He raises the poor from the dust

And lifts the needy from the ash heap;

He seats them with the princes,

With the princes of His people.

-Psalm 113:7-8

Last week my grandparents, whom I am staying with, had a houseguest from Uganda. His name is Hamlet. He is a priest in the Church of Uganda, a former parliamentarian, current chaplain for the Parliament of Uganda, an entrepreneur, and more than everything else an activist. Being a person with a vision for the economic and spiritual development of his people, he had so many words of wisdom for me since I have a heart for the economic and spiritual development of the people I work with in India.

He was surprised to discover that I do not have a car in India. He asked me if it was because I was afraid to drive there. I said, “Yes, that’s a big part of it, but we also want to live a simple life as the people we work with for the most part do not have cars.” He said that while there is value in “living like the people,” there is also an importance to modeling social upliftment. He said that, glorifying poverty was one of the mistakes of the missionaries that went to countries in Africa. They pointed towards heaven and encouraged the locals to be content instead of working hard and trying to make their situation better in this life.

In another conversation, Hamlet lamented that so much of Europe regrets having ever sent missionaries to Africa. But, “They don’t realize that the Gospel corrects itself. They don’t realize the value of the gospel,” Hamlet said to me. He went on to explain that after a generation of people grow up with the Gospel, if the Gospel is internalized the people start to realize the inconsistencies they were fed along with the gospel and they reject the mistakes. It is like John Wimber used to say; they “chew up the meat, and spit out the bones.” (Yes, yes, I realize that saying only makes sense in cultures where people do not chew up the bones).

In this case, one of the mistakes to be rejected in Africa is the glorification of poverty. While Jesus did come to earth, and live among us as a lowly human—he did not just stay that way and encourage us to stay that way. Instead, Jesus transformed himself through the resurrection—and encourages us to follow. So, perhaps we are not just called to live among the poor and handle our finances like the poor, but we are called to model how to live a better life where we do not have to live in fear of how we will feed our children or pay our rent because we run sustainable businesses and we budget our money wisely.

I have seen the “poverty mentality” eat away at beautiful, intelligent, and gifted people. They run from crisis to crisis, never looking ahead and therefore they are unable to live to their potential. I want to be a part of helping people out of that destructive cycle. Because good news is not good news unless it is good news to the poor, and as Hamlet said to me, “Poverty profanes the gospel.”