What IS poverty and do I REALLY care?

I'm reading a thought-provoking book called When Helping Hurts by Corbett & Fikkert.  Because we have a sister-church relationship with our friends in Carmen Bajo, Quito, Ecuador, I have been increasingly involved in the work of developing and maintaining a strong, healthy and HELPFUL partnership between Creekside and Iglesia Carmen Bajo.

http://www.whenhelpinghurts.org/

Reading this book has me asking some probing questions -
- What really motivates me to want to help the poor?
- How do I, how do we as a church suffer from a 'god-complex' that keeps the people we are trying to help shame-bound and un-free?
- What IS poverty?  How do we define it?

I love that this book roots everything in biblical theology, showing us that all of us are poor in one way or another, and all of us need Christ's reconciling work on the cross to be our good news and that which sets us free.  To quote the book:

"Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again. (ref. Col. 1:19-20)
Of course, the full reconciliation of all things will not hapen until the final coming of the kingdom, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.  Only then will every tear be wiped from our eyes (Rev. 21:4).  There is a real mystery concerning how much progress we can expect to see before Jesus comes again, and good people can disagree.  Fortunately, what we are to do every day does not hinge on resolving this issue, for the task at hand is quite clear." (bolded text mine)

The task at hand seems to me to be to engage everything I have and am to partner with others to help bring help that truly HELPS.  To walk humbly with our brothers and sisters, always recognizing that we are as poor as they, just in different ways, and that together we have things to do to help each other through this journey toward God.   It will never be as simple as just getting our resources and wealth over there to help them, although that is part of it.  It's about COMMUNITY, COMMITMENT and a firm resolve to stick with it through thick and thin.

More thoughts to come from this great book . . . . .