Poverty (Pt. 4): Heuristic Structure of Suburban Mission

Thus far, we’ve talked about...

1) how those of use with privilege and resources elevate the forgiveness-granting, existential aspect of Christ’s “good news to the poor” to the only aspect of the good news that matters. We also saw that when our identity is in the old kingdom of the world, the other aspects of the Good News are not just uninteresting to us, but threatening to who we understand ourselves to be.

2) how charity can get out of the way for Charity/Caritas/Agape through the exercise of hospitality towards our brothers and sisters in poverty. Moreover, how we need to get beside those brothers and sisters in order to get beside Jesus.

3) but we wondered if maybe our vision for poverty wasn't a little dull, causing us to only see the big, obvious kinds of impoverishment in big, obvious places like the city and the country. We wondered about poverty in suburbia. And we found that poverty is the thing linking these places and the people who dwell in them. A poverty some can hide with privilege and resources and some cannot.


So, I’m a philosophy student. Er, student of philosophy? Either way, I end up reading books by really, really smart dead guys. One of those soul-crushingly smart dead guys is the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. A big part of Lonergan’s philosophy is that human beings learn stuff by inquiring about things with the use of “heuristics.” Heuristic is just a fancy word for “anticipation.” We anticipate that there is something to be understood, so we ask about it. In algebra, we demonstrate this anticipation with letters like “X” and “N.”

“Let X equal…”

Well, I want to play a similar game with this problem of how we preach the Good News, in all its rich, pulpy fullness to the “poor” in Suburbia. Except, instead of “X” or “N,” we’re going to use the words “Mission to Suburbia.”

“Let a Mission to Suburbia equal…”

Then, like in algebra, we’ll list some “terms” or characteristics and their relationship to one another. The “equation” will then be kind of like what Lonergan called an “heuristic structure.” Whatever other concrete details there might be, a mission to suburbia would consist of and in those characteristics in relation. This way, if we stumble onto or into one, we’ll know it when we see it.

So, the first figure in the equation would have to be the rediscovery of poverty, in two senses:

- First, we need to rediscover the proximity that material poverty of resources and social poverty of privilege has to our suburban setting. We tend to tuck it away, in neighboring communities or out of the way neighborhoods. In Walnut Creek, CA, the town I’ll be headed to in a few months to start out an experiment in Suburban Mission, the low-income housing is quite literally invisible from the main thoroughfares, obscured by shopping centers and municipal landscaping. Poverty can remain the story of people and places that are far away and other to us only through selective ignorance. We acculturate ourselves not to see the poverty of resources and privilege right under our noses.

(As a complete aside, allow me to allude to a contentious political issue: Egypt was built on the backs of immigrants who fled a famine in their home-land for the opportunities and security afforded by the wealth of an empire, only to end up indentured laborers under increasingly exploitative conditions. Egypt’s unwillingness to be compassionate towards their foreign neighbors ultimately resulted in destruction, death and suffering [to say nothing of political unrest!] for their citizens.)

- Second, we privileged and resourced suburban Christians, need to rediscover and embrace our personal, fundamental poverty. Resources and privilege cover up that poverty, but do not solve it, because the only thing that can solve it is the grace and redemption of a God that overcomes our moral impotence. We’re not up to the task demanded by a moral universe and we suffer over and over and over again the effects of our sin upon ourselves, on others and on creation. We need each other and we need God. Continuing to live in stubborn ignorance of that need will mean that we will continue to mete out destruction on creation and ourselves. Every advance and development will ultimately be purchased with a payday loan that we are guaranteed to default on.

So, the equation looks like this so far: “a Mission to Suburbia requires a rediscovery of poverty…”

Now, it’s easy for that rediscovery to be mis-understood as an unmasking of the self-deception of other wealthy suburbanites. Let me be clear that, though I think there is a place for clever, prophetic proclamation in societies that need a little self-examination, I’m really talking about those of us who feel called to preach the good news to the suburban poor. We need to make this rediscovery for, of and in ourselves.

But then we should share with other resource and privilege rich suburbanites what it is we’ve found in ourselves.

In fact, that’s the next part of the equation:

Reveal (or “confess,” if you like) to one another and the community the poverty we discover in ourselves. And that doesn’t just mean passing nods to our sense of inadequacy or vague statements that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Rather, when one reveals poverty to others, and they really feel that poverty as poverty, there’s an implicit “Help ME!” included. The authentic revelation of poverty to your brothers and sisters is an invitation to an act of service, an act of care. It’s an invitation into a community of Caritas in the richest theological sense.

But if no one has any liabilities that need tending or, having them, if none are willing to uncover them, then no invitations can be received and accepted. Or rejected, of course. Which is the grand danger, is it not? That having revealed our true dependence, we come to confirm the sense that we are alone in this. That the world demands we be self-sufficient. That poverty and suffering and lost-ness is just all there is, lurking beneath all the distractions. So, its best to stay distracted. To stay self-enclosed.

And we’re on to the next, slightly paradoxical part of the equation: the requirement that we have courage, faith and hope.

So, wait, let’s review:

“Suburban Mission requires that we rediscover our poverty, revealing it amongst ourselves and others with courage, faith and hope…”

Why courage, faith and hope?

Courage because the reality is that if you reveal your poverty and let escape the slightest whimper of “Help Me?”, it’s likely that you will be failed. You might be ignored. You might be scolded. You might be helped once and then abandoned. You might be blamed for your situation. A million horrible things could happen in your vulnerable state and it will be necessary to be brave in the face of those possibilities.

And, indeed, it will also require faith. Faith that if you do take this risk, that in some impossible way, it will be met half-way. Or more than half-way. Faith that there are people out there as willing and able to help as you are in need of their care and support. Faith that God will transform the hearts and intentions and actions of all the other, hurting, scared people out there for whom your mess threatens to unmask their mess. People for whom your vulnerability shines light on their vulnerability.

And most of all, you will need hope, because shit will go wrong, and probably not just once. You’ll need the hope that, even though everything has gone wrong so far, by some impossible chance or grace, everything works together for the good. Hope that there’s no mess so messy that God’s redemption can swirl it into a grand, vast column of support for some serious next level shit.

So, here it is, the equation that I think helps us anticipate the structure of our mission to suburbia:

Suburban Mission requires we a) rediscover our poverty, b) revealing it amongst ourselves and others c)with courage, faith and hope d) so that our weakness might be made into strength.

And that last part is the whole point. And the whole paradox.

In a place where independence, strength, and wealth are white-washed over tombs of broken, lost, empty lives, to reach deep down and show everyone your dependence, your weakness and your poverty requires immense courage and strength. You have to be incredibly together in order to survive the exposure of how un-together you really are. You have to be very grown up to show the faith of a child.

And so, the mission to suburbia implies a call for a new standard of success, of grown-up-ness. Our Heuristic Structure of a Mission to Suburbia needs people who are strong enough to step out into weakness, showing others it can be done.

That’s the prophetic hope of all of this: That others will look at us and say, “They’re nothing special. Shit, they’re kind of a mess. And yet they’re doing something extraordinary…”

“…Maybe I can too.”

So, in abbreviated form, here's our equation. Our anticipation.

Suburban Mission = (Rediscovered Poverty + Confession of Poverty) X (Courage + Faith + Hope) = Weakness = Strength