It's funny how helping others can bring out the pride in you (and I'm definitely using the word "pride" as a bad word).
I've also seen this in where someone lives. You'd think I'm talking about some prideful rich person living in a mansion looking down at someone living in a one bedroom apartment....but I'm not. In the past couple of months, I've heard a half dozen people talk about the suburbs as though they were the worst possible place to live. They talk about them to me and I live in the suburbs. It's like they're so bad, that even I must realize how awful my living situation is...so it's ok to rip on my neighborhood right in front of me. They talk about them exactly like some rich jerk might talk about living in the ghetto. It's almost the exact opposite living situation - but both are judgmental or "I'm just superior" - ways of looking at them. It's just that you can talk derisively about the suburbs because they're seen as the "haves"
I know a couple of people who tell me how diverse their neighborhood is, and I always ask, "what are your neighbor's names?". I don't really care how diverse your neighborhood is, do you even interact with your neighbors? Who cares what your neighborhood group picture would look like -if everyone is going to keep to themselves?
There are now more poor people living in the suburbs than the cities.
You can help poor people get jobs, clothes, shelter and counseling in the city or in the suburbs. It's just sad when someone looks at one person helping another and immediately discounts it because "that's not what I do. I'm really helping the poor"
That's not even the point. I don't care where rich people or poor people live...I'm living in my neighborhood because that's where we chose to live. I don't have to rationalize that there are poor people within a mile from here. There are people going through divorce, death and diabetes (see what I did there?) in my sub-division. People are hurting here....but that's not the point.
My problem isn't really with people looking down on the suburbs for whatever reason (they hate trees? all the houses look alike - and they don't in cities? they hate grass?) It's that we all look down on someone because they don't live like us/serve like us/give like us.
We feed over 1,000 families a month at our church. We also wrap presents for people at the mall. I regularly see people look at the folks who are wrapping presents for others and handing out bottles of water in the 'burbs, and complain that they're just helping rich people.
Both are good.
Helping people is good.
One of the hardest things to overcome when you become part of helping solve a problem (mission trip, volunteering to help the elderly/blind/Bragg/homeless) is the pride that comes along for the ride. It can become so all consuming that your passion is this spiteful - they should help out too...just like ME - and that passion steals your passion to focus on helping the elderly/blind/Bragg/homeless.
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