Biting in proportion with chewability

One of my favourite things to do is to sit back on a couch, and chat with my ex-housemate Paul, and my wife Rebecca; usually about whatever’s been going on in little Paulie’s head. The second last time we did this, we had a great conversation about how Paul has transitioned in his thinking about poverty and our role in helping the world’s poor. And we got chatting, and I got excited. Hopefully the rest of this post will be some of the things that got me excited.

Every person understands that the plight of the poor and oppressed is a sad thing. And I’m not the first person to suggest (nor will I be the last) that the reaction to the enormity of the issue of global poverty for most people is one of being overwhelmed. The helplessness we naturally feel at the scope of the problem is a perfectly acceptable initial response, but it’s not enough to stay in that place.

So here’s where we need to start:

embrace your hypocrisy.

Recognise that to say that you want to help the poor, and do anything less than sell everything you have is an act of a hypocrite. Sit in the tension of not being ready to commit completely, and yet recognising that to do nothing is not a good enough answer. Let that tension eat at you, and boil inside you.

Then bite something. Bite off an amount that you can chew, that is just past being comfortable, but not so much that it makes you choke. Choose to put someone in front of you, and make a decision to change poverty for them. For me, a big part of it has been to lend money through Kiva – an organisation that makes micro-loans to budding third-world entrepreneurs, giving them an opportunity to break the poverty cycle, and provide themselves with meaningful employment (as well as often a number of other people around them). Is it enough? No. Will it end world poverty? Goodness no. But for the people I’ve chosen to put in front of myself, it represents a serious shot at changing their situations.

It’s not the perfect solution, and the idealist in me (which is plenty of me), sees that in some respects this is still a consumer-oriented decision. But the challenge is this: I have no doubt that for the majority of people – when face-to-face with extreme poverty – we feel obligated to act. And so, with the enormity of the problem, and the comfort of our current situation, we block it out and shut ourselves off. So stop. Choose to let just a little piece of hardship into your world. Don’t ignore it, but instead engage with it fully, and kill poverty off for someone. Start there, and don’t let the feeling that you’re being a hypocrite fade away. Let it constantly challenge you