The meaning of Christmas has been described a million ways to Sunday.
One of the key points I make in my book is that everyone is starving for someone to listen to them, validate their humanity and very existence, and above all, love them and embrace them without condition or judgement. That kind of love came down at Christmas.
But it all boils down to three mere words:
“Love came down.”
Love is the one thing that every breathing human being on earth wants, needs, yearns for, and craves.
I’m of the belief that the most hard-shell bully and cynic who embraces hate and anger, even one who will resort to violence to get what he or she thinks he or she needs, is starving for love within — craving the love that perhaps has been missing since infancy.
That’s not to deny the science of the mind and the body’s wiring that science (which is totally compatible with and necessary to Christianity) has taught us. Science has taught us that some people will be born too sick to ever be able to know or care about love or the health and well being of anyone else.
But by and large . . .
The good and bad alike who are feeling lonely, abandoned, isolated, forgotten — the shut-ins, the panhandlers, the refugees, and yes, even the hardcore criminals and prisoners who aren’t certifiably insane — my God how they yearn for someone just to acknowledge their humanity and very existence in the world.
How desperately they yearn for someone to hold them and squeeze them and love them without judgement or condition. Somewhere along the way their link to the love-chain connection broke loose. Then they were left to fend for themselves in a world that is broken up with sin-sickness and so in need of God’s healing power.
Love is as vital to survival and whole health and well being as oxygen, food, and water.
The good news is, the kind of radical love we all crave, and all feel is missing to some degree great or small, came down in the form of an innocent child. A child who needed nurturing love like any other baby child on earth. A child who received it from a most humble, powerless couple who were homeless refugees, no less, and so down on their luck that they couldn’t even get a room at an inn.
Pure, unadultered love is God’s gift to the world and ours for the taking and the sharing.
So by all means, in this Christmas season and throughout 2018 and beyond, let’s take what’s our share from God who sent love down, and then let’s make a habit of sharing it generously with someone who perhaps never had it or has missed it for a long, long time.
* My book has been for sale online since February at Amazon Books and Barnes&Noble.
What follows is a great review from my friend Jim Barlow, who absolutely got what I was trying to say in The View From Down in Poordom: Reflections on Scriptures Addressing Poverty. It is published here at GoodReads.com.
But other reviewers “got” my meaning and message and wrote briefer but equally flattering reviews here at Amazon.com.
So I hope you’ll check out the reviews (and more at Barnes & Noble.com) and hope you’ll read and get something meaningful out my take on the love needs of the poor and powerless — and the rest of us, too.
Diving into a book centered on Bible scriptures and commentary on the poor and poverty today was intimidating. While I learned a lot about right and wrong from my childhood exposure to religion, as an adult I have chosen atheism, but with the understanding that religion for many is truly a worthy guiding light.
That said up front, I read and received a spiritual lift from Paul McKay’s thought-provoking book “The View from Down in Poordom.”
A disclaimer: McKay is a friend. At one time we were journalists with the same employer. He turned into a Methodist minister.
How do Christians today respond to the poor?
That’s the big question of McKay’s book, which runs just 83 pages. The way McKay presented his chosen scriptures and translated them to fit today’s world was superb and intellectually educational. However, I read the book with a broader view.
This book need not apply only to Christians. In this world of growing income inequality in the aftermath of the Great Recession, McKay is asking us to re-evaluate who we are.
McKay tells of his own background and how family experiences shaped his thinking and led him into the ministry. He gives us a framework for considering suffering and poverty, especially in Belize, where he now lives.
In Chapter Two, we meet Francisco, whose story became known because McKay took the time to talk with him. Once a hard-working man, Francisco was left destitute and on the streets because of an accident that wasn’t his fault and cost him both legs and livelihood. His ultimate fate was heart-breaking.
Later, we meet Chanzy, who McKay stopped to help when he saw him resting against a broken-down car, crying. McKay calls upon the Bob Dylan song “Everything is Broken” to shape his story about both Chanzy’s life, which was one of poverty and strong spirituality, and similar situations confronting all of us.
As I read about Francisco and Chanzy, I could hear the voice of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia singing in “Wharf Rat” to a down-and-out man: “I got no dime, but I got some time to hear your story.”
Chapters Six and Seven deliver the punch of McKay’s message.
Chapter Six tackles the notion, often used by politicians, put forth by the apostle Paul: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” McKay addresses the “troubling aspect of acrimony over who should provide for the poor and struggling people,” taking on politicians, corporations and Christians, as well. He hits on our consumer-oriented culture and political and religious scapegoating.
Chapter Seven addresses personal responsibility and calls for honesty about how some poor seem to take comfort in their poverty. McKay tells the story of a minister who struggled with a decision to refuse monetary help to an angry, young woman. Was the minister’s decision wrong, or did it plant a seed? Can we, should we, help everyone?
Both chapters should be required reading, regardless of anyone’s religious affiliation, and, especially, for politicians, both liberal and conservative.
McKay provides thought-provoking nuggets about poverty (material and spiritual), about individuals and families living poor, and about the dangers and pitfalls of greed and wealth.
In closing, McKay asks, “So What?” Do we as individuals give money directly to the poor, donate to food banks or shelters, minister to them or ignore them and walk away?
McKay hits us on the head with the issue of poordom, but he also provides intelligent perspective that might just provide us a roadmap.
McKay’s overall message, in my view, emerged in a paragraph early in the book.
“When it comes down to it, the poor aren’t ‘the poor,’” McKay writes. “The poor are people, and people need loving, caring friends. Poor people are people who want and need the same thing that you and everyone else, including the rich, want and need — and that’s love.”
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