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Wilson McMillan

Professor Huff

HNGR 114 - Poverty, Justice, and Transform

1 May 2020

Not His, Not Hers, Our Poverty

Poverty, culturally defined, is a lack of monetary means to sustain one’s self. This commonly

defined form of poverty is a potent disease that has plagued humanity since the dawn of money with

the Mesopotamian shekel in 2,500 BC, but this limited definition of poverty barely scratches the

surface of what it truly is at its core. True poverty goes beyond the financial; true poverty is a

corrupting agent to the state of one’s soul. Bryan Myers defines Poverty as, “the result of relationships

that do not work.” (Myers 2011:143) Relationships are the fundamental building block of community,

and thereby civilization. Poverty seeks to disrupt the foundation of community, and it does that by

manifesting dysfunctional relationships. In Kamala Markandaya’s novel, Nectar In A Sieve, we are

witness to a multitude of dysfunctional relationships, but one that stands out is the cannibalistic

relationship between Rukmani and Kunthi. Humanity is unique among Earthly creatures, in that we

have the ability to empathize; when we see someone struggling we have the ability to understand and

relate to what they’re going through. What happens then when two people are sharing the same

struggle—in the case of Rukmani and Kunthi, a struggle with rural poverty—is that they can make one

of two decisions. They can either access their empathy, and thus their humanity, or they can succumb

to primal instinct, and eliminate their competition. The latter approach is what we see between

Rukmani and Kunthi. Kunthi blackmails Rukmani’s family, manipulating them into giving her their

last remaining rice. Out of desperation Kunthi acts maliciously to save her own skin, and that action is
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representative of her and Rukmani’s toxic relationship. This lack of shalom within their relationship

leads to a series of events that tear each other down and bring themselves further into poverty. Their

broken relationship leads to Rukmani’s family especially experiencing multiple facets of poverty, from

hunger, to spiritual poverty. Kunthi takes their rice and reaps discord throughout their family as

Rukmani attacks her own daughter, mistaking her for Kunthi, and Nathan proves to have been

unfaithful in their marriage.

The trouble with most forms of poverty is that the wounds it causes are often much deeper

than we initially perceive. This leads to thousands of people engaging in what Katangole and Rice

would call “firefighting” reconciliation; the kind of reconciliation that pulls the weed but misses the

root. (Katangole & Rice, 33) As pop singer/songwriter Taylor Swift sings, “Band-aids don’t fix bullet

holes,” and the level of brokenness in this world would most certainly fall into the bullet hole tier of

wound severity. Ground-up reconciliation is necessary to heal poverty, but we cannot rush into it

without first assessing it, because as Oscar Romero says “It helps, now and then, to step back and take

the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.” (Katangole &

Rice, 41) Stepping back is crucial, but in the process of stepping back it is even more crucial that we

remain attached to the brokenness by processing the gravity of the situation with lament. Katangole &

Rice outline this in the sixth chapter of their book, Reconciling All Things, saying that we’re called to

“a space where the right response can only be a desperate cry directed to God. We are called to learn the

anguished cry of lament” (Katongole & Rice 77) Lament, as I’ve learned over the past semester, is what

enables all of poverty, brokenness, and suffering to become real. As consumed as we are nowadays with

all things digital media it is harder than ever to escape detachment from reality, and that feeling of

detachment is amplified with one of Katangole & Rice’s practices to unlearn: distance. Distance kills
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empathy, and in the case of poverty, it is impossible to register the full impact of it without

experiencing it intimately. A poor man from Adaboya, Ghana in the Voices Of The Poor Study said

this about understanding poverty, “Poverty is like heat; you can’t see it; you can only feel it; so to know

poverty you have to go through it.” (Voices Of The Poor, 17) There is no way to know completely

what someone who is experiencing poverty is feeling without going through the same thing ourselves,

but we can counteract our detached disposition by practicing lament.

As easy as it is two confuse the two, lament is not despair. Lament is actually quite the

opposite; to lament is to hope. Both work in tandem to foster reconciliation, and it is only through

lamenting the current state of affairs and placing hope in the providential plans of God, that we can

begin to work out reconciliation. The importance of this hope cannot be understated, because as

Katangole & Rice say, “God’s ‘way in the desert and streams in the wasteland’ are not easily seen or

perceived.” (Katangole & Rice, 96) Within the culture of faith and reconciliation it is easy to glorify the

“testimony moments”, where some life-altering event occurs that leads to widespread profession of

faith and healing, but in actuality these moments are few and far between. Our God is a powerful God,

and on occasion he exercises that power to manifest “testimony moments”, but this is not God’s

primary mode of reconciliation. It is often difficult for me to witness the everyday actions of God

because I am too busy waiting for the “testimony moment” to be thrown at my feet, but God is a God

of gentle breezes, and he is working the most when we can’t perceive it. This is where faith, or the

“belief in things not seen”, comes into play, because God’s workings are beyond human conception.

(Hebrews 11:1 ESV) Only through a restructuring of our expectations for God can we begin to

witness and take part in the everyday reconciliation of his kingdom.