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"A lack of money or material posessions" – pretty simple?
Poverty is not having enough:- Oh! that's me!
It begs the question ‘How much is enough?’ – Just $1000 more! Than what? When questioned about the requirements people had to make themselves comfortable the answer is consistently about 10% more than their present income. We don't want to appear greedy do we.
Poverty is recognised as a problem in our society: We have had a succession of Royal Commissions and other enquiries who have employed armies of sociologists and produced tonnes of reports, but the problem remains unchanged. Welfare is a large proportion of the Federal budget, it is an election issue at every poll, and it is a favourite platform of Churchmen and others who wish to be outspoken while securing for themselves the high moral ground. It is easy to be very righteously moral when you don't have to also be accountable.
Poverty is not precisely defined. The first European Programme to Combat Poverty in the late 70's adopted a poverty line set at 50% of national household income. The Australian Commission of Enquiry into Poverty in 1975 adopted the the Henderson poverty line which had been suggested in 1966 as the basic wage plus family allowance for a basic nuclear family of four. Many alternative definitions are used – all of them are equally arbitrary. Since 1966 the average annual income of Australians has increased more than 10 fold and so has the definition of poverty.
Poverty defined in terms of the income of the wider population cannot be eliminated. It is a moving target. There will always be a bottom quartile. Even so, addressing poverty as merely a financial matter misses the important role of our own attitude in the quality of our lives.
My experiences in Papua New Guinea opened my eyes to a few things.
Is my life poor because my resources are modest and I have expectations accordingly? I have known families made destitute by circumstance, but they had faith and hope. They were not poor, and would have objected to the suggestion.
Poverty may be defined by the economists in terms of $/week but it is quality of life which makes mine enjoyable and that depends only to a limited extent on money.
In 1987 the Prime Minister Mr Hawke announced "by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty". He was wrong. Quality of life was not offered, only money, and money was never an adequate solution.
Government efforts to address the problems of poverty have produced a plethora of social welfare allowances and support services. The greatest beneficiaries of these are the welfare providers: the middle class professional welfare workers and the army of clerks and bureaucrats which are required to administer the system.
The principal effect of welfare payments often is to provide an economic living which, although meagre, requires little diligence and permits a broad range of non-economic activities to sustain the quality of life. A secondary effect is to discourage participation in the economic workforce as the earnings available are little more than the benefits and require the sacrifice of the non-economic activities and thus a considerable depletion of the quality of life.
On welfare I can play with my children and be personally involved in their development and education, I can help my mother with her shopping, I can read, write a letter, watch the soaps, I can garden a little and I can exchange what I have surplus with others. Take a job and I get about the same or perhaps a little more but lose all the side benefits. I have no time to cook or sew so my financial costs for the same standard of living are significantly higher if I am fully employed.
The Bible does have a bit to say about poverty but less than one might expect. This may be partly because relative poverty is not particularly common among well structured traditional communities where the welfare of the individual is inseparable from that of the group as a whole.
The Bible is directly critical of sloth and indolence as contributors to a condition of poverty and is generally supportive of enterprise and industry. However there is no indication of how much is enough. Perhaps this is because "how much" or "enough" is not the important point.
We have had some interesting thoughts on the matter of tithing in recent times – a subject perennially relevant. The reason for tithing bears close examination:
We should not accept the simplistic and worldly presumption that poverty is merely a want of material things or of money, which may be eaily addressed by government largesse. A want necessarily includes a desire to have. If I have no desire – I have no want – I have no poverty.
I recall being involved in a church discussion once which involved some difficult talking about a financial problem. One of those present had a sense that the direction was wrong and seeking to express herself asked if the Gospel was not about living "in a condition of enoughness".
There is little justification in prayer for another car because the parish needs one. Prayer may help in developing ways to get along (perhaps even better) without the car.
The same is appropriate in our personal lives. We can want for material possessions and success, or we can pray for the understanding to discover how to live an even fuller life without them.
Margaret & I have kept careful records for many years of our domestic expenditure and savings. We have been fascinated that until recently our standard of living has cost us a similar amount each week to the poverty line appropriate to our type of family. We are not poor!
The noisy demands by some prominent churchmen that the government should be doing more about poverty are in my view merely political posturing. It is not somebody else's responsibility, it is ours. If there is a duty being ignored it is that of the community (and the church) in enabling people to find their own way. We must be responsible for ourselves, and if we do not like the situation we need to be empowered to do something about it, not made dependent.
The truly poor are those who want. Poverty is for anybody if you want it hard enough. There is more that characterises the poor than just a lack of money – most importantly it is the lack of hope. So often we see examples of social welfare benefits spent on alcohol, tobacco, gambling and the like. This is real poverty.
Original: August ‘99
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.tassie.net.au/~phoban/
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