Living as a Poor Man
LEARNING TO IDENTIFY

Reference: Grigg, V. (2004). Companion to the Poor. GA, USA: Authentic Media in partnership with World Vision.

    TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO a seed fell from the sower's hand from heaven to earth. The God of eternity now inhabited humanity in the cry of a child, in the frame of a manger, in the tramp of sandaled feet.
   

    The symphony the angels sang at Jesus' birth was tinged by the melancholy of poverty. In coming from heaven to earth, the seed did not remain at the surface among the unrealities of the rich and the haughty. He buried himself in the depths of humanity, and those depths have weighed down the laboring poor for thousands of years.
   

    The prophet Isaiah declared that God has two homes: ‘For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity whose name is holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit (Isaiah 57: 15)’.

    Two homes, two addresses: eternity and poverty.

 

The language of the poor
   

    Real training in the knowledge of the God who dwelt among the poor began by the flicker of a kerosene lamp, long before entering Tatalon, as I studied Tagalog in Ka Emilio's home. I began to learn the heartbeat, the soul, and the language of the poor.
   

    After a long study session, I stood up for a stretch and went to the door. I looked out across the nipa thatch to the sky. The scene had all the drama of a traditional missionary movie scene, but beneath the romanticism lay the same melancholy of suffering Jesus knew.
   

    Luz, Ka Emilio's daughter, and her husband Emy ran out of food each twentieth of the month. Over a period of time we worked out a system where I paid the equivalent of the cost of my food in exchange for Ate Luz's cooking. Initially, in the style of Filipino hospitality, they gave me too much food until I explained that I should live on what they live on-though I asked them to add some extra meat to maintain my Vitamin B level. They improved their own food with the money earned by Ate Luz.

 

Learning the language of the poor
   

    It is in the language of these poor that Jesus spoke. His Beatitudes, his Sermon on the Mount, made no sense to the rich of his day, just as they make little sense today to the majority of 20th century middle-class Christians.
   

    Perhaps he learned it from his mother. Mary, in her Magnificence before Jesus' birth, tells how the Lord "regarded the low estate of his handmaiden" and speaks prophetically of him "filling the hungry with good things, but sending the rich empty away" (Luke 1:48 and 53). These are a poor woman's words, just as Jesus' instruction to "give to everyone who asks you" (Luke 6:30) is a saying of the poor, an expression not found in the vocabulary of the rich. He was one of the poor and so he used their words and. phrases. "The poor people heard him gladly" (Mark 12:37).

 

Metamorphosis
 

    In the process of entering God's being, we also enter fully into the complete nature of our humanity, our society and culture. Jesus set us a pattern for cross-cultural ministry when he "became a man and dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth, and we have beheld his glory" (John 1:14).
 

    Being ‘full of grace’, means that Jesus fully entered in and mastered the intricacies of our cultural forms. He spent thirty years learning Aramaic and Jewish culture.
 

    Being "full of truth" means there are elements in his life that supersede all cultures, and refuse to adapt to the evil in any culture. We have "beheld his glory" as he expressed. God's culture through the thought-forms, and actions of the Jewish soul.
 

    Many people think of cultural change as adjusting to heat (30°) or humidity (98.5%), living on a diet of fish and rice, being called an Americana, having to adapt to the daily pattern of siestas, travelling in a jeepney, eating at a carinderia (a snack shop), or bargaining for a shirt.
 

    These things are initial adjustments, involving some degree of culture stress which if, it is beyond our emotional capacity, could result in culture shock, but such experiences are fun and relatively easy to comprehend compared with the issues of cultural change.
 

    Cultural change is primarily a matter of inner change: change not at the level of external behavior (important though this is in becoming "full of grace"), but at the level of our inner emotional responses. Knowledge, study, wisdom, experience, and language are all necessary. It is here that dying to self is critical.
 

    How do I rebuke in a society that knows little direct rebuke? What is my status in a place where status is not based on achievements alone, but on position, wealth, power, age, good looks, and whiteness of face?
 

    As we ask these types of questions, we cannot simply replace our Western culture with Filipino culture. Rather we must evaluate both cultures against biblical values-we must move from a Western expression of biblical character to a Filipino expression. No culture is absolute. Only the Scriptures are. The Bible judges all cultures.

Intellectual understanding comes slowly. I can spend days contrasting the culture of New Zealand-"the passionless people" as one author calls us-with Filipino culture, which is certainly not lacking in passion. Change in my emotional responses comes even more slowly, as I move from individualism to group-centeredness; from the Kiwi authoritarian, structure-oriented leadership model to Fili­pino consensus decision-making; from a male-dominated society to a matriarchal society; from frugality to a celebrating lifestyle; from an egalitarian society (all men are equal) to a traditionally status-oriented society; from achievement­orientation to people orientation.

 

Lessons in child-raising
 

    In living with Ka Emilio, I was in a perfect situation to observe two areas: child-raising patterns (the basis of indigenous training concepts) and family life (the basis of indigenous group structures, social relationships, and value systems).
 

    One interesting feature of Filipino child-raising patterns is that control and discipline are not maintained by punishment for violation of principles, but rather by the presence of the mother (or aunt, or older sister), who constantly limits and molds the child's behavior according to the re­sponses of people around.
 

    One evening I was sitting at the table eating supper. Emy was dramatizing his courtship for me. Little Alma, three years old, was running around.
 

    "Huwag kang malikot." Ate Luz admonished the small boy. This means "don't run around" and also "don't be naughty." To be too active is to be naughty: an active child is difficult to control.
 

    Shame is the critical element. Often I would hear "Baka, magalit si Viv" (Watch out, Viv might get angry) as a way of shaming a child into obedience. To make someone angry is a great sin.
 

    Later in life, the same social mechanisms function in the development of ministry and eldership teams: constant sensitivity to the group: molding each other little by little: "shaming" a group member if he oversteps the mark. Groups are very conscious of what onlookers think of the group as a whole, lest they be shamed.

 

Shock!
 

    Culture shock takes place when cultural stress is beyond our capacity to cope, causing us to react emotionally and irrationally, and revert to the immature reactions of childhood. In a sense you must become a child again-seeing yourself as a child learning the simplest things of life. Culture shock is the result of tension between our prior experience and our current status. It is the result of failure added to failures: Failure in bargaining, failure in giving due respect to an official, failure in language, failure in ministry. Our "ego" is suddenly undermined. One morning I jotted:

Life here is full of failure of cultural adjustment. Failure in saying the right thing, doing the right thing, thinking the right thing. But only in failure comes success. Only in death is life, only in pressing into future failure comes the metamorphosis of cultural adaptation. That's the joy of being a missionary. That is the thrill of mission: walking into death in order to find life-and the knowledge of the One who conquered death.   

    The culture stress of those months of language study amongst the poor of Lipa City had many components. Knowing of no clear directions, I would have to carve out new models of ministry. Knowing of no group, no organization from which to recruit others to work with the urban poor, I would have to raise up co-laborers. I was used to having a team around me and missed the thrust and parry of activity that had been my lifestyle for years. The uncertainties of mastering the language, of doing anything significant, at times would overwhelm me, only to be pushed back by meditation on such scriptures as 'Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage."

 

    There is stress relating to other missionaries. The most difficult cultural adjustment was not to Filipino culture but to American. I think it would be true to say that most Kiwis (the nickname for New Zealanders) grow up with an antipathy to American culture for its apparent arrogance. The same appears to be true of most Australian and British people. We grow with a deep nationalism that identifies our egalitarian culture as superior to that of American capitalism and its "man-is-a-machine" administration systems. Many times I had to bring these prejudices before God in repentance. But love covers a multitude of sins. Missionaries of different nationalities need to walk together in forgiving love. I had to seek consciously the positive aspects of other cultures. From my British heritage I have learned the importance of being a scholar and a gentleman: from my American brethren I have learned the importance of productivity and achievement; from my Kiwi background how to take life as it comes and to pioneer; from Filipino culture I have learned how to enjoy life and people.

 

    In time one comes to a degree of cultural sensitivity. Many missionaries looking back on those first years wish they had taken more time for study of the surrounding culture. The demands of people. leadership roles, and our own personal expectations promote impatience, however, and we jettison the ideal of concentration on culture and language learning needed to become a worthy servant of God, acceptable to him and to the people.

    It is a wise 'grain' that takes the full time of winter to die-time needed to read, study, think, experiment, and internalize the life of the new culture into which it is being planted.

    Finally, we begin to enter into the soul of the people. We begin to speak their soul language and know a little of their soul music. But no matter how far we come. the in-built values in any culture ultimately reject foreigners. This rejection prevents full integration and reminds us that we are strangers and exiles in this world, looking forward to a more permanent dwelling. Such intermittent rejection should also remind us that we will never fully understand another culture-that we are guests in another's "house" and must accept that limitation.

 

Language study
 

    In becoming man. Jesus took the time to learn our language, to learn our heartbeat. He came walking softly, speaking on our terms in our language. Initially, language study increases stress by its very monotony, by its constant failure, failure, failure and by forcing one out to talk with people one does not understand.
 

    But as time goes on, the increasing facility for communication provides warmth, laughter and love. The process of studying the language leads one in a series of supervised cultural learning experiences.
 

    Language study is an emotional life.
 

    An apple and taped vocabulary at five in the morning, chatter with the little boy next door about everything under the sun, five hours of tutoring, a last listen to the tape before sleep, and tomorrow and tomorrow... until March next year. It is a droning air-conditioner punctuated by the humdrum repetition of a phrase, a phrase, a phrase-and the other students' deadpan, weary faces.   
 

    Each day begins with a drama. Then mastery of the dialogue and grammar, rote memorizing of the phrases, and finally heading out to practice on friends. In the middle is a break for a snack or a game of table tennis.
 

    By the end of the morning, the class is mentally exhausted. We fail and fail again at language. But there is the thrill of daily becoming more skilled with words, of talking to people, of being able to understand a television program, of preaching for the first time in that language. Finally freedom begins to come, bringing that same exultant feeling we had when we first learned to whistle, or swim, or tie our shoelaces.
 

    And there is humor! I recall my first day in Tatalon. I had been looking for the pump. "Nasaan ang bomba?" (Where is the bomba?), I inquired of a group of ladies. There was silence, then a round of hilarious laughter. I thought bomba meant pump. It means a movie star! The ladies still joked with me about it years later.

 

Executive footwasher
 

    Jesus not only became fully human, learning our language and ways. He not only dwelt amongst the poor. He chose something deeper - an inner dependence of spirit, an inner humility:

 

For though he was in the form of God.

[he] did not count equality with God

a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself,

taking the form of a servant,

being born in the likeness of man.
And being found in human form
he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death
even death on a cross... (Philippians 2:5-8)

 

    How easy to live as a poor man; how hard to be a poor man's servant! How easy is external poverty; how hard is poverty of the spirit! External identification must always be matched by inner humility.

    The executive sits behind his expensive desk, swinging quietly in his leather chair as the conversation progresses, in-box, out-box, dictaphone, telephone, secretary's clickety­clack, harbor view, air-conditioned room. Perhaps it's you ­ or is it me?

Secure! Powerful! Wealthy! Proud!

    Pride feeds on security, pride feeds on wealth, pride feeds on control and success. My training as an engineer taught me to control. taught me the paths to power, success and efficiency - and taught me pride.

    How subtle that pride! These friends - Emy, Luz, Ka Emilio - wished to honor me as a Westerner as I ate with them. They didn't want me to do my share of the physical labor of fetching water. I had to work doubly hard at choosing the lowest place and the most difficult jobs.

    One missionary friend came to believe that the honor given him by Filipino friends was his rightful heritage. We must never believe the lie that says we are better than another because we have a different colored face or a fat wallet. We must constantly renounce such flattery. The very heart of identification is communicating to another that he or she, too, is a person of equal worth. We need to actively choose the apparently inefficient way, even to sidestep the seemingly important people, that we might honor the nobodies! Such was Jesus' style.

 

    People's respect and honor must not stem from the color of my skin and my wealth. It must come from the recognition of the Lord within me, that same Lord described by John: "Knowing that he had come from and was going to God, (he) rose from supper, laid aside his garments and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded" (John 13:3-5).

   

    I heard that one of the world's great religious leaders once washed the feet of twelve old men. For this menial task, he used a pure gold basin! The princes of the church, the men of power, riches and authority, the international congress on this or that have some small influence on the kingdom. But servants? They are God's strategy.
   

    In dying to ourselves, respect will not come because of a powerful position. It will be because of the power of Christ. That power comes through small acts of humility - the choosing of the lesser place, the less thankful tasks. In Andrew Murray's definition of humility, it is perfect quietness of heart; it is never sore or irri­tated or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to be at rest when nobody praises me and when I am blamed and despised.

    Opposition from missionary friends helped reinforce my commitment to humility. A respected evangelist friend visited me in Ka Emilio's house and over breakfast advised me not to be critical of those who choose a richer lifestyle, since God is impartial, I was tired of the old arguments, so I kept my peace. He pointed out that the inefficiency of a lifestyle of poverty would hinder my ministry.
   

    Yet efficiency, too, is a part of us that must die if the gospel be preached to the poor. The choice of seeming inefficiency is a choice that ultimately brings effectiveness. By neglecting our customary patterns of effectiveness, we find our Lord's patterns beginning to manifest themselves - the patterns of humility, of becoming fully human, of identification.
   

    I could only continue in the belief that poverty and hu­mility are both prerequisites to real spiritual power and to a successful ministry. I wrote:   

I easily get wiped out and discouraged unless each day I get that time with God, going over every attitude, meditating on each detail of life and praying over each step forward. If I do not spend that time, I will never have the dependence on God and humility to survive emotionally in this place, nor can God advance his kingdom.

    During this time of meditating on these issues and of rejecting traditional mission patterns, the lives of St. Francis Xavier and Francis of Assisi were strong encouragements. For Xavier, poverty was the protection for the religious leader against deterioration into a life of comfort. It secured him from the desire for possessions to which so many monks had succumbed. Both Xavier and Assisi saw poverty as essentially apostolic - it enabled them to serve more freely, to evangelize more effectively.
   

    For Francis of Assisi poverty was his "bride," his chosen "lady." Xavier too loved poverty dearly. He replaced the Franciscan image of "bride" with that of "mother."
   

    It was encouraging also to note how Xavier and his companions learned poverty by experimenting. At times they took nothing on ministry trips; at other times (such as in foreign lands) they took provisions. It encouraged me to persevere.¹

    A renewed passion for the mastery of my inner self began to develop. I was thankful for the seven years of rugged Navigator training in the discipline of thought, developed through Scripture memorization and intensive Bible study. Now the choice of poverty was compelling me to a new level of discipline - the disciplines Jesus gave us in the Sermon of the Mount, the disciplines of spirit. I wrote to a friend:

The sincerity of our desire to win the world to Christ is measured by the yardstick of self-conquest. Men and women back home ought first to direct
their zeal to the conquest of their own relationships, possessions, and delights by the kingdom. You cannot wage war in a dark land, on a dark devil unless the war is first directed against egotism and self-love. For the man of God works frequently from a bed of sickness, in the midst of loneliness and bitterness, and in God we must conquer with joy.

 

We must expect and delight to share in the sufferings of Christ. Xavier taught that "failing such a disposition, enthusiasm itself fails. The apostle cannot discharge the rigorous and exacting duties of his office if he becomes embittered by the thought that, at forty, he will be past his prime, by the loneliness of his wanderings, by the frequent 'you are aware that all who are in Asia have deserted me' or  'at the first no one stood to my defence.'" To the Christian, suffering is a delight, for it causes him so much more to become complete. External hardship leads to inner strength. External ease leads to flabbiness of soul.

 

We are to "train ourselves in godliness." Paul says, speaking figuratively, "I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified." This joy, this ability to face suffering and utilize it for good, is the result of hard discipline in training our minds in small things.

There can be little success without the daily memorizing of the word of God until hundreds and indeed thousands of verses control our thinking. I can well remember several godly men, about whose lives I have noticed an unusually toughened holiness. They were men of the memorized word, men of a holy mind.

Boxed in by humanity
   

    Imitatio Cristi is an old phrase of the church that describes a life of identification with the poor, of incarnating Christ. Choosing to lead such a life leads us deep into the nature of Jesus' deity. Jesus identified himself with the poor. But he never was identical Though he could classify himself as; a poor man, as one of the anaw, he was always God. He had two natures.

    The Western missionary has a similar duality of nature. No matter how simply we live, we are always rich. We have traveled. We have a hundred rich friends. We are educated. And, if we are white, we cannot change our bone structure or skin color to identify fully with the people.
 

    To be poor among the poor, we must recognize this duality. Incarnation is not becoming hopeless among the hopeless. It is, instead, to become involved in the poor man's sufferings and lifestyle to show that in Jesus alone is hope. It is to bring the riches of rich friends, our resources of wealth and education and power to affect the needs of the poor.

    Jesus' incarnation was not that of becoming a malnourished beggar, but becoming fully human in the context of inhumanity. Identification is not becoming destitute, but demonstrating, by actions of love and deeds of spiritual power, the fullness of Christ.

    We must beware of overemphasizing Jesus' poverty. Though he became poor, he ate daily, wore a finely woven robe, and grew up with a skilled trade as a tekton (a cross between a carpenter, cabinet maker, and stone mason - a skilled job, perhaps equivalent today to that of an engineer or architect). He loved to celebrate and freely went to rich men's houses. He and the twelve disciples gave to a class of poor who were even poorer than themselves.

    Though at times, like Paul, we may choose a greater life of poverty and suffering for the gospel, we need to avoid the extremes of ascetic poverty of Xavier and Assisi. We need to know the limitations of chosen poverty.

The fear of economic insecurity

    Choosing poverty raised another fear. From my study of poverty, I knew the inevitability of the poor getting poorer. I was afraid because the choice of poverty seems more costly than it would have been in Jesus' day. It is one thing to choose voluntarily a poverty from which I can move. But if I do not develop the computer skills for which my engineering training prepared me, I may lose my options. I may become one of the involuntary poor.

    Rather than immerse myself completely into a life of poverty, I wanted to hang on to both worlds - to become bicultural. And indeed that is the life I have ended up living -the life of a poor rich man.

    I've chosen to maintain my skills in one world for use when needed, while living in the other world of poverty the majority of the time. So too, the Son of God moved from the realm of infinite riches to his life of poverty. So, too, we find St Francis Xavier, when confronted by the intransigence of the Bonzes of Japan, dressing up in all his glory as a Papal Nuncio and visiting them in state. His reason? To gain freedom to work among the poorest! And St Francis of Assisi in his poverty drew on his status as one of the sons of the rich to unite the rich and poor in his own divided city of Assisi.

    The problem is the motivation behind living a bicultural lifestyle. Fear is the complete antithesis of Jesus' command to simplicity:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Fear not little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms...(Luke 12:22, 32 and 33).

    To help the poor, it is reasonable for us to oscillate back into a wealthier lifestyle at times. This, however, must not be for personal protection. We must not shrink back from the high calling of the poor Master to a life of external poverty and inner humility. It must be always for the sake of these poor. And in all this he promises to provide for our needs.

But we must be realistic about the limitations of our humanity. At one stage I made a list of these limitations:

(a) The need for room and time to study, to pray, to sleep.

    I remember the first time I slept in the same bed with another co-worker. I did not sleep all night! For people who grow up sleeping on the same mat with their family, it is natural to share a bed. Indeed, it is strange to most Filipinos that a Westerner should wish to sleep in a private bedroom.

    Fortunately as a university student I had learned to study in the midst of all sorts of noise and people. But at the same time every "monk" needs his own cell for prayer and study.

(b) Limited by food needs

    Each day Ate Luz would boil my water, since my stomach had no resistance to amoeba, fungus, worms, or bacteria. Even so, because it is hard to boil water on a wood fire, I soon contracted all four.

    Having grown up on meat, I found it difficult to live on the staple diet of fish and rice. We worked out an arrangement so that I could eat some meat each day.

(c) Limited by my intellectual need for time to think.

    I am not only called to the poor. I am called to lead men and women. And such leadership requires mastery of complex issues. Much of my motivation to pioneer comes from the exploration of ideas, of theology.

(d) Limited by my emotional need for time out of poverty to cope with culture shock.

One weekend a month I would return to Manila to fetch my mail and to enjoy some company with some other missionaries. Often I would watch a good British movie or a TV program to throw my mind back into Western culture.

(e) Limited by my achievement needs. built up through years of living and mastering an achievement-oriented culture.

(j) Limited by my needs to interface with my own culture through correspondence and typing

(g) Limited by my own quietness, my seriousness, and directness.

At times I found I needed to retreat inside myself, away from the exuberance and display of emotions that make Filipinos such a fun-loving people.

 

 

    A further complicating factor in Imitatio Cristi, the lifestyle of imitating Christ, is that Jesus had several lifestyles.

He lived in a stable home and had a stable childhood. Then came a long time of maturing, training and working. He had times of withdrawal, times of mission, times of ministry.
   

    The missionary in the slum also needs to be a quick­change artist from one lifestyle to another - within the same day being a poor man laboring in the slums, a successful missionary interacting with rich donors, an evangeli preaching to sinners, and a mystic taking time out to be alone with God.
 

    After many months of musing, I came to the simple conclusion that I could call individuals, or couples without children, to live among the urban poor, provided they had: a good toilet, control over cooking food, control over boiling water, a day of rest outside the slums each week, and a companion.

    But what about those with children? Could they have an effective ministry to the poor? There is no simple answer. Raising children in the midst of poverty is a difficult task. To work from outside a community is a difficult, perhaps impossible task, yet could prove effective. John Wesley succeeded in his ministry by living outside the communities where he preached. Those with support roles, such as administration or the development of economic projects, could certainly do so from the outside of the slum communities.

    Even those living within the slum communities will spend much time out of the communities working to obtain justice, political assistance, or economic aid, and to take time needed for rest, retreat, or recuperation.

 

    Perhaps the critical issue is the heart commitment of a couple to identify with the poor. Where there is a will, there is a way!

 

Next steps
   

    As I struggled to identify with the poor and grow in the knowledge of God, an inner certainty began to fill me. I knew I was standing for a central truth the Lord was speaking to the church. I knew that God would raise up a band of Filipinos to meet the social, economic, and physical needs. And I had a growing sense that he would lead out a band of men and women from other countries to work among the poor. I began to think through the basis for a new missions structure from the suburbs of the West to the slums of the East. But it was time for the Lord to teach me the next step. And as usual, it wasn't what I expected.

    Stricken with a bad case of amoeba, I had to leave Ka Emilio's house for a friend's middle-class Manila home. The doctor mistakenly prescribed the wrong medicine, affecting my heart. I was forced to stay in bed for two months. I changed doctors, but by that time my liver was affected.
 

    As I slowly regained my health, I continued language study in Manila. At the same time, I was asked to bring together the leaders of Bible studies for professionals throughout Manila. Although the Lord may not have wanted me to leave my language study and his clear call to serve the poor, he used the experience to transform my view of discipleship.

 

NOTES

1. The best motivational books I have found on these men are: Pascual Oiz, S.J., Saint Francis Xavier, The Mystical Progress of the Apostle (Bandra, Bombay: St Paul Press Trainig School, 1976), and Sabatier, P. and J.M. Sweeneer, The Road to Assisi: The Essential Biography of St Francis (Paraclete Press, 2003).