One thing that has been on my mind lately, is another passage from "Spotting the Sacred" by Bruce Main, which could very well be seen as controversial. I want to preface it with a quick anecdote of something that happened at work a couple months back:
A victim of a group assault was on the stand and being cross-examined by the defense attorney of her alleged assailant. One of the issues addressed on direct examination was that her [insert expensive label here] purse was stolen, containing her Access card. The defense attorney just couldn't let the detail slip without asking her, "Your testimony is that your [label] bag was stolen, correct? Was that a real [label] bag? And your Access card was inside? I'm sorry I'm just having trouble understanding why you have an Access card if you have enough money to buy a [label] bag," at which point the ADA objected and the judge pressed the defense attorney to move on in his questioning.
I promise I'm not exaggerating the bluntness of the questioning. I was astonished, no, appalled, by the audacity of the defense attorney's willingness to mock the victim as she was giving testimony to a horrible assault and robbery/theft, especially when his line of questioning really had no relevance to the crime.
It got me thinking about my judgmental nature and ideas of justice versus compassion, and then I read this:
Our staff knows that impoverished children can be Academy Award-winning actors. The appear at our programs dressed in ninety-five dollar sneakers and designer jeans and look like they could fit into any upper-middle class community in the country. Their outward appearance sends the message, "I'm cool! I'm not poor!" But the food cupboards are bare, the gas has been turned off, and the rent payments are two months in arrears.
Some critics respond to this "deception" by claiming that "those people" just need to get their priorities right. Those hundred-dollar sneakers could feed a family for a week, maybe two. The money used to purchase those designer jeans could have been used to buy pants for all the children. And the critics are right. Money could be used in more effective ways.
But what they fail to understand is the tremendous stigma attached to poverty--especially in America, where the very rich and the very poor share the universal space of television and shopping malls. The fact that images of affluence are beamed into the living rooms of the poor every night only heightens their pressure not to be seen as poor. Especially young people. They must confront the realities of peer pressure and peer cruelty; they are susceptible to the need to project a false front. It is humiliating to have anyone find out that you are poor.
...
I have never had to beg for crackers. I do not have to spend emotional energy worrying about my next meal. Thus, I have difficulty imagining what it must be like to go through a day of school without food and know that it's likely I'll have no supper. The inability to feel what it is like to be poor worries me, for when we cannot feel something, we can blindly lose our way.
After reading this, the one thought that consistently came to mind was that I am not responsible for judging anyone. The same upside-down logic of the Gospel that tells me to lend money to people when I know for a fact that I won't get it back, also tells me that compassion trumps judgement.
I know it doesn't answer a lot of questions and there are a lot of political debates surrounding this kind of taboo topic, but at the very least, Bruce Main offered a shift of perspective that I think is worth examining.
