Shedding Light on a Dark Path: What Spirituality Can Do for People in Poverty

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

                                                           ---Hebrews 11:1

There are times in everyone's lives where the world and everything in it seems to be spiraling out of control. There are also times where the spiral appears to be endless, growing darker and darker the longer one falls. Individuals and families in severe states of poverty experience this falling sensation on a daily basis, especially when the government is doing little to eradicate the problem in a timely fashion. Based on past observations, I find myself frequently coming to the conclusion that people in poverty cope with their suffering in two major ways. Some feel as though they have no choice but to simply wait around for government policy makers to make their move and improve the lives of millions via new job opportunities, health care, child care, and so on. Others, on the other hand, make the effort to rid themselves of the many fears and anxieties associated with poverty by replacing all of their trust in man with a spiritual belief system.  As featured in the photo above, when all hope is lost and when one is at their lowest point in life, he/she will often look desperately for other ways to achieve a peaceful and healthy state of mind.


According to a national poll conducted by CNS News in 2013 that featured 2,250 American participants, 74% of respondents stated that they did, in fact, believe that there is a God. While the sample size of the study is somewhat small, the poll still manages to give the impression that beliefs in a higher power remain strong in some form. The problem, however, is that such an impression is often muddled and hazy in both mainstream media and everyday society. One reason for this involves the media's tendency to only report religion centric stories if they involve some type of negative, "extremist" behavior. Reports of people finding the face of Jesus on a piece of buttered toast, protests at veteran funerals by the cultish Westboro Baptist Church, and the inability of various religious scholars to predict the day of "Christ's Second Coming," are all stories that depict both Christianity and spirituality in a negative light. We also seem to be living in an era where the news media is clearly drenched in a thick coating of political correctness, a concept that strives to eliminate the topic of God and religion from any and all circles of public conversation. The point of the matter is that while we are still a nation under God, we do a fairly poor job of showing it.

So what does this do to the mindset of those in poverty? In essence, it prevents them from achieving a sense of spiritual strength that they desperately need in order to uplift their spirits in times when the government is at a clear standstill. It also keeps those in poverty, who have yet to experience what spirituality has to offer, from turning to a faith-based medium. Instead, they are forced to rely on the willpower of the U.S. government, a system that provides physical representations of relief, which, in turn, only seem to provide instant gratification. Many people (my family included) often state that having a faith-based belief system firmly in place helps to generate long-term relief to real-world issues that currently lack real-world solutions. As one may have already guessed, such long-term relief is neither a public policy, nor is it a statewide law. Rather, the relief takes the form of old-fashion, yet all-important human qualities of self-confidence, determination, courage, steadfastness, compassion for others, patience, temperance, sensitivity to others' needs, and most importantly, the ability to persevere through trying times. Furthermore, faith and spirituality serve to remind us that we, as human beings, have both the ability and tenacity to overcome the most difficult of circumstances if we simply embrace our inner strengths. In truth, the more the media moves towards an anti-spiritual stance (the opposite stance of which this country was partially founded upon, by the way), the less likely people will be made aware of what spirituality can actually do for someone in need. Granted, being poor and having these aforementioned qualities is not enough to immediately lift someone out of poverty, but simply knowing that one has the power within themselves to fight the good fight and make a name for themselves at some point in the near future is what truly matters in the end.

In conclusion, even though the subjects of spirituality, faith, and religion are topics of great controversy in this day and age, this should not keep mainstream society from at least acknowledging some of their ideas. Rather than making the effort to exclude these concepts from the public eye, the process of pairing them with the likes of government and political action is the first step towards bringing a sufficient level of  empowerment to those who are down-on-their-luck. In short, we simply need to start having a little more faith...in faith.


http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/poll-americans-belief-god-strong-declining

A CNS News article that manages to show the current decline of America's belief in God via an assortment of poll results from 2013.

Poverty's Psychological Side: The Effects of Poverty on a Child's Brain Development

 When anyone hears the word "poverty," there is a tendency to dwell on the likes of economics, finances, and the ever-present hand of government politics. A major reason for this is simple. Each is considered to be a major, physical characterization of poverty that can be seen with the naked eye and measured using a plethora of scientific tools. One of the real issues at hand, however, involves characteristics of poverty that are not readily apparent, particularly those that affect young children. In short, such descriptors are the effects of poverty on a developing human brain, a topic that, strangely enough, has not received as much attention as one might initially be led to believe. Even so, there are a handful of studies conducted in the past few years that serve to shed some light on this "hidden" issue with the hope that doing so will garner some much needed mainstream attention in the near future.

What Does an Impoverished Child's Brain Look Like?

At face value, many understand the potential environmental influences of poverty on young children who are forced to live under such conditions at a young age. Lack of success in future educational endeavors, for example, is one major result. The question is, are environmental influences solely to blame for poor academic success, or is there something else going on? Researchers who recently conducted a neurological study on impoverished children at Washington University seem to believe so. In short, they firmly support the notion that being in a severe state of poverty can actually "alter the physical makeup of a child's brain." Specifically, the children studied (ages 6-12) "had smaller volumes of white and cortical gray matter, as well as hippocampal and amygdala volumes." For those unfamiliar with each of these terms, white and grey matter are essentially a series of nerve tissues that serve as mailmen for the brain, constantly sending out electrical communication signals to the central nervous system. The hippocampus has the job of "converting short-term memory to long-term memory" and is also involved in one's ability to successfully decipher where they are and where they plan to go in any given physical space (spatial navigation). The amygdala is also involved with memory, but caters heavily to emotions and, in some cases, may even be at the center of various anxiety-related disorders that can arise in early childhood. According to researchers of the aforementioned study, having low volumes in any one, or all of these areas means that their "functions may be impaired" to a considerable degree.

The Potential Impact of Poor Nurturing Skills

On another interesting note, children of parents who demonstrated "poor nurturing skills" over the course of the study showed significantly lower volumes of both white and gray matter in regions of the brain that cater to "learning skills and coping with stress." This suggests that a parent's ability to nurture and take care of his/her child, regardless of outside circumstances, is crucial in providing children with skills that could potentially lift them out of poverty at some point in their young adult lives. As a result of not having quality parental care, children were also found to lack the skills necessary to deal with "stressful life events" inside and outside of the home, thus dwindling their chances even more of, one day, escaping poverty's grasp.

The Impact of Urban Environment Noise

To no one's surprise, past research on a child's early exposure and full-fledged experiences with poverty have amounted to a number of issues, ranging anywhere from "poor cognitive outcomes and school performance, to a higher risk for antisocial behaviors and mental disorders." In relation to school performance, in particular, one study found that "children with lower socioeconomic status tended to have less efficient auditory processing abilities" where a large portion of brain activity would be geared towards sounds from the surrounding environment, rather than towards the sound of a single voice. This finding not only supports the "known correlation between low income and the amount of noise exposure in urban populations," but also suggests that this may be a reason for why many children of this status find it difficult to concentrate and pay close attention in classroom settings. This could also explain the frequent accounts of misdiagnosing low economic status children as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), where symptoms of fidgeting, inability to listen intently, and/or short attention spans mirror some of the major outcomes of growing accustomed to noise in urban environments.

What Remains to be Seen

In the end, further studies are needed to effectively answer the question of whether poverty conditions are the primary cause for keeping portions of a child's mental capabilities at bay. What little data  does exist, however, truly manages to speak volumes in terms of what policy makers may need to consider in the future if the mental development of children in poverty is to be protected and properly cared for.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/28/early-childhood-poverty-damages-brain-development-study-finds

 USA News', Allie Bidwell, discusses the overall impact of poverty on developing brains of young children by discussing the results and implications of a neurological study conducted in 2013 by Washington University in St. Louis.

 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-growing-up-in-poverty-may-affect-a-childs-developing-brain-180947832/?no-ist

Author, Joseph Stromberg, discusses what the current body of research shows with respect to a child growing up in poverty. Such research includes, but is not limited to nurturing skills and noise within impoverished urban environments.