The moral breakdown of society has negatively affected the struggling class more than other levels of society. For example, in the fall of 2012 the Grand Rapids Press reported that 51% of children were born out of wedlock, 71% in Detroit and 85+% in Chicago. Sue Thomas of MILive.com on July 7, 2011 headlined an article with these words, “Michigan’s sharp rise in births to unwed moms means a lot more children growing up in poverty.” Some of these have decided to live together without the formality of marriage, but probably most of these families are inherently unstable, some breaking up because of conflict, the lure of temptation, and adverse circumstances.
Children in these homes often grow up without a stable, loving, supporting father. They receive inconsistently applied discipline, move to a different home on alternate weekends because of custody issues, and are left to fend for themselves in choosing friends, watching television, the use of spare time and when and what they eat. In some school districts up to 100% of the children qualify for the free lunch program because of a dozen or so risk factors.
More than half of the people in the struggling class are without a regular church home. The older generation went to church when they were children. Their children don’t go except for a vacation Bible school or maybe midweek teen club midweek if the church provides transportation. Knowledge of the Bible is woefully lacking. What they’ve heard is, “God is love. He made everything. He answers prayer. Jesus is your friend. Try to be good and be kind to others.” Bible memory work and crafts are geared to emphasize these themes. I have seldom seen any story or lesson that taught about the judgment of God for sin.
For some, the church fits into the world of resources upon which they can draw on. Mobile food pantries are a way to supplement the food supply. It frees up money that can be used for supplies not covered by any assistance program, like soap, hygienic paper products, diapers, etc. If asked, some have told me what church they attend. Some tell me that they belong to a worshiping, serving community of faith. Others tell me where they get some assistance, or maybe send the children to a week of summer Bible school.
Some of the men have difficulty holding a job. They have difficulty being submissive to orders, suffer from chronic pain and are easily injured. This brings them to emergency rooms for treatment of various ailments like back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc. This may prompt them to abuse pain killers, alcohol or drugs. Eventually a doctor may declare that they are unable to work and they move to Social Security disability. A good number spend money on tobacco to the detriment of nourishing food for themselves and their children.
Where the family has broken down, meal time is an individual affair. Both children and adults scoop what is cooked in the pot onto their plate, take it into the living room, and watch what is on television.
Morality, or lack of it, is learned from peers at school or on the street, from social media, movies and the example that their parents give. They may hate how their parents treat each other, and yet adopt the same habits (shouting, for example) that will lead them to do the same thing.
Discipline is applied inconsistently, often with shouting, maybe screaming. A parent, more likely the mother, after a violent screaming scene, may hug the child and show affection as a means of making up and trying to reestablish the relationship. The relationship continues, but the child has not learned to obey and continues to do what he or she wants. Fathers often are not involved in discipline but when they are, they can be brutal and mean.
It would be a mistake to equate the struggling class with low income. It can characterize people with a broad range of wealth, background and neighborhoods. Once, I offered to help a “poor” worker–so poor that he couldn’t contribute to the church–do his income tax report. I could do it for free since I had the computer program to do so. To my surprise, he was earning more than I was!
Here is another surprise, but it shouldn’t be. Five years ago, I gave a series of messages at the evening service of a church that was without a pastor. Although the whole church was invited, the topics were specifically chosen for preparing a group of about ten candidates for church membership. One white family and two African American women attended the service with some regularity. On Thanksgiving Day, Dan and Virginia and their three teenage children formally transferred their membership to the church. Their oldest son Carl professed his faith.
The Van family had recently moved to Wyoming, MI from Colorado to be closer to aging parents. They sold everything and bought a house in foreclosure that badly needed repairs. They moved at the depths of the housing crisis and economic downturn. Dan couldn’t find work in the building trades (he was a carpenter) so he took a job at $10 an hour. After work he worked at installing floors, painting and repairing their small home to make it more livable. Virginia continued to home-school their teenage children and help her husband with the remodeling. Carl was very shy and didn’t talk a lot, but he found part-time work.
When I visited with them and reviewed the extensive questionnaire for profession of faith with Carl, I noticed how sparsely their home was furnished, but it was clean and well-ordered. The family had one computer that all of the members shared. Carl completed the questionnaire in the allotted time. Although he was quiet, he was very articulate when he met with an elder and me to share his answers and his personal testimony.
This struggling family had it together with God, with family and with church. The two African American women, however, did not follow through with their initial expressed desire to join the church. In comparison with the Vans their lives were filled with broken relationships. Although the church was starting to bridge the gulf between them, it did not have mentors who were equipped to come alongside them, love them and coach them to wholeness with God, with family, and with the faith community. The Vans, on the other hand, came from the same spiritual-cultural tradition and had little trouble making the transition to a new church.
Several years later, maybe seven, I happened to see one of the elders. I asked him about the Van family. Where they still attending church? He thought a while before answering. No, he hadn’t seen them for quite some time. I was not totally surprised: Maybe, their teen children did not fit in with the other teens of the church. Maybe, they never found a place in the church to minister to others. Maybe, they became judgmental in regard to changes being made as the church moved forward. Was income disparity creating separation?
No one wants to be identified with poverty. I hope I’m using a more acceptable term, the struggling class. Still, one person reading this paper might say, “I draw unemployment, and this does not describe me.” Political candidates use the term, “middle-class,” a term that most common folk will accept, “That’s me.” Pastor Ondersma of the PIER Church where I belong, wrote, “Poverty has nothing to do with money, it has everything to do with broken relationships. The turning of the tide of poverty is the rebuilding of relationships. First with Almighty God and then with those who have experienced broken relations with others in the past.”
When I read Pastor Ondersma’s words, I was asked myself, “When and where did the struggling class begin?” Then it hit me. It began when Adam and Eve broke faith with God and they sought to hide themselves from him. They were expelled from Eden and from then on Adam had to fight weeds and till the ground by the sweat of his brow. His wife would suffer the pain of childbirth and be the victim of male domination and often abuse (Genesis 3). Their first-born son murdered his brother and became a “restless wanderer,” a fugitive on the earth (Genesis 4:12).
Once a couple with marital problems came to my church. Ron, the husband, was a home builder, who drove a beat-up truck, got the work done, but without finesse. He had the reputation of being a hard worker even though he sometimes showed up at the work site late. His wife Claire was more refined and started to feel disrespected. They decided to take a marital counseling class together, but nothing changed. So, they divorced.
Not long after this Ron found a divorcee, the mother of some teens that came to our youth group. They started to live together and had a child. After a time, they married. This was a stormy relationship and ended in divorce as well. Some time passed and then I heard that Ron found another woman who was married to an alcoholic husband. She left her husband and, according to reports, found a harmonious relationship with Ron.
Ron never seemed to lack for money, but he lived in a house that was not finished. His son and his girlfriend moved into the trailer that Ron at one time lived in. Old vehicles were parked in the yard and beer cans littered the entrance. It was a picture of rural Kentucky poverty in Appalachia.
One day, when Ron was attending our church with his first wife, I received a call from his mother who was concerned about his spiritual welfare. I learned that he grew up in a solid Christian family, graduated from a Christian high school and had a brother who was a church elder, father of a stable family. It was in another church that Ron bought into the pastor’s preaching on male headship, that the pastor interpreted as meaning the absolute authority of the husband over his wife. Surrender to the Lord Christ and servant love for one’s spouse was not understood or practiced, and so in a matter of about 15 years Ron moved from stable middle-class to a life of chaotic poverty.
If the followers of Christ learn how to identify with, communicate with, and minister to the working poor, they soon discover that he are able to communicate well with those in any social income level. It’s not just the poor who struggle with addictions and relational problems. When the rich find themselves broken like the poor, they discover that the good news for the poor is good news for them as well. Jesus ministered to the common people, most of whom were poor, but a wealthy Nicodemus sought him out. He called Matthew, a tax collector who had considerable wealth, to be one of his disciples, and Matthew immediately left his tax collector’s booth and followed. Prominent and wealthy women also followed him (Luke 8:1-3).
While poverty is more about broken relationships than it is about money or lack of it, the American church is woefully absent from neighborhoods and school districts populated by a large percentage of people that qualify for some type of assistance, even for something as simple as the free hot lunch programs at schools. And the church is absent because its leaders believe that it’s impossible to start and grow a church where there is so little money and so few resources. I am sure that Jesus does not like to see this happening. Jesus came to minister among people like this.
I use the term struggling class because most other words define people by their lack—poor, for lack of wealth; needy, for lack of opportunity; underclass, for being at the bottom of the social scale; welfare class, for lack of resources; etc. The fact is that the struggling class of America displays a great amount of resourcefulness. Those on public assistance have learned how to navigate a complex government bureaucracy and rely on a complex network of family and friends. Probably more than any other group, they live one day at a time. They are like the birds that do not sow, or cultivate, or harvest or store in granaries, but depend on what our heavenly Father provides (Matthew 6:26). An example of this is someone who draws unemployment, lives on reduced income, and only looks for work a week before his insurance benefit expires. And he usually finds something!
If we have identified the struggling class, and if we have gone through the, at times, painful experience of adaptation and learning the new language, if struggling people have stamped a visa in our passport as we tried to enter their world, then we face a further challenge. Do we pull people out of their world and bring them into our world, our class if you will? Or, do we see it as God’s calling in our life to help them join together to form a body of Christ’s followers in the world that to us is f oreign? Will we encourage them to open their eyes to the opportunity to provide daycare for working mothers who live near them? Can they share resources and information to build each other up? Can they join together to sing God’s praises, and to study the Bible together, and to pray for God to act in miraculous ways? Can we encourage them to issue visas, not just to us, but to others near them who need forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit to turn from sin and overcome it? Finally, are we willing to grant them a visa if they come to us, asking, “Will you allow me to share an insight or a reproof that will help you in your relationship with God?” I believe that our answer will be “yes” to all of these questions once we understand God’s special concern for the poor.