessarily mean that a post gets made every week, but I will consistently work on writing.

The second piece is a change in format. This site will be replaced by a slicker platform. I've secured www.forshalom.com and will be working to make it live over the next month.

Finally, nothing much is accomplished or stuck to without a good BHAG (a Big Hairy Audacious Goal). Mine is to have a book published by the time I'm 30.

The proposals start today.

We'll see where it all goes. For now, I just feel good breaking the silence.

Place and the Bible: From the Thesis

The Sea of Galilee

“The Bible begins and ends with places—a garden to a gardened city” (Bouma-Prediger and Walsh, xv). Strewn between the beginning and end are stories rooted and guided by place: from walking with God in a place called Eden to expulsion toward the East; from Ur toward the Promised Land of Canaan and into bondage in Egypt in a place named Goshen; wandering in the Wilderness until the day the river Jordan was crossed and the people came to dwell in the Land; being “vomited out” of the Land and becoming a people of exile, a displaced people longing for replacement. Place keeps insisting itself in the opening moments of the New Testament. God appeared incarnate as a body, “and bodies can only exist in place” (ibid, xii). Scripture etches the Messiah’s place in intimate detail: hailing from good-for-nothing Nazarus, birthed in the dirt of Bethlehemian squalor, laid in a food trough for animals. The pulse of Jesus’ ministry throbbed with place. Jesus filled his parables with images of soil, vineyards and Samaritans. Each reference is rife with political, economic, cultural, and theological meaning connected to place. The decisive moment of his life on earth came when Jesus turned toward Jerusalem—the place called Zion that became the city of chaos. Our savior agonized in Gethsemane, was crucified on a hill called the Place of the Skull, was buried in a garden tomb nearby, and ascended to heaven from a mountain called Olivet. The book of Acts lists thirty-two towns and cities by name. The Pauline letters were messages to specific places regarding the particular dynamics of those locations. John directed his revelation to seven cities in Asia Minor and communicated his message by dramatizing iconic places: the Whore City Babylon against the Bride City New Jerusalem.

Why were these records of place so scrupulously preserved? Scripture is incessantly reminding us that life plays out on a physical terrain, that this life is primarily a relational matter of fidelity to God and servanthood toward others, and that if God’s driving passion for shalom is to manifest it can only do so in a place. Allen Pred tells us "places are never ‘finished’ but always ‘becoming.’ Place is ‘what takes place ceaselessly, what contributed to history in a specific context through the creation and utilization of a physical setting.’" Scripture is thus the drama of places in process, ever in the materialistic act of “becoming” closer or farther away from the heart of God as communities perform their values into being. In this sense, the bible uses the character of a place as a society’s ethical barometer and compares its character to the biblical vision of shalom for the community of creation.

From the Thesis: Love

If a place acquires its characteristics through the relational ethic practiced within it, then Jesus creates places of shalom through an ethic of love.

“The religion of Jesus makes the love-ethic central,” wrote Howard Thurman. 

It was because of love that God’s only Son came into the world, and it is through love that all things can become “on earth as it is in heaven” (John 3:16; Matt 6:10b). First Testament authors repeatedly assert that justice (mishpat), or the right ordering of things (shalom), was predicated on righteous behavior (sadiqah), or fidelity to the covenantal law. Jesus clarifies what righteousness means by explaining that “all the law and prophets hang on” two commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the greatest commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). He then removes any lingering ambiguity by teaching his followers to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Why? Because loving enemies is what God does. In the next verse Jesus tells us through enemy-love we mimic God and “may be children of your Father in heaven” (5:45). 

When we love, we model our behavior on the righteous character of God himself and thereby establish justice. “The substance of that righteousness,” Walter Brueggemann explains, “is the well-being of the world.” He goes on to write:

“When Yahweh’s righteousness (Yahweh’s governance) is fully established in the world, the results are fruitfulness, prosperity, freedom, justice, peace, security, and well-being (shalom). Because Yahweh in righteousness wills good for creation, there is a complete convergence of Yahweh’s self-regard and Yahweh’s commitment to Israel and to creation.” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 303).

It is by participating with God as lovers that we join with him as co-creators. 

How to Love

What does the love of God look like? 

The standard and not inaccurate answer prooftexts 1 John 3:16 which reads, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Incredibly, and less quoted, John immediately follows this line with an economic exhortation: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s good and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (3:17). 

This is the word of the Lord, but we should not rush by so quickly that we forget to ask to whom this word is directed. John is encouraging people who possess power and wealth. For them, the love of wealth is their stumbling block to discipleship, their ability to follow Jesus as an instrument of God’s love. 

Theology has largely traded on the assumption that self-interest is the basic, sin-producing human flaw. Reinhold Niebuhr played a leading role in foregrounding this doctrine in modern theology. He believed that sin is primarily caused by the fact that “man loves himself inordinately.” The language used here exposes the theologian’s flaw. Theology, for most of its history, has been expounded by men whose common fault is an inordinate love of self. As women publicly entered theological discourse in the twentieth century, the one-sidedness and damaging power of the Church’s teaching was exposed. A love-ethic as self-denial was taught by men but not practiced by men. Carol Lakey Hess says that, “sadly, it is often the already humble who take the message of pride to heart” (37). She goes on to quote Jacquelyn Grant, who,

“writing to African American women who have taken on the greatest burden of service in our society, speaks even more boldly of ‘the sin of servanthood’ and calls for ‘the deliverance of discipleship.’ ‘A language needs to be adopted or emphasized that challenges the servant mentality of oppressed peoples and the oppressive mentality of oppressors.’” (ibid)

Fortunately, I believe the teachings of Jesus have already masterfully provided us with a language that holds the paradox of love together.

In the closing remarks of a parable in which every worker is paid equitably regardless of their time spent laboring, Jesus says, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20:16). Three chapters later, in a tirade against Israel’s religious elite, he exclaims, “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted” (23:11-12). Paul picks up on Jesus’ theme in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so no one might boast in the presence of God.” 

These verses, representative of a far larger swath of scripture, capture what might be called the dual operations of love. For the oppressed, love offers empowerment and the upward mobility of liberation. For the powerful, love is the downward trajectory of self-sacrifice. The two operations are crucial for the equitable conditions of shalom to be met. Slaves are not more like Jesus by being better servants to their Master. How could they be if what Jesus’ atonement provides is freedom and abundant life? 

The social reordering described in the above passages is not an arbitrary method for God to display his power. It is an act of love that brings his will for shalom into being.

Note that all people still have to exercise situation by situation ethical discernment. In the words of Martin Luther, the line between good and evil runs through every person. In the same way, each person is a composite of privilege and powerlessness, varying from one relational context to the other. Socioeconomically a black man might be quite vulnerable, while at the same time exercising disproportionate power over his family and acting unsustainably with the Land.

For the ultimate Greatest, the perfect act of love was the most disgraceful of deaths. But we should be wary of parceling this trajectory out to every man, woman, child and creature. The goal of Christian love is not corporate masochism. It is communion. Sanctification is the sojourn of disciples from our various social, cultural, economic, ecological, sin-smattered locations to a seat at the table where we can in unity share the bread and wine of Christ's broken body. Both repentance and liberation are prerequisites for the reconciled community.

The Homeless: Part VII - Liberation is Yours

Last April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in this blog) prompted me to republish it here.

This is part 7.

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Liberation is Yours

In the last blog, we said that the most Christian posture toward the homeless is repentance. But to repent is not merely to feel bad about what you have done and promise not to do it again. Repentance is constructive action toward a different way of life--toward different systems. We do not stop at “sorry,” but offer Jesus the Liberator to the person with their back against the wall. Jesus’ death for the sins of the world is a rich and multivalent fact. When it is reduced to a savior who died to free people from the penalties of their personal sins, we extend a gospel that is stuck in individualistic homelessness theories and has nothing to say in regard to the forces of oppression that actually generate their circumstances. Street folks are the most evangelized people group in any city. Unfortunately, the gospel we extend fails to address their reality and instead unintentionally blames the victim. Good news for the oppressed is to hear that the sin-tainted structures destroying your life have been overcome by the power of the Lamb and he has provided liberation.

However, there are other ways to speak about Jesus with those who suffer. We can talk about how “Jesus’ death exposed the futility and helplessness of the systems of evil, and behind them, God’s ultimate enemy, Satan (cf. Col 2:15)” (Geddert, All Right Now, 5). We can exalt in that glorious moment of resurrection when Sin, Death, Satan and Powers and Principalities were all defeated. We can tell about how sinfulness became enshrined in the structures of our society, how this led to oppression, and how Jesus’ victory provided power for liberation and a new world of shalom.

Through Jesus, the homeless themselves can be empowered as liberators and shalom builders.

“It is this revolutionary cry that is granted in the resurrection of Jesus. Liberation then is not simply what oppressed people can accomplish alone; it is basically what God has done and will do to accomplish liberation both in and beyond history. Indeed, because we know that death has been conquered, we are set free to fight for liberation in history--knowing that we have a ‘home over yonder’”(Cone, God of the Oppressed, 147).

In this sense, evangelism is less a one-directional proclamation of truth than a process of dialogue through which the homeless can better comprehend their spiritual, economic and socio-political situation, rediscover their identity as human beings who can take an active role in shaping their world for justice, and be ‘on-ramped’ into the business of shalom alongside Jesus. [24]

Finally, as Christians we seek to walk with the homeless in solidarity for their liberation. Much has been said on how to be people of genuine value with the poor. Recently, books like When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity have challenged us to recognize different genres of poverty so that we can respond with the appropriate strategy: relief, rehabilitation, or development. There is great wisdom in these cautions, however major problems occur when we misdiagnose what is in front of us. If Christians maintain individualistic notions of homelessness (particularly of the chronically homeless) then we can easily abdicate our responsibility to provide immediate relief in the belief that this is ultimately crippling, that it will “hurt the poor.” But to be homeless is to be in crisis, no matter how long you have been on the street and how accustomed to its lifestyle you have become.

Recognizing the crisis level of homelessness means acting on multiple fronts at the same time. I normally would advocate to begin a transformational strategy with Freirian techniques so that the marginalized person is positioned for leadership in the developmental process. However, in this case the radical instability of homelessness requires immediate outside intervention in order for relationship and ongoing dialogue to have a functionable environment and effective degree of consistency. In the poignant words of housing advocate Ed Loring, “housing precedes life.” [25] Before someone can hold down a job, they need the stability of a home. Before healthcare systems can effectively improve a person’s wellbeing, they need to get out of the rain and cold. Before someone can get over an addiction, they need a house that can stop the chaos around them and relieve the depression of hopelessness. If the Church is to be the Church, they need to serve the homeless through immediate housing services. Housing must come first. [26]

From housing, followers of Jesus must turn toward effecting transformation of the many systems which collude to produce homelessness. The world is beginning to wake up to the fact that our political economy is failing across a multitude of indicators. Just over a month ago a group of over 400 activists, policymakers, practitioners, business people, and scholars signed a major statement called the Next System Crisis Statement. It named the following:

“Today’s political economic system is not programmed to secure the wellbeing of people, place and planet. Instead, its priorities are corporate profits, the growth of GDP, and the projection of national power. If we are to address the manifold challenges we face in a serious way, we need to think through and then build a new political economy that takes us beyond the current system that is failing all around us. However difficult the task, however long it may take, systemic problems require systemic solutions.”

As a people who can easily recognize the paradigmatic gap between biblical visions of shalom and the homelessness-producing systems of the modern world, the people of God can readily agree with this statement and need to lend all our strength, creativity and worldview insights to this task. Globalized, neoclassical capitalism is not the sanctified, unquestionable will of God. Democracy can function far more robustly than the money-driven, exclusivist, quagmired structures we currently maintain. New systems are needed and we stand at a moment in history when enormous energy is gathering around a movement for change. It is a wonderful opportunity for Christians to collaborate with others for the common good. The point is worth repeating: people will continue to fall onto our streets until the systems change. [27]

Change work has to happen at every scale, micro and macro, local and global. The church can be part of creating alternatives to societies’ oppressive institutions: affordable housing, social enterprises for employment and professional development, financial institutions for savings and loans, co-ops for democratic ownership. We can also help drive the built environment and public spaces like parks toward vibrancy. This is the vital work of community development that creates an equitable world in which such an extreme form of marginalization like homelessness is no longer even imaginable. In addition to development, churches have close ties with the community that give them a strategic place in organizing people together to advocate for change. Through organizing and advocating for systemic changes, people of faith can help change the rules of the game to foster a world in which all thrive.

Finally, Christians are able to play a unique role in a homeless person’s journey from the street back to wholeness. As followers of Jesus, we know that housing is a wonderful first step, but that alone it falls far short of the shalom-homes we believe everyone was created to enjoy. Our goals are far loftier! Kimberly Dovey says: “Home is a relationship that is created and evolved over time; it is not consumed like the products of economic process. The house is a tool for the achievement of the experience of home.” [28] Bouma-Prediger and Walsh go on to explain what a home truly is in its richest form: “Home is, minimally, where they have to take us in, like it or not. Ideally, it is where we are loved and cherished even though we are known. Home is where we have a shot at being forgiven” (66). A home is the place where the stranger can become the host, a place of stability, a place that roots one’s identity, and a place of security. It is a place where relationships are whole, where love and warmth abound. As the Church, we recognize that it is not enough to simply stick someone inside an apartment and call it good. Instead, we know that life is about relationships well lived, and that those who have been excluded and discarded need a loving family to gather around them for the long haul. The systemic solution is not simply housing the homeless--important as that is. It is providing homes for the homeless, in all the richness and familial love implied by that term.

Conclusion

CCDA practitioners pride ourselves on neighborhood-based methodologies. Unfortunately, this focus typically leads us to work a step or two away from hands-on homelessness ministry. This is a shame. Homelessness is an ultimate sign of neighborhood failure. As ministers of the ‘hood, we have to see this connection. Our goal is a world in which no more people live on the streets, where everyone has a home in every shalom-imbued sense of that term.

That is my dream, and it is where I want to end this series of essays to end. But I find my heart unwilling to do so. While history may someday find its completion among the mansions God is building for us, my conclusion needs to stop in the present, not in a dream. Tonight, hundreds of thousands will end this day without a home. Their ongoing suffering does not have an immediate end in sight, and they resist my BS pie-in-the-sky religiosity. Paul’s story in particular stops me short. Paul broke all the stereotypes. He was a former aeronautical engineer who once worked on the air force base east of Colorado Springs. Brilliant and hard working, he still lost his job when his contractor downsized. Not long after his wife left as well. Paul fell into drinking, lost most of his property and eventually lost his home. After ten years on the street, he pulled it together. I met him on the way back up. He came with his ubiquitous jean jacket and mullet to our social service office every day to work on the computer, make phone calls and seek opportunities. He got up at four to get Labor Ready temp work. Then one day, he was approved for a Housing First program and got off the streets. I got to be there when he found out and we celebrated. Several months passed and I did not see him. Then one day, I was helping organize a yearly vigil for the homeless who pass away called The Longest Night. While gathering the names of that year’s deceased, a woman on the other end of my phone said Paul’s name. “Paul?,” I said, “Are you sure? The guy who always wore the jean jacket?” Yes, she said. He died in his apartment a couple months after moving in. 

Even when everything seems to line up, the deck has been stacked against some people for so long that they never get to see the other side. I cried for a good twenty minutes after that phone call, wondering if I might be the only one who wept for Paul. Tears need not be equated to hopelessness. Sadness is too often associated with fatalism. This is not what I am talking about. Lamentation does not need to mire us in cynicism or inaction. Rather it can be the grief of a lover who sets out to avenge their lost one. It is a sadness that produces a holy anger, not toward any person, but toward evil. If we do not lament the pain and loss of our loved ones, we dishonor them. Sadness arises because you love the one who is being injured. Out of love, we will fight for justice in faith that our God has already won the decisive victory. But for this moment, let us lament.

Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches!

Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord!

Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children,

who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

Lamentations 2:19

[24] - I would describe this as evangelism as inspired by Paulo Freire. His books Education for Critical Consciousness and Pedagogy of the Oppressed provide a fresh, empowering methodology for evangelism that allows both “teacher” and “learner” to encounter Christ together in conversation, to honor the stories and wisdom of both parties, and to be mutually conversion in that process.
[25] - quoted by Bouma-Prediger and Walsh in Beyond Homelessness
[26] - For Christians, this is not merely instrumental, impersonal sheltering, but implies intimate hospitality. I wish there was space to explore the richness of this theme and its radical implications for everyday life in a world of people without homes! A wonderful reflection on the subject is Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s Strangers at My Door: A True Story of Finding Jesus in Unexpected Guests.
[27] - For space limitations, I am not going to go into what these new systems might be, but the reader should know that a wealth of valuable resources exist pouring out of many of the world’s brightest minds. Starting points include: E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful; Daly & Cobb, For the Common Good; Liu and Hanauer, The Gardens of Democracy; McKibben, Deep Economy; Powell, Racing to Justice.
[28] -  quoted in Bouma-Prediger and Walsh, Beyond Homelessness, 57-58.

The Homeless: Part VI - Struggling Toward a Christian Response

Last April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in this blog) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 6. 

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Struggling Toward a Christian Response

Howard Thurman threw down the challenge of our age by posing this question: “The masses of men live with their backs constantly against the wall. They are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed. What does our religion say to them?” (Jesus and the Disinherited, 3). What does our religion have to say for the spat on, the invisible, the dirty, the hungry, the hurting? What good is Christianity for the homeless?

Ultimately only they can provide an answer. No thoughts I offer can be definitive without their voice. As a seminarian, my habit is to talk about non-ontological, relationally based, social psychological theologies of sin. To cast grand visions of shalom from the Garden through the Law and Prophets, to Jesus among the outcasts, to the New Jerusalem. To creatively exegete the culture for contextualized articulations of the gospel. Then roll into a sophisticated, multi-pronged strategic plan for social transformation. All this has its place, I know, but the weathered faces squatting behind a concrete wall somewhere in my head keep staring at me saying, “What the fuck are you talking about?” My homeless friends do not want a technical answer about them, they want an answer that is for them and with them. I must begin phenomenologically to speak into the experience of being homeless: bored, chaotic, fearful, lonely, numb, disturbed...suffering and powerless.

If we are to offer something of value to the homeless, it must be done with painful sensitivity that we speak into the flow of suffering. Shifting the focus from traditional theological matters to the situation of the oppressed, James Cone writes, “Blacks do not ask whether Jesus is one with the Father or divine and human….They ask whether Jesus is walking with them, whether they can call him up on the ‘telephone of prayer’ and tell him about their troubles” (God of the Oppressed, 13). In suffering, a person wants to know if anyone is there with you. Cone goes on to say, “Through Jesus Christ they could know that they were people, even though they were bought and sold like cattle” (31). The discriminated and discarded want to know that they matter, that they have value, that they are human. Finally, those who suffer look for hope, searching for a sign that change can come, that someone is fighting on their behalf, and for the strength to resist their own persecution. On this note, Cone is superlative:

“Yahweh is known and worshiped as the One who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who raised Jesus from the dead. God is the political God, the Protector of the poor and the Establisher of the right for those who are oppressed. To know God is to experience the act of God in the concrete affairs and relationships of people, liberating the weak and the helpless from pain and humiliation” (57).

Though he writes specifically from the Black context, Cone’s words extend to oppressed people everywhere, to all who suffer. In his writing we find the beginning of a meaningful response to the homeless that can be offered as love: solidarity in suffering, an affirmation of worthiness, and power for liberation.

We are With You

At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus looks out on the crowds that have walked beside him and is moved. The passage says, “He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (v37). Compassion, in the sense Jesus expresses, is not merely offering some assistance to those who have less than you. “The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean ‘to suffer with’” (Nouwen, et al., Compassion, 3). To all those who suffer, we offer the God who suffers with. Jesus repeatedly became the “harassed and helpless” alongside the people he loved, and epitomized his solidarity through death on the cross. The fact that Jesus not only ministered among the marginalized but identified himself as the marginalized good news offered from a Savior who is a brother and comrade in the struggle.

His solidarity also serves as a lifestyle to model for his disciples. Richard Hayes takes the cross as an emblematic symbol for ethical engagement in the world; “Jesus’ death on a cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world. The community expresses and experiences the presence of the kingdom of God by participating in ‘the koinonia of his sufferings’ (Phil 3:10)” (The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 197). Finding ways to empathize and share in the suffering of the homeless is both the truest form of love and the seed for transformation--“but the power of the resurrection is in God’s hands, not ours” (ibid). Those of us who attempt to shift from the dominant culture into solidarity cannot take this transition lightly. We have to accept that our lifestyles have benefited from and contributed to oppression. “Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed...Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture” (Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 49). There is no better starting point for entering in than the simple art of listening. Dietrich Bonhoeffer claimed “the beginning of love is beginning to listen.” [22]

You Are Amazing

When speaking into the midst of suffering, followers of Jesus can declare an unfettered celebration of who a homeless person is. Far more than passive or begrudging affirmation, the Christian declares two sacred truths over the life of the oppressed. First, we know that a human being’s value is not reducible to economic productivity, but rests in the incomparable majesty of the image of God. In the ever-poignant words of Martin Luther King Jr, “The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.” (Strength to Love, 25). Justo Gonzalez has also reminded us that human value--even human righteousness--does not correspond with their legality or criminality. Furthermore, when laws are unjust, it is not the lawbreaker who is in sin but the lawmaker and the law itself. [23]

Second, we know the paradoxical truth that the homeless are uniquely glorious among all people for Jesus himself dwells in and among them. It is the shamed who have honor in the kingdom, the poor who will inherit the earth, and the hungry, naked, and imprisoned with whom Jesus chose to identify himself. Following this logic to its conclusion leads to a startling revelation. If Christocentrism is the best point of departure for understanding the universe, and if the homeless are to be identified with Christ, then we are wrong to talk about the homeless as “marginals.” Rather, they stand at the center with Jesus as a window into the true nature of reality. In the final analysis, the homeless are not at the margins for to position them as such permits the oppressive society to function as the appropriate ‘center’ off which all deviants should be measured. From a Kingdom perspective, our work is not among the marginalized, but ministry among the centralized!

A third aspect of human nature revealed in scripture should send the privileged to the underpasses and train yards asking for forgiveness. God’s word exposes the lie of individualism and prophetically denounces societies built on its competitive, self-seeking foundations. In its place, the bible offers a vision of humans as wholly dependent on God and designed for interdependence with the entire community of creation. “If there is to be well-being, it will not be just for isolated, insulated individuals; it is, rather, security and prosperity granted to a whole community….Always we are all in it together” (Brueggemann, Peace, 15). Randy Woodley argues that on the basis of God’s creational intent for comprehensively inclusive communities, “sin, in a very real sense, can be defined as the absence of shalom” (Shalom in the Community of Creation, 23). We are, as the King quote says above, brothers. As brothers, we are responsible for one another. Unfortunately, we have abdicated this call since Cain first asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer is yes. As the people of God, the most appropriate postures toward our homeless brothers and sisters is repentance.

[22] - Quoted by Barry Wade, Ministering at the Margins, 211.

[23] - See Justo Gonzalez, Mañana: Christian Theology From a Hispanic Perspective.

The Homeless: Part V - Structural Injustice

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in this blog) prompted me to republish it here.

This is part 5.

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Structural Injustice

While personal lifestyle choices certainly have ramifications, the breadth of possible ramifications and the funneling of certain outcomes into marginalized portions of the population are shaped by our society’s mitigating structures. I have met wealthy alcoholics with multiple homes and homeless people who are sober, and I know many homeless who are far harder workers than myself and most of my seminary classmates.

“We need to abandon the simplistic idea that poverty results from the moral weaknesses, bad behaviors, and inferior abilities of the poor....We need to recognize that the problems of poverty and inequality are inextricably bound to the power-laden economic and political structures. These determine the allocation of resources and opportunities, who gets what and how much” (Royce, Power and Poverty, 2).

Economic, political, social and cultural systems make up the primary macrostructures of human society. Though books have been written on each of these, I will briefly identify some of the features in each that have allowed us to accept, create and even criminalize the homeless.

ECONOMIC STRUCTURES

Income inequality today is back to its highest recorded levels, on par with the depression era’s robber barons. “In 1970, the average U.S. CEO earned 30 times more than his lowest paid workers; in 2005, he earned 411 times more” (Salvatierra and Hetzel, Faith-Rooted Organizing, 5). However, even more damaging than income inequality is the dramatic disparity in wealth. A person’s financial assets represent their personal safety net. For the poor today, this safety net is nonexistent. “In 1997, the richest 1 percent of American families...owned 38.1 percent of the nation’s total wealth. The bottom 40 percent...possessed a miniscule 0.2 percent of total wealth” (Royce, 9). This gap has only mushroomed. A household is asset-poor if their wealth holdings cannot cover basic needs for three months. Unsurprisingly, rates of asset poverty for African-American and Hispanic households, are “over 60 percent [when] measured by liquid wealth” (10). Without even the narrowest margin for error, life without an economic cushion constantly teeters on the edge of homelessness.

Wealth accumulation is, before anything else, a function of income, and income is primarily a function of one’s job. Unfortunately for the poor, good work in the city has rapidly evaporated. Globalization and the shift to a “knowledge worker’s” economy disolved industrial jobs that once provide solid quality of life for the working class. In their place has come low-income service sector jobs that withhold employee benefits and a living wage. No factor has influenced the rise in homelessness since the 1970s more than the loss of good jobs. [15] Wealth is, secondly, derived from inheritance. Thus, any appraisal of present day capital distribution leads us to an historical account of systems that funneled wealth into the hands of white males and away from people of color.

POLITICAL STRUCTURES

Economic inequality funnels up into political inequality. Robert Linthicum reports that the top 13,000 richest families in America “gave 35% of all campaign dollars in recent presidential elections” (Transforming Power, 50). It is not surprising, then, that the political system is stacked in favor of large businesses and the wealthy, and against the poor. [16] Among its many harmful repercussions, three are of note for their direct impact on the homeless. First, the social safety net, which includes government provision of affordable housing, has been scaled back to the point where it no longer meets the needs of those on the street. “If there are more people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless than there are houses, apartments, and rooms to provide them shelter, there is a crisis” (Bouma-Prediger and Walsh, Beyond Homelessness). Furthermore, if the free market is failing to provide this housing (and/or to provide habitable housing as in the case of slumlords) then it is the government’s responsibility to its citizens to close the gap. [17] Similarly, if there are not enough living-wage jobs, it falls to the political realm to generate a remedy. [18] It is not acceptable to wait for the market to produce a solution in its own good time--not while men, women and children suffer.

Second, policy decisions played a key role in creating America’s blighted and abandoned inner-cities that raise and play host to the majority of our nation’s homeless. As Mark Gornik wryly states, “A lack of personal responsibility did not build the inner city” (To Live in Peace, 50). Racialized redlining, disinvestment, destructive transportation policies and highway construction, neglectful education policy, foolish zoning and a host of other progressions overseen by the government create contexts that conclude with homelessness for some residents. Now that the wealthy are returning to urban centers, it is vital for public officials to empower the marginalized residents who have called these places their home with leadership in the future of their city.

This juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in America’s inner-city leads us to the third and most tragically ironic political injustice: the criminalization of homelessness. “The US economy operates systematically in a way that inherently disenfranchises a portion of its citizens, while at the same time society cries foul at those who are the inherent product of its own structures and policies” (Wasserman and Clair, At Home on the Street, 155). Vagrancy laws stack injustice on injustice when they make the oppressed into a criminal for simply living in a space he or she was forced into from the beginning. [19] Conveniently, this situation creates no cognitive dissonance for the dominant culture thanks to their individualistic homelessness myths.

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STRUCTURES

Many subtle and not-so-subtle elements of American culture and society converge to displace over a million individuals from their homes over the course of a year. These include our previous discussions on rugged individualism and its subsequent poverty myths. Another oppressive force that cannot be over emphasized is our culture of discrimination on multiple bases of race, gender, class, nationality, sexual orientation, and mental-physical health. That discrimination of these people exists is a fact I do not feel the burden to substantiate. Instead, I want to highlight that the corresponding -isms become comprehensively ingrained at every level of our psychological and social worlds, significantly complicating the road to justice. Ideologies like racism constitute a piece of a person’s worldview, and become expressed in the four following forms:

1. Intrapersonal: Discriminatory typologies are internalized into the identities of both oppressed and oppressor.
2. Interpersonal: Interactions between type-casted individuals are shaped to become hurtful, exclusionary, exploitative, reactionary and even hateful.
3. Institutional/Communal: Groups and organizations formed with conscious or subconscious discriminatory worldviews take corporate actions and set group policies that institutionalize the exclusionary actions/attitudes of individuals.
4. Structural: When discriminatory worldviews are held by the powerful, they become enshrined in the society’s macrosystems, as we have been examining. [20]

Once again, there are feedback loops between each level that allows discrimination to built and reproduce. Thus, one can argue that a culture’s worldview is a hidden structure generating familiar injustices like homelessness.

Disconnecting diverse members of the population has concrete ramifications. Social connections are how things get done and how opportunities arise. Social scientists describe these relational dynamics as social capital: “social connections have significant economic consequences…social capital consists of the benefits people derive from their personal interactions and social relations” (Royce, 187, 197). If you are part of a group that has been marginalized through discrimination, educational and vocational opportunities are far more difficult to acquire because these are primarily derived through one’s social networks. If you live in a disinvested neighborhood full of similar people, the odds are exponentially stacked against you. Social capital forms part of the explanation of the disturbing prevalence of former foster children on the streets. Those who lack a strong network of support not only have a much harder time acquiring assets and are thus more susceptible to poverty, they are also in far greater danger when disaster strikes for there may be no one standing by to offer a hand back up.

On the devastating effects of the dominant culture, Bouma-Prediger and Walsh are worth quoting at length:

“Urban decay, rampant poverty, and a society-wide crisis of homelessness may all be rooted in pathology, but it is not the pathology of the victims. If there is pathology to be diagnosed, it is a societal pathology that has diseased the very structures of the economy and the shaping of public policy for the common good. If there is a cultural cause of homelessness, it is not to be discerned in a blame-the-victim diagnosis of a ‘culture of poverty,’ but it can be discerned in a victimizing and excluding culture of economic growth at all costs” (93).

The systems have indeed been stacked against “the other” in our midst. However, it is precisely at the level of culture and worldview that we find the brightest glimmers of hope. Systems theorists demonstrate that because our structures are shaped to conform with our values, changing a people’s values offers the most powerful leverage point for comprehensive transformation. [21] As a worldview with a dramatically upside-down framework from the world’s oppressive, self-seeking ways, this is the time to turn to our faith.




[15] - For a much fuller description of the impact of globalization on homelessness, see Bouma-Prediger and Walsh, Beyond Homelessness, 94-97.
[16] - I just want to acknowledge that that is a strong claim that I am leaving unsupported due to space limitations.
[17] - This is not a claim I make based on contemporary politics, but on the bible’s concept of the role of government. See Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East.
[18] - By this I do not simply mean New Deal-esque government jobs. Creative policy needs to incentivize the business sphere toward social and ecologically just ends. Liu and Hanauer offer a thought provoking model for government in light of new systems science in their book The Gardens of Democracy. Additionally, as I explain below, this is by no means an abdication of the Church’s role in compassion and community development. Rather than detracting from this important responsibility, it highlights the people of God’s call to advocate for justice in the political system.
[19] - The homeless need to follow basic laws of social conduct in public spaces like anyone else and I am not advocating for panhandling (something that has never released anyone from the street). But when someone’s entire life has been banished to public spaces, it is not their fault that they must do life there. If we make it illegal to urinate in public (for example), but do not provide public restrooms, shame on us for criminalizing a victim.
[20] - This framework is partially based on the work of race scholar James A. Powell, and was presented by Deth Im, a PICO national trainer, during the Hope Fresno event Spring 2015.
[21] - See Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points.”

The Homeless: Part IV - At the Margins of the Marginalized

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in this blog) prompted me to republish it here.

This is part 4.


_______________________________

A SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF HOMELESSNESS

The individualism of the West is based on belief in a world which is at base composed of self-contained atomic units (as in Newtonian physics). Scaled up to anthropology, it follows that humans are best understood in isolation, that rationality best reflects natural law, and that a person’s life-trajectory is their own responsibility. The modern world we are familiar with is a great experiment in applying this worldview.[6] Unfortunately, it is based on faulty science. Over the past century, “a change of paradigms as radical as the Copernican revolution” (Captra and Luisi, xi) has taken place largely outside of the public consciousness. It has precipitated a rejection of mechanistic explanations for the discovery “that the material world, ultimately, is a network of inseparable patterns of relationship; that the planet as a whole is a living, self-regulating system.” (Capra, 3)

Three significant implications emerge from the recent scientific paradigm shift that inform this paper’s reflective point of departure. First, in the words of systems theory pioneer Donella Meadows, “You’ll stop looking for who’s to blame; instead you’ll start asking, ‘What’s the system?’” (34). Locating social problems in individuals is no longer a tenable alternative. Rather, our analysis must attend to the broader contextual forces at work which collaborate to produce the world we are familiar with. Second, modernity’s stern division between facts and values is a farce. “In reality, scientific facts emerge out of an entire constellation of human perceptions, values, and actions...from which they cannot be separated” (Capra, 11). Social systems designed for maximizing mechanical efficiency regardless of the “waste” products produced along the way can no longer stand above reproach by reference to natural laws. The waste of these systems has too often included human lives. Our systems are products of our culture, and therefore must stand trial before people of conscience. Third, “from the new science’s perspective, “the only viable solutions are those that are sustainable for life” (Capra and Luisi, xi). This is convenient for Christians and makes our voice particularly relevant in the new milieu for we have words of great sophistication to offer in regards to systems that cultivate abundant life.

Of course, this approach is not new. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the following over half a century ago: “We’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” People of faith have intuitively believed this for some time, but having the most progressive science to back up our claims gives us newfound legitimacy in the public square. In the spirit of these principles, let us now critique a few major systems that have stolen life from the homeless before moving on to God’s vision of life-giving shalom and methods for reconstructing society toward this redemptive end.

At the Margins of the Marginalized

The first thing that must be noted in reconnecting homelessness to the broader context is that it is--along with death--the cul de sac at the end of every marginalizing road. When society rejects someone, their journey of exclusion culminates in a functional ejection from society to the street. And in many ways, to fall out of society is to no longer be a member of the human race.

From the poor to people of color, from LGBT youth to the formerly incarcerated, disproportionately large percentages of marginalized people groups find themselves homeless. It was this overwhelming correlation that led me to choose this topic for my final paper. The following are only a few examples:

• Over a third of the homeless were at one time a ward of the state or in foster care compared to only 2% in the general population.

• Of homeless youth, over 40% identify as LGBT. Not only is this disproportionate to the overall youth population, LGBT individuals are often further rejected by so-called faith-based homeless shelters.

• 40% of the homeless are African Americans (compared to 11% of the general population); 11% are Hispanic (compared to 9% of the general population); and 8% percent are Native American (compared to 1% of the general population). 

• As high as 70% of the homeless have spent time in jail. Conversely, being homeless vastly improves one’s chances of eventually becoming incarcerated.

• It is not redundant to remind the reader that the poor make up 100% of the homeless.

Marginalization begets further marginalization. In systems theory parlance, this is referred to as a reinforcing feedback loop, “a vicious or virtuous circle that can cause healthy growth or runaway destruction…[that] are found wherever a system element has the ability to reproduce itself or to grow as a constant fraction of itself” (Meadows, 30-31).

Advantage or disadvantage quickly compounds on itself. Children who grow up in poverty often do not receive the same care and training during the first few years of their life. They show up to kindergarten already behind their middle and upper class peers, and without significant intervention often never catch up. Each time a traumatic event happens in someone’s life, another chip of disadvantage is stacked on the scales against them. Bearing in mind the agency of human beings and the complexity of their environments, these factors are not deterministic, but clearly all do not play on an even field. Our history and context have significant bearing on the likelihood each of us has to live on the street. At the same time, genuine efforts to combat homelessness mean moving upstream to the sources of oppression and injustice in all their forms.







[6] - Since this is such an aenemic explanation of all the complex sides of modernity, here are a couple suggestions for further reading. The best philosophical analysis I have seen is Charlene Spretnak, “Chapter 2: The Rise and Fall of Modern Ideologies of Denial,” The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World. Her critique comes from an ecological perspective, which allows her to move past deconstructionism and offer something fresh. Euro-American explanations always fall short, however. We are too much inside the water to fully explain it. Walter Mignolo's The Darker Side of Western Modernity brings the perspective of the marginalized to bear like a tidal wave that drags all a city's trash out into the street. His book make the convincing argument that colonialism is at the heart of modernity, that these are two sides of the same coin, one unable to be understood without the other.

The Homeless: Part III - The Poor Will Be With You Always

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about three blogs ago) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 3.

The Poor Will Be With You Always

Like good moderns, we believe that there are “natural laws” that irrefutably establish how reality works: Newtonian physics, Locke’s “social contract,” and most importantly, the unseen hand of the market. In modernity’s worldview, “the human is considered essentially an economic being, homo economicus. Consequently, the arrangement of economic matters is believed to be the wellspring of contentment or discontent in all other areas of life” (Spretnak, 40). Twentieth century geopolitics were a clash around this narrow pivot point, battling for which economic system--capitalism, socialism or communism--should have preeminence. Unfortunately, no matter how you slice the cake, when humans are reduced to econs that must play by certain rules, major consequences ensue:

“US capitalism is characterized not just by the existence of competition but also by the belief in competition as a mechanism for social progress. Moreover, in order to define success, the system must believe in and rely on poverty as a natural and just state, as an outgrowth of corrupt individuals, that is to say those who are lazy and deviant. Poverty is US capitalism’s grand punishment and a threat that is supposed to motivate citizens to participate and succeed” (Wasserman and Clair, 6).

Because the competitive mechanism and the “unseen hand of the market” have been christened holy laws guiding society toward progress, side effects like homelessness are simply dismissed as unfortunate but necessary byproducts of “the way things are.” As long as GDP is on the rise, this argument goes, the economy is considered a success. There will always be those who cannot win in life’s economic competitions, so we must simply accept the poor and homeless, throw some charity their way, and encourage them to work harder. Any thought of a wholesale elimination of homelessness is therefore anathema to this brand of neoclassical capitalism.

A similar strand of passive acceptance lurks within Christian folk beliefs. Based on only two verses, many Christians fatalistically believe the bible teaches that society cannot avoid poverty. Deuteronomy 15:11 states that “there will always be poor people in the land.” Jesus seems to reiterate this idea in Matthew 26:11 and Mark 14:7 when he says, “The poor you will always have with you but you will not always have me.” These passages, taken out of context as I have done here, are used as the normative hermeneutic principle when considering poverty either elsewhere in scripture or in society. While the context of each verse alone does much to dismiss turning these into universal claims for human society, the overarching narrative of the bible rules it out completely. “The most important observation about the material world to emerge from the creation account in Genesis 1 is that God created it good” (Blomberg, 34). From the beginning, God’s intentions are set toward a world order in which all can flourish. Once humanity fell into sin and poverty entered the world, he continually provided means for restoration. From the tithe and sacrificial system that provided a social safety net (whose statutes frame Deut 15:1), to the redistributive Sabbath and Jubilee practices, to the prophets who continually called Israel to uphold these statutes of justice, to Jesus’ ministry of solidarity and liberation for the oppressed, to the early Church’s communal sharing of property, to John’s revelation of a New Creation in which all have joy and a home in the city of God, the bible is continually rejecting systems of oppression.

The American political economy is not a natural law embedded in the fabric of the cosmos. Nor are the poor simply a fact of the world like the blue shades of the sky. Homelessness is the result of the system we have created. It is not the poor’s destiny. It is our choice.

The Homeless: Part II - Myths of Individuality

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about two blogs ago) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 2.

PREVAILING MYTHS

In its full complexity, any single homeless person’s life defies easy explanations. However, because our culture has no qualms dismissing the life of homeless people, we continue to proliferate easy explanation. A myth attempts to provide a story that lays down a consistent, understandable answer to the apparent chaos that often surrounds us. In America, our myths about homelessness do more than simply identify causes. They are “also a stigmatized social identity that is given meaning according to its conceptual distance from ‘the norm” (Wasserman and Clair, 2). Our theories allow us to both distinguish the homeless--or any other “out” group--as not like us and to believe that the forces at work to create their situation are categorically separate from those that have led to our own. Conveniently for the privileged, it follows from this logic that we have no responsibility for their predicaments. We have accomplished these feats of distancing and abdication through two primary means:

1) a variety of myths that locate the “problem” in individuals instead of society, and

2) by embracing a groundless fatalism about the inevitability of poverty. This is subsequently extended to a belief that homelessness, as a common American manifestation of poverty, must also be inevitable.

To question these convictions, held so dear to the heart of mainstream culture, is to challenge a person’s view of themselves and their world. “Theories of poverty imply theories of society” (Royce, 18), and we can add that they also imply theories of personal identity. It is, therefore, natural to resist the seismic shifts a change on this subject may require. Despite how painful it may be for some, as we shall see, the reality is that “homelessness stands as a challenge to widely held beliefs about opportunity in the United States, and it highlights the importance of structural obstacles and inequality in our society” (8).

Individualistic Homelessness

Fundamental to the notion of being American is the conviction that hard work and a responsible lifestyle will lead to the good life. In the land of opportunity, one must simply put in the time and success will follow. The shadows of Adam Smith, John Locke and Horatio Alger all stand by to gird up these ideals. While this provides a great sense of self-accomplishment for the well established, it has a dark side that goes like this: if my socio-economic success is solely the result of my impressive efforts, then your failure must be the result of your impressive deficiencies. “One can speak of the deserving and the undeserving in absolute terms. When used as a filter for viewing individual fortune and achievement, those individuals who are more successful (certainly the ‘homed’) are more valued than those who are less successful--clearly the homeless.”[3]

Edward Royce identifies three variations on individualistic poverty theories. First, what he calls the biogenetic theory pertains to supposed physiological and intellectual shortcomings in the poor. Someone’s poverty is an outcome of their natural lack of abilities. They are not as smart as the rich, cannot achieve the same levels of education, or function in the same complicated workplaces. Their poverty is an inevitable outcome of their biological inferiority. Secondly, and in my experience the most common, Royce describes a cultural theory of poverty. As a group and as individuals functioning within that group, the poor are lazy and often disposed to criminality. The lack of a work ethic, possibly engendered through welfare dependency, is the primary cause of their impoverishment. If they would simply get a job, work hard, progress over time and save their earnings, all would be well. Finally, Royce outlines a tempting theory based on the idea of human capital. Those who have invested in their own assets the most--particularly in the areas of education and professional development--will have the greatest capacity to compete effectively in the marketplace. Others who neglect these inputs will expectedly fall behind.[4]

Alongside these three, a fourth cause is specifically attributed to homelessness and has the greatest impact on continuum-of-care program design. The individual pathology explanations of mental-illness and addiction are by far the most prevalent causes on the lips of both everyday people and service providers. “Sometimes these are asserted explicitly as causes of homelessness and other times more vaguely conceptualized as inextricably intertwined with the conditions of being homeless” (Wasserman and Clair, 70). A significant collaboration that took place in Fresno over the past few years called the Community Conversations Group formed due to major sustainability failures within the mental health services arena. Out of this team, a new Strategic Plan for homelessness was designed and implemented. While I will compliment much of this team’s work later on, the dreary result is that mental health issues are now the defining characteristic of our approach to homelessness and likely will be for at least the next decade. There is no doubt that mental health and addiction services are needed. The issue comes when they become our organizing principle for describing and addressing the homeless. Once again, we have a myth that tells the homeless, “The problem is in you.”

These ideas have great prevalence in the public imagination and are reflected in our economic and political systems. I will not respond in great depth specifically to each, but will largely allow my structural analysis to reject these theories. Briefly: 1) It should be noted that there is absolutely zero scientific foundation for the biogenetic theory despite its prevalence. 2) The cultural theory is highly reductionistic. It is ignorant of the real culture of the poor in which most are extremely hard-working, law-abiding citizens, and ignores the way inequality fosters the cultural maladaptations like violence that it blames on the poor. 3) Human capital theory forgets that individuals do not exist in isolation, but that their capacity for self-development is largely derivative of their economic capacity and social capital, which will be explored more below. 4) Such a large number of homeless people are not substance abusers or mentally ill (at least not prior to their experience of homelessness) that medicalized theories cannot be considered an adequate explanation for this social phenomenon. With this last myth in particular it is vital to question the flow of causation--anyone who spends six months on the streets will begin to battle depression and find their mental clarity waning.[5]

Even if every one of these claims about someone were true, we still must continue to ask: Why? Why do certain people have less human capital than others? Why do certain people have such high rates of mental illness and substance abuse? And most importantly, why would any of the reasons described above automatically necessitate homelessness? Addiction alone, for example, clearly cannot be blamed. Celebrities move in and out of rehab, but seem no closer to life under a bridge. “While addiction is certainly an obstacle, particularly to one’s getting off the streets once there, we cannot conclude that it causes homelessness, since it may often be the case that homelessness causes or at least exacerbates addiction” (Wasserman and Clair, 74). At a minimum, and a minimum is not enough, a stacking of multiple causes is necessary for an initial explanation. One must typically already be marginalized in some way in order to become marginalized through homelessness.[3]

Tied up with the secular world’s individualistic rationalizations, the Church likes to offer a spiritual nuance: you are homeless because you have lived a life of sin. If you would only repent and believe, you will be saved from the consequences of sin and be able to get your life in order. Despite how many rescue missions and faith-based nonprofits operate out of this mindset, the reasons for rejecting such an arrogant idea are many. Much of what I say later will show its hollowness. For now, I affirm that following Jesus helps us through life, but I also remind the reader that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and not all are homeless. We need more complex answers than individual sinfulness to explain why some people fall out of homes.[4]



[3] - Kenneth Kyle, Contextualizing Homelessness, 27. Quoted in Wasserman and Clair, At Home on the Street.
[4] - see Royce, Poverty & Power: The Problem of Structural Inequality.

[5] - These responses are largely shaped by rebuttals offered in Power & Poverty and At Home on the Street.

The Homeless: Part I

This April I wrote a paper on homelessness for one of my seminary classes. The recent anti-homeless laws passed in Berkeley (which I talked about in the last blog) prompted me to republish it here. This is part 1. 

---

Yesterday I found myself in conversation with Christina.[1] These days she is fighting back against her slumlord apartment manager. Bad as that sounds, things have not always been this good. Christina grew up against significant odds, born within a highly dysfunctional, generationally impoverished family. Her husband has been in and out of prison (he gets out in a couple weeks), and she has too. Her lack of strong social ties, slim resume and alcoholic coping habits have made things pretty tough. Amidst these struggles, Christina found herself on and off the street. As she said, “Last time was about a year ago when I was homeless on the West Side.” All this has been particularly hard on her three kids.

As we talked, I found myself remembering other friends of mine who are all too familiar with concrete nights. I thought of the time I met Dale panhandling a downtown Houston off-ramp. He was a couple months out of prison, but with no identification papers of any kind he'd found it just about impossible to land a steady job or place to live, much less access the social safety net. Then I pictured Merl with a big, goofy grin on his face when he told us in absolute honesty, “I’m addicted to milk!” And he was. Sober as could be, but would never go a day without dairy. We grabbed him a gallon and a new bike tube that afternoon. Ed was under a different bridge on that same highway. A veteran who suffered from debilitating PTSD flashbacks, he was a highly intelligent, avid reader whose disability kept him from holding a job.

As far as I know, Rich and Larry are best buds to this day, sipping Wild Turkey between AA meetings. It took six months of friendship building before I got up the courage to ask if I could stay with them over Memorial Day weekend. Those three days were the closest I have ever been to seeing the world as a homeless person sees it. They make me think of Mary Anne and Robert, long-term partners who lived together on the creek south of downtown Colorado Springs. He was a huge, grizzled guy, kind as they come, who always looked out for his much smaller soulmate. I pray I never forget the choked up hug Rob gave me when she left him. It was not unlike the hug Jacob--AIDS patient, brilliant chef, gay, repeatedly rejected--gave before he left town for more secure housing with a distant family member.

Then there is Shannon, whom I loved and miss so dearly. But there aren't enough pages to tell her story here.

These old friends makes this a hard paper to write. It catches me red handed where cynicism has snuck in over the past several years. After all, at least two of these folks are dead, most are still homeless, and all struggle on in one way or another. The presentness of their pain is arresting. It rebels against overly clinical analyses of the homeless as though they are a “population,” and homelessness as though it were an issue or cause. My emotion is important; it rises out of relationship, and without relationship there will never be transformation. However, it is partially people’s emotional reactions to homelessness that are the problem. When emotions slip into emotionalism they soon terminate in unquestionable ideologies, stymieing critical thought. The homeless service “industry” is chronically devoid of innovation for exactly this reason. Therefore, in this paper I strive for criticality without negating the personal contexts my thought has emerged from. Since all thought is unavoidably contextual anyways, this seems like the right framework for the task at hand.[2]

The second reason this paper is difficult is because of the jarring dissonance I experience when my knowledge outpaces my obedience--or, less critically, when the source of my frustration does not line up with my present call. I do not know how directly or deeply I will be connected to homeless ministry in the future. I had fairly well walked away from this group until the past few months when God, I suppose, prompted me to include them as a research subject for this class. Re-engaging has felt a bit like rediscovering a missing piece of myself.

It is from this liminal position that I now turn to engage the fact of homelessness. Who are the homeless? I mostly skip over this broad question. They are too diverse a group to adequately capture, and I am not interested in narrowing down to subcategories like families, children or the “chronically” homeless. For my purposes, ‘homeless’ will simply represent its tautology: those without a home. My interest is this: Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the history of the world consistently has between 1 to 2% of its people sleeping on the street, in their cars or bumming on a family members couch every night? And what can we the Church do about it?



[1] - All names have been changed (except for Shannon's) to protect the persons' privacy.
[2] - See MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?; Dyrness, Learning About Theology from the Third World. I am also reminded of the fantastic introduction to Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion & Embrace where he wrestles with his unavoidably subjective memories of genocide while seeking to articulate an objectively meaningful theological response to the evil he experienced.

A Not-So-Advent Blog: In Memory of a Poor Kid Born Homeless a Couple Thousand Years Ago

Folks protesting the new anti-homeless law in front of Berkeley City Hall.

A bizarre thing happened in Berkeley this week. Shrugging off its reputation as the progressive capital of the world, this town's city counsel decided to pass a bill that criminalizes homelessness.

Here's an article from the "homeless newspaper" Street Spirit explaining what went down.

I guess if you can get past the city's reputation, it isn't really that strange after all. Just remember the famous 'ole Bill Clinton line: it's the economy, stupid.

The cost of housing is painfully high here in Berkeley, as it is around the Bay Area. The average home price--average--is hovering just under a million dollars. "One bedroom apartments in Berkeley rent for $2921 a month on average and two bedroom apartment rents average $3651" (source - thank goodness we found something for less than this but its still excruciating!).

With that kind of insane real estate market, the straightforward solution--providing homes--is impossible (not to mention the additional homelessness created by displacement, something that becomes epidemic when landlords hike the rent 30% in a year). Of course, the Bible's 15 year plan to end homelessness is still on the table: "bring the homeless poor into your house" (Isaiah 5:7). But there doesn't seem to be a lot of that going around (myself included).

In other startling news, Berkeley claims illustrious spot #10 on the list of cities with the highest inequality in the country (i.e. the wealth and income differentials of its residents), higher than any other city in California. And as inequality rises, a mind-numbing host of social maladies follow.

The economic El Niño conditions have converged to pour on the homeless. This climate, for a variety of reasons, breed an atmosphere of wealthy, profit minded people who know that it is only the sensible, good-for-business act to sanitize the environment so a person (aka: consumer) can walk to shops without being accosted by dirty panhandlers who subvert their portentous sense of the sublime. Thanks to the merchant members of the Downtown Berkeley Association and the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce (and to a public who went right along with it), we now have laws that make people's poverty and lack of shelter illegal. As much of an injustice as that appears at face value, it seems even more sinister once we come to terms with the truth: homelessness is a natural byproduct of the economic system we as a society have chosen.

In the classic tradition of empires everywhere, we have criminalized the victims of our own injustice.

Though this response falls dramatically short of what's needed, I feel prompted to post a paper I wrote this past spring for a class called Ministry Among the Marginalized. I'm going to chop it up into several chewable pieces to appear over the next couple of weeks. I hope it busts some myths, guides your imagination toward paths of action, and in some small way shines the light of the gospel on an issue of our day.

You can expect part one next week.

Blessings my friends, and may the spirit of our Lord who new what it meant to have no place to lay his head be with you.

Vote for Shalom!

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, I thought I'd share this little documentary.

I'm all for buying gifts for people, it's a beautiful way to love others (though making stuff is awesome too). But let's be conscious of our purchases this year, remembering that ever dollar spent is quite literally a vote for the kind of world we live in.

Vote for a world that reflects the God whose entrance into the world we celebrate this time of year.

Vote for shalom!

From the Thesis

Thought I'd pull a little excerpt from my slowly developing thesis for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!




When Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris as the newest delegate from the United States, he moved through the city with confidence that belied the youth of his nation. Jefferson relocated to France with his eldest daughter Martha--whom they all called Patsy--in July 1785 bearing, primarily, the responsibility to broker trade deals with his hosts and other European nations. In two brief years since the Treaty of Paris was signed and the Revolutionary War came to a close, the United States had quickly emerged as a state with whom the world must reckon. Militarily the U.S. eked out a victory on home turf, much thanks due their French allies, but the late eighteenth century was an era when naval power defined true might. Everyone knew the U.S. fleet was a shadow of their counterparts across the Atlantic. 

Jefferson’s plomb drew from a new source, one that had already risen as the defining feature on the geopolitical scene: economic power. It was no secret that the New World was a treasure chest of sorely lacking commodities in Europe, and the American ability to exploit its ecological gifts was burgeoning. But this was not the primary mode of profit on the middling diplomat’s mind.

Two months before arriving in Paris, Jefferson was present as the Congressional Congress’s ratified the Land Ordinance of 1785. It was an adaptation of a plan he put forward as representative for Virginia the previous year. As the chief architect behind its elegantly simple, seemingly destined, though ultimately diabolical strategy, Jefferson knew the United States was about to be a very wealthy nation. 

The land claimed by the thirteen colonies more than doubled after the Revolution. To the Founding Fathers, this presented an enormous opportunity dilemma: millions of acres of ‘unsettled’ territory. Sprawling to their west all the way to the Mississippi River (the other side was claimed by Spain) the settlers saw vacant, open wilderness. For Jefferson it was the perfect moment to begin enacting his vision for a nation of yeoman farmers. He and others “devised a plan whereby all the vacant unclaimed land in the young republic could be divided into an almost infinite number of squares, each of them a square mile, or 640 acres--more than enough to satisfy the average would-be settler” (Jennings, 225, quoting Jackson, A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time). Each plot would then be sold off by the government as pure profit. The Public Land Survey System, as it was called, was used to reduce the complexities of thousands of bioregions and Native civilizations to abstract geometry available for purchase. Its methodology was extended with zeal under Jefferson’s presidency as massive new quantities of land entered U.S. control through the Louisiana purchase, and it continued to shape the parceling of nature into property until Manifest Destiny reached its westward terminus. “In this US system, unique among colonial powers, land became the most important exchange commodity for the accumulation of capital and building of the national treasury” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 124). Anyone looking out a plane window today can still see Jefferson’s vision stamped over ancient, disjunctive soil in the patchwork grid of fields and roads so familiar on the middle-American landscape.

Implications abound from the Land Ordinance of 1785, but for now we must simply note that our third president had no concept of America as place. He followed a storied tradition of treating land outside white-European control like space. Colonists saw the New World as a vacuum Domicilium, open and available to their ‘civilizing’ inhabitation. Just before departing with merchants of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Puritan minister John Cotton preached on the settler’s logic: “In a vacant soyle hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his Right it is.” The tragic irony is, of course, that many peoples did possess the soil, participated in a rich cultural world, and practiced a complex system of husbandry that, while opaque to most settlers, had cultivated the unprecedented ecological abundance on display for the earliest explorers. 

“Since the particular had no place in the hierarchy of values developed in the post-Enlightenment world, studies of place were often relegated to ‘mere description’ while space was given the role of developing scientific law-like generalizations. In order to make this work people had to be removed from the scene. Space was not embodied but empty” (Cresswell, 34). This philosophical turn to space was excellent at opening the possibility for totalizing projects like Thomas Jefferson’s. Empty space--quite opposite populated, storied place--can make no demands on you. As an ethical void, it can make no claims of truth, value, or morality and is thus free to be filled by whatever the newcomer brings. When space was married to (and eventually subsumed under) a unidirectionally posited theory of time, they collaborated in the minds of Euro-Americans to offer an abstract setting for “progress.” Spacetime became a ravenous, unexamined lie buried in the mind of the colonizer. With its categories the coordinates were charted toward fresh vistas of Manifest Destiny, racial and class segregation, ecological destruction, and globalization. 

Decolonizing ourselves to inhabit the co-creative rhythms of human vocation requires us to once again look upon the land as shared place.

Focal Points

The Colorado State Capitol Building lines up with
the city's downtown street grid. It's also a gathering
spot for many of the city's homeless. (pic circa 1950)

Cities designed thoughtfully are filled with focal points. 

Even careless city plans have them in some shape or form. Whether parks, monuments, or significant buildings (public, private and religious architecture all fulfill this function and are a strong indicator of value expression at different points in a city's history), these become the visual reference points that help people orient themselves within the complexities of urban space and hold an "image of the city" (to use Lynch's phrase) in their mind. Sometimes focal points show up as a cluster of skyscrapers. Other times they appear as a strategically placed building at the end of a major boulevard. Whatever they are, these focal points draw our eyes and our bodies to them self and professes to the world what we find most important.

Focal places also function in a very interesting secondary role: they form the city's prime public spaces.

In the modern, capitalist city, public space is often inhabited by the poor. Private space outside the home is mostly geared toward consumption and profit generation in today's urban areas. Thus, the poor have limited private space available to them thanks to their limited purchasing and profit generating power. What's left are the public places available to anyone (though, increasingly, policies are being passed to oust unwanted folks from these places too). Imagine the parks and plaza's in your city's downtown. Who is seated and standing around capital buildings and courts, churches and office buildings? More often than not, this is where we find the homeless and those characters the dominant culture attempts to exclude.

I find it amazing that Jesus associated himself with exactly these people: the excluded, the disinherited, the barred from entry, the kept outside. Where you see the hungry and ignored, there, we are told, you see Jesus.

In the past, when I've thought about the focal design of our cities, the things we have centered our built environment and subsequently our lives around, I'm often saddened. At these center points we find the constructions of empire. The power of our government and financial institutions are set on full display. I have often worried that this leads us away from the true center, Jesus. And I have worried that this construction wordlessly teaches our imagination to value the wrong things.

But could it be that, ever so subtly, the presence of the poor in these places is subverting what the world has tried to place is the middle? That in the grimy faces of the poor, Jesus has planted himself at the center of our social worlds? Perhaps if we look down from the corner offices and emblems of power, if we can listen with humility, we will rediscover a more beautiful way to be human. We will find Jesus at the center, standing among the poor.

Seeing Systems: Resources

Posted this on FB, but thought I'd capture it over here too. Blessings yall!

Lots of political, economic, social, cultural type posts flying through my feed recently, lots more from my Christian friends than I'm used to seeing.

I'm feeling very grateful for that, actually. 

It implies that we as a people are beginning to see more clearly that belief systems (ours included) can never be isolated to individual piety -- the way we act in the world and the societies we create come out of the paradigms we hold. 

But reading the world is incredibly challenging. News outlets share and react to events, but rarely penetrate much deeper. So, even people who believe similarly often come out on different sides of issues. We're stuck asking, "What the heck is actually going on and what does being a follower of Jesus have to do with it?" The tendency is to focus in on these events and the individuals who are involved in them, pin blame somewhere, and try to solve problems that way. Unfortunately, most of us realize that isn't really making any progress...

With that in mind, I thought I'd share some resources on systems thinking that have been very helpful to me in attempting to think through what's going on in the world. The iceberg model below will get you started.

creds to the Donella Meadows Institute

If you are interested in learning more about how almost everything that matters in the world is composed of interrelated systems, here are a few helpful links:

1) Exceptional series of talks by systems guru Donella Meadows, this links to the first of four (she comes in around 6:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg

2) Article by Meadows on identifying leverage points in systems (i.e. how to we figure out how to create change on a systems level? the iceberg pic below is based on this article)
http://www.donellameadows.org/…/leverage-points-places-to-…/

3) The Center for Ecoliteracy has some helpful, straightforward systems explanations:
http://www.ecoliteracy.org/article/systems-thinkinghttp://www.ecoliteracy.org/…/seven-lessons-leaders-systems-…

4) Our minds are a system...here's how they work, and how to think more clearly about the world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sfiReUu3o0

5) PBS partnered with some great folks to create a K-12 systems literacy program filled with videos and resource...tons of gold here
http://opb.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/systemsliteracy/

DISCLAIMER: The root word in radical--radic--means, you guessed it, "root." Systems thinking is a process for getting down to the root of things. When you do that, people will think you are a radical. And you might be, but if you do so in commitment to following Jesus yours will be a radicality of love, one that seeks the good of others, lifts up the marginalized and lays down self.