Nearly every one of us has participated in one form or another of ministry to the poor. From purchasing small gifts at Christmas with one’s small group at church for a needy family in your city or for an overseas orphanage, to bringing food, household, or clothing items to a drive that organized by someone at your school or workplace, to committing to sending a significant monthly financial donation to an organization that exists to feed the poor or provide safe drinking water in third world countries, all are activities familiar to many Americans. Even the occasional short-term mission trip can now safely be considered by many as a common activity associated with ministry to the poor. Although many take part in these activities through their churches, schools, and workplaces, few can say they’ve taken the time to investigate how much their participation in these programs truly impacts the lives of those they are trying to help for the long-term. The authors of the book “When Helping Hurts” examine many of these activities, ask the hard questions, and lovingly, scripturally, steer us to answers that prick our consciences and convict our hearts of the inevitable conclusion- that we must not only do more to help the poor, but that we must choose what we do with more wisdom-mindful of the dangers associated with superficial, short-term mission initiatives which may actually undermine self-esteem and personal initiative, foster attitudes of entitlement, and thus, do more harm than good.

The authors recommend that anyone serious about poverty alleviation needs to abstain from any practice of paternalism. Paternalism is a policy or practice of treating or governing people in a fatherly way, especially by providing for their needs without giving them rights or responsibilities. Paternalism can fall into many categories related to working with the poor; resource, spiritual, knowledge, labor, and managerial.

One of my favorite passages in the book relates to knowledge paternalism:

For example, during the first several decades after WW II, the leading Western economists and agriculturalists concluded that peasant farmers in the Majority World were irrational and culturally backward because the farmers failed to adopt new varieties of crops that had higher average yields. Subsequent research discovered that the farmers were, indeed, acting very rationally. While the new crop varieties had higher average yields, these new crops also had much greater variation in their yields from year to year than the farmers’ traditional varieties. For farmers living in highly vulnerable situations in which a bad crop could result in starvation for their children, it was better to choose the low-risk-low-return traditional varieties than the high-risk-high-return new varieties, particularly in a setting in which landlords and loan sharks tended to reap the majority of any increase in profits. The failure of the outside “experts” to understand the realities of life on the ground led them to give life-threatening advice to the materially poor and then to demean the poor when they failed to listen to this “expert” advice.

All of us need to remember that the materially poor really are created in the image of God and have the ability to think and to understand the world around them. They actually know something about their situation, and we need to listen to them! This does not need to degenerate into some sort of new-age, “the-truth-is-within-you” quagmire. Like all of us, the materially poor are often wrong about how the world works and can benefit from the knowledge of others. In fact, a key trigger point for change in a community is often being
exposed to a new way of understanding or of doing something. But it is reflective of a god-complex to assume that we have all the knowledge and that we always know what is best. (“When Helping Hurts”chapter 4)

“When Helping Hurts” helped me to understand how contrary to biblical teaching paternalism is and I found myself searching my heart to see how truly committed I was to advocating for refugees and their families. Did I really just want to throw some material possessions or money at them and go home? Or worse, did I want to give them all of my old stuff from my closets and drawers, and the attic-all of our cast-offs? Or was I willing to go the distance, do the research, learn the hard lessons, develop the relationships- sit with them, visit with them, eat with them, take the time to really understand their lives, perhaps even (gasp!) pray with them, learn from them, see the world as much as I could through their eyes, so that I could truly begin to help them in ways that have lasting value, generational, even eternal, impact.

“When Helping Hurts” was a wake-up call for me because it forced me to really open my eyes to the serious nature of the work that I am doing anytime I dare to set foot on territory that I’ve come to see as sovereign to my God. So much in scripture points to how intensely God loves the poor, the oppressed, the widows, the orphans. Each minute that I spend doing any work related to this ministry, I pray that I will honor Him and His great love.