Are We Not All Beggars?

By Larry Doyle Crenshaw

MeditationsInLight@blogspot.com

There is considerable debate in the public arena about how we respond as a society to the conditions and how to remedy the conditions of the poor and needy.  Healthcare, food, housing, employment, and education, are each vital components in the equation of poverty. 

Unfortunately, these discussions are habitually relegated to electioneering time and descend rapidly into narrow debates about politics and economics.  In the process the poor and needy become viewed less as real people and more like political pawns – losing their humanity when viewed only as a demographic group.  “Principles” for caring for the poor and needy quickly devolve into “rules” for providing assistance. The polarization of poverty into “left” and “right,” “liberal” and “conservative,” do little to add value to the discussion and often obscure the true issues and remedies.

This week’s meditative verse seeks to understand the nuances of difference between those who are poor and those who are needy.  While the verse draws lines of demarcation between the two, we ultimately come to a sometimes startling revelation: “we are all both poor and needy.”

 Day-to-day we all have needs of the body and mind and spirit - needs for physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.  These needs can generally be remedied and met by simply finding, creating, and developing the necessary missing need either by our own efforts or the temporary help of others.  These needs can and are met because we have the ability and capacity to meet them.  Hence, we differentiate between these sorts of needs versus the other innate types of long-term needs which we reserve for the term “poor.”  

There are other, usually longer-term needs –generally beyond our personal abilities or capacities to remedy without some significant changes to our thinking, feeling, and doing.  They have to do with special long-term needs, often unrecognized, or recognized but denied. Paradoxically, these matters have to do with “acquiring” the ability to “acquire.”  We will use the word “poverty” to define these needs and use the term “poor” when referring to those who have these characteristics. Thus, being needy is one thing and being poor is another.  

We may suffer from a poverty of beliefs, of feelings or emotions, or a poverty of action.  For example, if my parents and their parents, and their parents for generations denigrated or put down the need for education, learning, reading, math and science, I might be put at a disadvantage in our society through ignorance and lack of education having inherited and acquired those beliefs, attitudes and values.  If, likewise, I was told that I would “never amount to anything,” that I was “no good,” I might grow up with a poverty of ideas, beliefs and feelings about my self-worth, my abilities and capacities in many areas of life – in other words, I would be “poor.”  The poor, in this sense, are poor because of poor habits, ways, and methods of interacting with the world and with people, and with things.

Using these definitions, we might properly describe a person as one who is “poor” who has millions of dollars in the bank, and with homes and cars, and all kinds of material possessions, but who doesn’t know or have the skills to be a good husband, father, and friend.  Likewise, a person who has such skills and knowledge, but temporarily has lost a job, or been in an accident or become ill, might be “needy,” in certain temporal things but, in the sense described before, would not be “poor” – having the ability, with some temporary help to “acquire” what they “require.” Therefore, the maxim, “We can be needy and not poor, but not poor and not be needy.”

So, one may ask, “Why is this important?”  When, as an individual, or collectively, as a nation, we try to care for the poor and needy, it becomes very important.  As described previously, the basis of being needy is different than the basis for being poor.  Remedies for those who are needy involve temporary measures to help the needy acquire required goods and or services which they may or may not be required to pay back in the way of money or services.  The remedies for the poor are much more complex and longer-term. They involve changing long-held (or never-held) beliefs, feelings, and habitual actions – sometimes going back generations.  Such changes will change the culture of poverty for them and future generations.  Obviously, we are talking about an educational process with, hopefully, willing learners. 

One wonders what such a perspective would have on legislators and legislation, if they based their political and economic decisions on this point of view.  Our current “one size fits all” approach does neither the poor nor the needy a service and creates disincentives for all. 

As we reflect on these definitions and this discussion, we are led to wonder about our own individual poverty of ideation (beliefs or lack of beliefs or knowledge), poverty of emotion (feelings or ability or inability to express them), and poverty of action (what we do or don’t do because we don’t know how).  As we ponder these things, we quickly realize that, in many areas of our lives, we haven’t been able or had the capacity to “figure certain things out,” or been able to respond emotionally in a proper way to certain people or situations.  There are also many instances that come to mind of not knowing what actions to take, or taking the wrong action in certain situations.  Thus, we come to the realization that, along with our daily and routine needs, we too are also poor. 

It is in this context we present this week’s meditative verse as we recall the words of an ancient prophet and king, “…..For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? ….And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.”  (Book of Mormon;  Mosiah 4: 19, 21)

Larry Doyle Crenshaw,  MeditationsInLight.blogspot.com

Are We Not All Beggars?

And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish…..For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? ….And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.

Book of Mormon    Mosiah 4:16, 19, 2

Are we not all beggars without exception?

Does not "Poor and Needy" aptly apply?

To think not so, is a gross misperception

For all our needs - God doth supply

Do we not depend upon the same Being

Even God, for substance of every kind?

He sees to our wants and well-being

Regardless to what we are consigned

The Poor are poor in creeds of belief and doing

The Needy lack essentials, basic and required

A home and health and food they're pursuing

While the Poor in poor ways are often mired

As one who is Needy, I may not always be Poor

But as one who is Poor, I am always in need

While needs are always knocking at my door

My poverty of truth makes me poor indeed.

We all rely on what gifts God may give

Poor and needy applies to all His offspring

So ought we to be liberal to all who live

For we are all beggars and Christ is our King

Larry Doyle Crenshaw

Dedicated to Elder Glen L. Rudd from whom I gratefully learned I am both poor and needy.