Christ The Lord Is Risen Today

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

In his book book Building Social Capital, Muhammad Yunus tells the story of how he got the idea for the
first grameen bank.

After a privileged upbringing in what was then East Pakistan, Yunus was the head of the Economics
department at Chittagong University.  But the nation's economy had crumbled after East Pakistan won
its war for independence, only to be hit by catastrophic flooding.  Famine followed, and starving people
from the countryside flocked to cities to find jobs they hoped would help their families survive.

"I found it increasingly difficult to teach elegant theories of economics in the classroom while a terrible
famine was raging outside," Yunus wrote.  ". . . I felt the emptiness of traditional economic concepts in
the face of crushing hunger and poverty.  I realized I had to be with the distressed people of Jobra, the
neighboring village just outside of Chittagong University, and somehow find something to do for them..."
(p viii)

Talking to the residents of the Jobra shanties, Yunus found them still on the brink of starvation, although
they had found work and were working hard, working long hours.  The problem was that they were all
falling deeper into poverty, because they had to buy tools and materials to produce the bamboo furniture
and woven cloth they sold.

They had been forced to apply to predatory money-lenders who charged exorbitant interest on their loans.
The money-lenders also required borrowers to sell their products only to them . . . and the lenders always
drastically under-priced the people's products.  Borrowers' families had been forced to work, to try to keep
up with their increasing debt to the money-lender...from whom they had to borrow more money for more tools
and materials.

Yunus found entire families working all day long, every day, hopelessly trying to pay their still-increasing debt
to the money-lender.  One woman's family had fallen into economic slavery for an initial loan equivalent to
seven American cents.  When he totaled the debt of the 42 people he had interviewed, Yunus found their
cumulative debt to money-lenders amounted to $27 U.S.

Yunus told his poor friends he would help them get a loan from a bank.  The banks would charge a much more
reasonable interest-rate, he said: and with their continued hard work, they would soon be out of debt, and able
to sell their products at fair market-prices.

But Yunus was wrong.  When he took his poor friends to the banks, none would lend them a cent.  Even when
he, an esteemed academic in the local university, offered to personally guarantee the loan, no bank considered
his friends "credit-worthy" for even the very small sums that would free them from poverty.

"The more time you spend among poor people," Younus later wrote, "the more you become convinced that
poverty is not the result of any incapacity on the part of the poor.  Poverty is not created by poor people.  It is
created by the system we have built, the institutions we have designed, and the concepts we have formulated."
(p. xii)

Yunus finally paid his friends' debts from his own pocket.  And from that experience he began to formulate the
idea for grameen (Bangladeshi for "village") banks, by which the poor could help each other escape from poverty.

The idea for grameen banks has now spread throughout the world, saved millions from economic slavery, and
created millions of jobs.  Yunus and his idea have even been honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

But reading this story as we prepared to celebrate Christ' resurrection, I was forcibly struck by the thought that
Jesus is the hero of the story.

I doubt Yunus is a Christian.  I don't know if anyone who benefitted from his idea is a Christian.  Doesn't matter.
The idea of grameen banks saved people from poverty and hopelessness: and ideas are spiritual events.  Don't
we really still think in the terms Romans did when they created the word "inspire"...that "into" man's thoughts a
"spirit" is breathed?

What spirit is it that inspires a man to free people enslaved by unrighteousness ?  What spirit inspires a man to
help the poor escape poverty and hopelessness ?  The only spirit like that which exists is the Spirit of Christ.

I don't know if Muhammad Yunus realizes his idea embodies Christ's Spirit.  I'm pretty sure some of my fellow
American Christians, who theoretically believe that Christ rules even in (what they call) the "secular" world, would
also be unable to see that He is the "Hero" of this story.  And there are some American Christians are so enslaved
to the enemy's false political ideas that they would even reject the Spirit's inspiration as "socialism."

Doesn't matter.  For those who have eyes to see, "Christ the Lord is risen today."  In this very day, Jesus is still
alive.  The same as He did 2000 years ago, He continually shows up in places, and ways, and people, where we
would never expect Him.

Hallelujah !!