Reflection

‘If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you’ Leviticus 25:35

Poverty is in Africa – Yes/No?

Poverty is in Japan – Yes/No?

Poverty is in Scotland - Yes/No?

If you answered Yes to all three of these questions you got it right. We often link poverty with poor children dying in Africa but even in a technologically advanced and wealthy country like Japan, poverty exists.

 

Satomi Sato, a 51-year-old widow, knew it was tough, working two jobs and raising a teenage daughter on less than $17,000 a year. Still, she was surprised last autumn when the government announced for the first time an official poverty line — and she was below it. “I don’t want to use the word poverty, but I’m definitely poor,” said Ms. Sato, who works mornings making boxed lunches and afternoons delivering newspapers. “Poverty is still a very unfamiliar word in Japan.”

After years of economic stagnation and widening income disparities, this once proudly egalitarian nation is belatedly waking up to the fact that it has a large and growing number of poor people. Poverty in Scotland is on the increase not just in the beggars we see on the city streets but in all neighbourhoods rich and poor. Let us hear from Brian in Glasgow.

I had left school without many qualifications mainly because of things like bullying. There is only so much you can take, and when I had started to fight back I was excluded from school time and again. LATER… I had to leave college early because my mum was struggling and I was doing bits and pieces of work as I could, but it wasn't enough. I had to give her a hand, I had to work. I got a job in MacDonalds. They say you shouldn't have any regrets in your life, but I think that is one of my regrets, that I didn't finish that college course.

LATER in my life I met Diane, my partner. We made a little bit of money and so managed to get a one bed roomed flat together. We worked hard to make it our home. But the mortgage was one of those things that we started to fall behind on. We ended up in a situation where we were robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then the mortgage company were threatening to re-possess as well. So we put the house up for sale. It wasn't easy, it really wasn't easy, we loved that house and had put a lot of work into it. We walked away with nothing, but we got all those people off our back. Sometimes it's about more than the money. So we had to try to get a council house. I was still working constantly on the buses trying to bring money in to pay for everything.

The week after we moved in we had drug dealers move in next door to us, and then there were needles all over the close. People banging the door at all hours of the night, at the wrong door, looking for drugs. Diane answered the door at 4 one morning in desperation as she was trying to get the baby to sleep. She was dragged out by the hair. I was going out to work not knowing what I was going to come back to, knowing my family didn't feel safe there. It was unbearable. I nearly cracked in two with the stress of it all.

It gets to the stage where you can't eat, you can't sleep, you're just so stressed out. It's constant there's nothing you can do about it We eventually got a move to where we are now, and it's so much nicer and we know we can rely on our neighbours. There's still hassle but not like before - we're safe. We were lucky to have a roof over our heads, but at the same time, how much do you have to put up with and be grateful for? Now I work on average 70 hours a week. Me and my partner are just like two ships passing in the night sometimes.

That is just to survive, and put a bit away for the future. I don't know how much longer 'll have a job for - people are losing their jobs left right and centre.

The biggest change for me was becoming a Dad. I felt inspired to make a difference in other people's lives and to make the world a better place for my daughter's future. And the past is my motivation to get out of bed in the morning. I can't change the past, but as for the future I want to make a difference.  I'm not stopping until things change.

Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:9

I think it's fair to say that there are two attitudes to poverty that abound at  this Christmas season, One of peace and goodwill towards all which makes people more charitable and aware of others needs and a self-centred disdain and fear or even suspicion that poverty is peoples’ own fault, that they're simply lazy or inferior. Often we prefer not to look at the poor too closely; it's depressing, and they're surely not fun people to be with. These attitudes are a world away from God's attitudes. Neediness arouses compassion in God and action.

We may think: "Of course God loves the poor; he loves everybody." But it's not as simple as that; God's character is presented as a model for our own.  If God values the poor, we have to think about what that means for us.

Fay Lamont, Priest-In-Charge at St. Ninian's Scottish Episcopal Church, Dundee

(Brian’s story has been taken from Poverty Truth Commission, part of Faith in Community Scotland