Suffering

There are so many people dying of hunger, sickness, poverty, oppression, etc. For sure, God is never happy seeing his people suffering. However, I still want to know why God – all merciful and loving – allows many people get drowned to different kinds of suffering. This question always comes to my mind every time I see my countrymen suffering from poverty.

The world tends to define poverty and riches simply in terms of economics. That is the easiest way to look at it. However, we need to broaden that definition. For us Filipinos, poverty is a state characterized by lack of means. The poor person then is one who either temporarily or permanently finds herself or himself in a situation of weakness, dependence, and humiliation. The poor then does not have the means to accomplish the end that they desire. The scriptures promise that God will take care of such people, because they have to rely on him for they have no one else to rely on.

With the situation of poverty, who then is at fault? Poor person may themselves be to blame for their poverty to some degree. An author, Dorothy Day wisely said, “What the Gospels forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.” When we sit in judgment, we stand aloof and apart. If we critique who is unworthy or worthy, our criteria will always e cultural and too often self-interested.

A person might be at fault to some extent. But we should also realize that poverty is an oppression with which one surrenders after repeatedly being put down. People who have never been in this downtrodden situation can be very unsympathetic. Those who are in the higher economic status could easily characterize the poor people unmotivated and lazy. The poor then have nobody to turn to. This state is often called “victim behavior.” Those who do not experience such poverty could never understand this behavior of the oppressed for such does not fit their criteria. Hence, they misinterpret and misjudge everything the disadvantaged do.

SUFFERING caused by poverty then is undesirable and the behavior of the oppressed is deadly. But one thing is for sure, God will never abandon the poor as He had promised in the scriptures.