Caution: Thinking Out Loud

I think you have heard the saying, opinions are like noses. Everybody has one.As a pastor, I need to be careful sharing opinions on certain subjects because I don't want people to think I am speaking with the same level of authority as when they come to church and the Scripture speaks.But still, I have opinions...and what's the good of having an opinion if there's no opportunity to share it? And a blog seems like a pretty good place to do that.Which is just a long way of saying, what I am about to write is one man's perspective, probably not that well-formed or that well thought out, on an emotional issue for many people.And that is this whole idea of individuals being 'previously disadvantaged.'It is a common phrase here in South Africa. The same idea is expressed using different words all throughout the world, because wherever there have been different people groups, there have been people who have taken advantage of others.And I want to begin by saying, I get the concept. I really do.In fact, I only have two problems with the term.The first is the word previously. The second is the word disadvantaged.Previously? I was sitting with a pastor in a township on Monday who is serving a community where the majority of people are out of work. He is about my age, an expository preacher, committed to sound doctrine, with a work ethic that puts me to shame. He also doesn't have enough money to purchase school uniforms for his children, which means they often are sent home from school. His office has a tin roof with holes in it which makes things a little sketchy when it rains. We had just come back from going door to door where I had spent some time with an old blind man, water flowing out of his eyes, who was living in a one room tin shack, his legs not working anymore, so he has to spend the entire day in his bed, his niece taking care of him, barely, it seems more likely she may be using him for his pension money.I was talking with a friend recently about some of his visits to schools in some of these kinds of settings. Schools where the English teachers don't even really know how to read English. I myself have visited hospitals where I wouldn't even want to go to die, in fact, some of these hospitals I wonder if I went there, whether I would die. I have seen the way some of the ladies from our church our treated at these hospitals. They go to have a baby and are sent home six hours later. They are thankful to go home however, because if they had to stay in the ward they would be placed in a room with many other women and no blankets or anything like that. Don't get me wrong. It's not all bad. There are amazing people doing amazing work. But, still there is a lot of bad. Just last week, I spent some time with a person who comes to our church, he is sick, to me it looks like if things don't change, he is on his way towards dying. He had just walked and taken taxis to the hospital for an appointment, after having gone week after week to get that appointment, only to be told the doctor decided not to come in that day and he would have to try again next week. One of my good friends recently was beaten by a policemen in town, forced to lay on the ground, spread his legs, and have them continually kick him in the private parts, not telling him what he was doing wrong, only to leave him and go on to another car and not look back. He is a white person, actually and when he went to tell some of my other friends who stay in town, they said of course, that kind of thing has happened to most of the people we know. Of course when he tells those of us who live in the suburbs we are absolutely shocked. I have another friend who says he watches out of the window of his apartment on weekends and sees the police beating people like snakes.So previously? I am not so sure about it. For a whole lot of people, what exactly is previous about it? One of my favorite funny things is when people come to me and say there life in South Africa is so hard now, that they think they have to emigrate to Australia. I may sound a little callous and I really don't mean it that way, because I get that certain work place realities right now are frustrating and unfair, but look, here's the deal, if you still have the ability to emigrate to Australia and buy a home and buy a car and start a well paying job, then probably you shouldn't spend too, too much time talking about how disadvantaged you are. Right?But it's not just the word previously I struggle with. It is also the word disadvantaged. I take very seriously the lack of resources, the lack of hospitals, the inequality that exists in education, the different way police treat people. Since I have been to South Africa, I have been overwhelmed with all the privileges I have enjoyed in my life - and so many of them I didn't even know were privileges. I can make a long list. When we moved here I knew we would be poor from an American point of view, but I assumed we would purchase a car. The ability to purchase a car means I am not poor. Or at least was not poor. It is crazy now not having a car and having to take a mini bus taxi. We love it so it is fine but at first you think what is the problem with taking taxis, it works great. And it does, so long as you are going the same route as the taxi. Just the other day we were at the mall to purchase something, easy to get there, but then we were told that to purchase what we wanted to purchase, we had to go to the post office first. Easy in a car. But totally not on the taxi route. So, how many hours of going to the mall, sitting in taxis, walking to the taxi, potentially wasted? Or, going to schools where the teachers expected you to think and if you weren't working hard at school, setting up appointments with your parents who then worked with you on your homework and challenged you to work at learning. These are huge advantages. Having credit, so when it comes to the end of the month and I need to go to the grocery store but we are out of money, my family doesn't have to sit there and eat air. Going into a room and never once thinking that people will think I am inferior because of the color of my skin. I remember going to another church once with someone and they were staying so close to me and I was wondering why until later when this person told me, I wasn't sure they would like me because I was black. The same church where one of my friends was told, you can't go there, that's only a church for white people. They were wrong of course, but even the fact that people would assume that. That kind of thought has never entered my mind. So I definitely believe there are some advantages that people experience that they don't even know they experience.But at the same time, when some people think about the word disadvantaged they primarily think in financial terms. To them disadvantaged means growing up in a tin shack. Disadvantaged means not having a car. Disadvantaged means not having a fat old bank account. And I think we have to be careful that when we use this word that we are not accepting our culture's definition of what matters in life. Am I worse off just because I grow up without many financial resources? Who says? What if I have godly parents? What if my family loves me? What if they take me to church and teach me about Jesus Christ? What if my community is one where people share with one another? What if my community looks out for each other? I think I could have at that point a whole lot more advantages than some really rich young man whose father is constantly working, whose family is breaking apart, who lives behind a gate and doesn't know anyone else who lives around him, who lives in a community that is self-absorbed? Or to come at it from another angle, I can grow up in a really poor setting and have this amazing brain and someone else can grow up in a rich family and be mentally challenged. Who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged? Obviously we could go on.Money is god where I come from, and I think because of that, when we see people without money, we can easily freak out because if we didn't have our god with us, we would be lost. There's more to life however than money, malls and big cars. Much more. We have to be careful because the concept of previously disadvantaged can reinforce the idea in some people's minds that they are superior just because they have money. I have seen where people with money go into poor communities and act like they know so much better what to do for those communities and like their opinion should matter more than everyone else just because they have financial resources. What? It's important to respect people but should I really respect your opinion more simply because you have more money than me?I guess what I am saying is that the end of the day what I am concerned about are two almost opposite sounding things. The first is one that people hear me loud and clear on because I am better at communicating it. I am concerned that some of us don't feel the empathy we should for those who are living in very difficult situations, who don't appreciate some of the privileges God has given us. On the other hand, and this is what I am not always as good at communicating, but I am concerned that some of us don't simply accept the world's categories of what is important and feel inferior and disadvantaged and automatically assigned to a lesser kind of life simply because we don't have the same amount of money as other people.