March 26, 2013
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Poor and Needy
A good language teacher doesn’t correct, they rephrase. “I writted this paper!” receives the reply, “Oh! You wrote the paper?” to which the student responds, “Yes, I wrote the paper.” Brazilians have done this naturally, consciously and unconsciously for the past nine years that I have been learning Portuguese.
One of the first times they did this was when I told them I worked with impoverished children. Underpriviledged. My vocabulary simplified to just criancas pobre, poor children. Their replies were, “Oh! Criancas carentes.” Hum, said my brain, carentes is the word I use here. So filed away in the recesses of my mind became the idea that “Pobre equals poor, carente equals needy. Needy is the proper term.”
Fast forward some years, to when I had a deeper conversation with a Brazilian friend about what I do. When speaking Portuguese, my brain still trips over my mouth, trying to move faster than it is able. I use whatever vocabulary is close to whatever point I am trying to make, and sometimes I grab the wrong word. I used pobre to describe one of the children.
My friend stopped me. “You don’t mean that. To a Brazilian, who has nothing, he is working his whole life to gain something—to make it just a little bit better. Life is already against him and to call him ‘poor’ is throwing in his face that he isn’t going anywhere. We say ‘needy,’ because who doesn’t need something sometime?”
It reminded me of all I was trying to learn between the verbs “Ser” and “Estar,” which always returned me to the age old difference of “I am joyful” (the permanent “To be” that describes things that don’t change) because of Jesus and the “I am happy” (the fluctuating “To be” that floats as far as your whims). Pobre is to Ser what Carente is to Estar. Because who doesn’t need something sometime?
My friend continued, “You may think this is something little, but it isn’t. You’ve been taught your whole life you can do anything you put your mind to. That is the label you were given, and you believed it. Those who are needy in Brazil, they haven’t been taught that, they’ve never been believed in. And to then label them poor is to kill any hope that might have been born in them.”
Words are powerful. Even the ones we say, ignorant of the hundreds of years of culture behind them. Fast forward to today, when I open my Bible to Matthew 5:3 (“Blessed are the poor in spirit”). Inquizitive, I wonder which word will be used. There it is: “Bem-aventurados os pobres em espritito.” Pobre. Not Carente. Because who doesn’t need something sometime? But my job is to learn I need everything at all times. From God.
I hope that becomes my label: Pobre. Because I want the promise in the rest of the Matthew 5:3. Because I want to become more like Jesus. Because I realize I don’t know one iota of anything there is to know, but I know that I can trust God, and He does know. Because I’ve experienced that nothing is worth it without Him.
