Eric's Beijing Diary

Incredibly beautiful day today. Kinda bad, though, because I completely forgot to bring change for the beggars. It wasn't intentional, of course, but I still felt like a jerk. It would be easier, I suppose, if I were Chinese, but if you look like a foreigner, the beggars can be pretty persistent. Some foreigners deal with this by just not giving any money. Like the time I was mobbed by beggars down by the Friendship Store. The foreigners who were with me were left alone. That's one way of dealing with the problem, but I am not quite satisfied with that approach, because even though I don't like begging, I do want to address the needs of folks who are genuinely poor, and don't have anywhere else to turn.

I shouldn't say too much about this, because the truth is, I don't really know the answer. I'm just trying to understand the problem. China is a country which is going through a lot of changes. And the increase in prosperity has also increased the spread between the rich and the poor. Poverty programs which are based on some utopian notion of ending poverty for all time are doomed to failure, because Jesus said, "The poor you have always with you." And a cursory reading of Proverbs teaches us that poverty is as much a state of mind as a state of being. Still, it is incumbent on the Christian community to carry on its shoulders the burden of this problem, and while we are developing solutions to the problem, we must do what we can to meet the practical needs of folks who are having a tough time.

Help me the slow of heart to move
By some clear, winning word of love;
Teach me the wayward feet to stay,
And guide them in the homeward way.