Building Faith Series: #4 Life in the margins

[from September 2021]

I have re-written this post a few times, and I still hesitate a bit. I am a lot more talk than I am action on this topic, and I'm uncomfortable with my current balance in that. However, I come here with the following questions. 

• What does it look like to show compassion to people in the margins? 
• Does everyone deserve compassion, even if they made choices that help lead them to their misfortune?
• Do I personally need to help people I don't agree with? Or who I don't even know? Or who I believe are threatening my freedom or my country?
• Is compassion wasted if they never come to my church? 

Have you ever felt on the border in this society we live in? Have you felt like you didn't really belong with the others around you in the mainstream?  Or maybe even more extreme, like you were barely hanging on and were desperate for someone to help you? Or maybe you face daily the preconceived notions people have about you based on your race, your gender, your family situation, your abilities, your neurodiversity, or your mental health.

The closest I can remember to feeling that way might be when I was working at group home jobs and living in Saskatoon when I took a break from university in 1991. I was struggling with an eating disorder and I was barely getting by financially. I remember sitting on the floor in my little apartment, holding the handset of the blue phone with the tangled up cord, doing my banking, like we used to do back in the day, and realizing I wasn't going to make it financially. 

However, looking back, I still had many options. My parents would have taken me back in. I was living alone in my apartment most of the time, and even though it smelled like other people's spices and didn't feel the safest, I still had a place to live and not even a roommate to bug me. I had a car that was old and barely ran, but still, I had a car. I don't remember a time when I couldn't buy any groceries or was hungry for a few days with nothing to eat. 

I also had a license to drive, and I knew the language to communicate with everyone around me. I had white skin and had finished high school, and knew I could get a student loan to go back to school. I looked up many careers and took my pick of what I thought might be a good match for me. I had an ID, citizenship, a bank account, and a blue tangled-cord phone to check my banking.

To me, that is the very definition of privilege. Life wasn't easy, oh no it sure wasn't. But, I was the majority race, majority language, had education, shelter, transportation, and the support of family and friends when I needed it. I was starting the race of life several hurdles down the track in comparison to so many others, by no effort or hustle of my own, just by the timing and place of my birth and upbringing. 

I have since begun to learn that life does not have that privilege for so many others. Growing up or living in *actual* poverty is a much different situation than me not being able to pay my bills as a 20 year old, or carrying a debt load. I've never been followed around a store because of my looks or race.  I don't have memories of war and escaping with nothing, leaving my home and all I've ever known. I have never been falsely arrested or accused of a crime based on my skin colour. I've never had to wait and wait to hear if a body had been found of my loved one who went missing and wonder why authorities didn't seem concerned about the missing sister. Trauma has never claimed my voice or my legs or my hearing or sight. 

But many have experienced these challenges, through no fault of their own. This has had a significant impact on my faith story. This impact has partly come because I struggle with why God allows these things. I'm grateful for my home, for example, and I used to view it as a gift from God, maybe almost as a prize for how well I'm doing at pleasing God - going to church, helping out there, smiling at people, praying sometimes, and working hard at my job. It still might be a gift, but I know some deserving people who are doing a lot more for others and are much more giving and don't have a gift from God like a home. It just feels unfair, I guess, and I don't know how to view God in it all. 

The story of the Good Samaritan details that the person who was actually doing what pleased God was the one who went to the margins, spent their own money, and got dirty to help others in need, whether they knew them or not. Did the Samaritan man cause the man by the road his pain? No! He just found him that way and he helped him. We don't know if the Samaritan man went to the synagogue or prayed or read the scriptures. The Pharisee and the lawyer that went to the other side of the road were most certainly ones who did all those things. Yet they were not the ones who 'loved their neighbour as themselves'. They were not the ones who knew the greatest commandments and the way of Jesus. 

Where does that leave you and me today? We churchy folks really like to think that we care about people in the margins, but it's kind of complicated if we're honest, right? Is it showing God's love to feed someone, even if you don't also give them a Bible and tell them about Jesus at the same time? I've heard people argue that it isn't God's love unless you also give them a Bible, and you might as well not even do it. One of my favourite ministries I ever was involved with was a clothing giveaway at our church. We literally just accepted donations and then twice a year gave clothes away. That sounds so simple and like such a worthy cause to me. I couldn't believe how many people had a problem with it, and didn't approve of the 'handouts' or accused people of taking advantage of us or thought it sent the wrong message, or even judged the cost of the clothing the people wore who came to the giveaway. I just can hardly go there, but I disagree strongly, and I think Jesus would back me up on that, haha. Only kind of kidding on that. The stories I experienced in the times I was able to help with the giveaway days live on in my heart, knowing I was doing the real work of Jesus in this world - loving the people on the borders and the edges, like foster moms/grandmas, refugees, and hurting people. 

I listened this week to a podcast interview of Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her book Jesus and John Wayne. At the end of the podcast, he asked her if she had hope for the Christian community. I found her response mesmerizing. "The question we should ask ourselves after we learn about something like this is not, 'what can I do now?'. It is, 'why didn't I see this? Who did I choose to listen to or choose to ignore, or maybe not even invite into my spaces?' When we explore our own complicity in the situation, and have an eagerness to invest in the undoing of the injustice, this is where we can find hope." (my paraphrase)

This is powerful for me, because I didn't realize so many of these things for so long. I still have much to learn about history and the impact of race, colonialism, poverty, sexual orientation, the patriarchy, and other challenges people in my own community face. Who did I choose to listen to that helped me turn a blind eye to what was all around me? Who did I ignore or turn away from (or walk on the other side of the road from) that could have helped me see what was going on around me?

I could say a lot more about privilege and religion and loving others, but maybe that leads us into the next topic. What is the point of loving others? What if the person we are trying to love isn't accepting our love or doesn't seem to want to change in the ways we think they should? Do we still love? What if they stay in addiction? What if they live in a gay relationship? What if they are a different religion? Some of those answers used to feel more simple to me. I started to question what a truly loving response might be when I read about the suicide rates in individuals in LGBTQ relationships. You don't have to look far to find a story about church people causing deep wounds in others. Is there another way? I hope so.