[Vision2020] flooding the victims with blame

[keely emerinemix]

I have found the recent exchanges regarding the horror in New Orleans more 
than a little upsetting, but I think that Pat Kraut's comments today put me 
over the edge.

I have often been broke -- short of money -- but I have never been poor, nor 
will I ever be.  Unfortunately, this fallen world favors people like me:  
educated, healthy, white, connected, and unfettered by the prejudices of 
others.  Regardless of the status of my bank account, it's pretty damned 
unlikely that I'll ever be without some form of political power, much less 
transportation, and my political power as a member of the privileged class 
isn't dependent on my checkbook.

These things can't be said of the majority of New Orlean's, and 
Mississippi's, flood victims.  When you're poor, the first thing that goes 
isn't necessarily money but choice and the power to exercise it.  The 
Dworshak could flood and those Lewiston residents who can read, who have TVs 
or the Internet, who have cars and cell phones and places to go -- 
connections with other people with resources to shelter them -- could likely 
get out.  Those who don't, wouldn't.  The death toll in virtually any 
natural disaster will always include in its majority the sick, the elderly, 
the young, the broken, and the hopeless.

Pat and I have done battle over her less-than-charitable view of poor 
people, and yet I think she's probably a pretty nice person -- a person who, 
unfortunately, has first been lulled into complacency and then provoked into 
judgment by a society that cares little for the poor and a Christian church 
culture that isn't remotely interested in confronting it.

If you see Jesus among the poor, your heart breaks and your hand opens, but 
if you place Jesus in the halls of political power and like being on the 
right side, you blame those who aren't.

Where you seem Him makes all the difference in the world . . .

keely emerine mix

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