mostly irrelevant…

In 2006, I read Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus. Here is a description of the book from an editorial review by Shane Carkonen:

It began with a simple $27 loan. After witnessing the cycle of poverty that kept many poor women enslaved to high-interest loan sharks in Bangladesh, Dr. Muhammad Yunus lent money to 42 women so they could purchase bamboo to make and sell stools. In a short time, the women were able to repay the loans while continuing to support themselves and their families. With that initial eye-opening success, the seeds of the Grameen Bank, and the concept of microcredit, were planted.

After earning a Ph.D. in economics at Vanderbilt University, Dr. Yunus returned to Bangladesh to settle into a life as a professor. But a famine in 1974 ravaged the country, leading Dr. Yunus to alter his thinking and his life profoundly: "What good were all my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall? Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me." Armed with little more than a lofty dream to end the suffering around him, he started an experimental microcredit enterprise in 1977; by 1983 the Grameen Bank was officially formed.

The idea behind the Grameen Bank is ingeniously simple: extend credit to poor people and they will help themselves. This concept strikes at the root of poverty by specifically targeting the poorest of the poor, providing small loans (usually less than $300) to those unable to obtain credit from traditional banks. At Grameen, loans are administered to groups of five people, with only two receiving their money up front. As soon as these two make a few regular payments, loans are gradually extended to the rest of the group. In this way, the program builds a sense of community as well as individual self-reliance. Most of the Grameen Bank's loans are to women, and since its inception, there has been an astonishing loan repayment rate of over 98 percent.

It is a fascinating read and one that has inspired me in many ways. Here is another quote from the book that continues to put it in perspective: “Sufiya Begum earned two cents a day. It was this knowledge that shocked me. In my university courses, I theorized about sums in the millions of dollars, but here before my eyes the problems of life and death were posed in terms of pennies. Something was wrong. Why did my university courses not reflect the reality of Sufiya’s life? I was angry, angry at myself, angry at my economics department and thousands of intelligent professors who had not tried to address this problem and solve it.“ Later, after collecting some data from a local village a worker for Muhammad Yunus found that 42 people in that village borrowed 865 taka – less than 27 dollars- from traders who lent the money on such terms that these borrowers had no chance of repaying the loans and making profit in order to become self sufficient, but would instead become continually indebted just to survive. Yunus exclaims, “My God, my God. All this misery in all these families all for of the lack of twenty-seven dollars!”

Did you catch the quote in the description where he asks “What good were all my complex theories when people were dying of starvation on the sidewalks and porches across from my lecture hall?” It is this mindset that inspires me and what led me to ask in last weeks post, “What could 200 people with roughly a couple hundred thousand dollars a year really do?” My answer: “Well that depends on their theology.” Similar to Yunus’ questioning of his professors and University courses, I often wonder, why do our theologies, our organizations, our classes, our sermons, and our church activities seem to be accomplishing so little? Are we as irrelevant as he felt discussing his complex economic theories while people died of starvation across from the lecture hall? Again, that depends on your theology and it seems to me that the theology of so many us continues to let us off the hook.

I am not expecting us all to do something as “visionary” as Muhammad Yunus, but I expect more than apathy, that’s the way things are, “what are you going to do” shoulder shrugs, or other clichés that seem to support continued stagnation. Like I said before, I am not expecting definitive answers, but personally, I am tired of patting myself on the back for church sub-culture accomplishments that remain mostly irrelevant to the realities of most of my community.