Some reflections on "When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without hurting the poor"

Here at Healing Waters we do a book study, bible study or prayer time on Friday mornings. It is a chance for the staff to touch base and focus and reflect on our work from a spiritual perspective.

We have just started the book When Helping Hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor. . . and yourself.

This is a great book and should be required reading for anyone that is doing any sort of missions work, local or global. Most of the examples in the book focus more on global missions, but the content is relevant in either case.

I wanted to share a few quotes and reflections with you as we study this book.

"We write this book with a great deal of excitement about the renewed interest in helping low-income people that is so apparent among North American Christians. While materialism, self-centeredness, and complacency continue to plague all of us, nobody can deny the upswing in social concern among North American evangelicals in the past two decades. There is perhaps no better illustration of this trend than the exploding shor-term mission movement, much of which has focused on ministering to the poor at home and abroad.

But our excitement about these developments is seriously tempered by two convictions. First, North American Christians are simply not doing enough. We are the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth. Period. Yet, most of us live as though there is nothing terribly wrong in the world. We attend our kids' soccer games, pursue our careers, and take beach vacations while 40 percent of the world's inhabitants struggle just to eat every day. And in our own backyards, the homeless, those residing in ghettos, and a wave of immigrants live in a world outside the economic and social mainstream of North America. We do not necessarily need to feel guilty about our wealth. But we do need to get up every morning with a deep sense that something is terribly wrong with the world and yearn and strive to do something about it. There is simply not enough yearning and striving going on.

WOW! This is difficult to read and even more difficult to digest. I think my first reaction is to get defensive. I do a lot of social justice and poverty alleviation work, where do they get off talking to me like that? I pursue my career and take beach vacations, should I feel guilty? While the authors state that "we do not necessarily need to feel guilty about our wealth," it is really hard not to after reading this. But I think the key lines in this passage are right after that (which is why I italicized them in the original passage.)

We DO NEED to get up EVERY MORNING with a DEEP SENSE that something is TERRIBLY WRONG with the WORLD and YEARN AND STRIVE to do SOMETHING about it. There is simply NOT ENOUGH YEARNING AND STRIVING going on!

Ok, let's take some time to reflect and pray on that. And let's ramp up our striving and yearning. . .

Re-Post of NY Times Op-Ed Piece about International Relief work and Global Missions

This op-ed piece was just too good to not repost. I will be honest with you, I think it is going to make some people uncomfortable. It made me a little bit uncomfortable, but as Christians, I think we are called to live with a little discomfort. Enjoy!

Learning From the Sin of Sodom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published in the New York Times: February 27, 2010

For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”

Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.

A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?

It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.

World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”

Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.

One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.

Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.

Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.

A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.

If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.

Snow Day in Denver and Matthew 25. . .

I am sitting here at home writing this blog post today. Ed Anderson, my CEO at Healing Waters International called at 10pm last night to tell me not to come into the office today because of a pretty big snowstorm that started last night and is supposed to get worse as the day progresses.

The office for Healing Waters is on the campus of Lookout Mountain Community Church in Genesee. The church gives us office space up there, it is very generous of them. Genesee is about 15 miles west of Denver up in the foothills. So when we get snow in Denver, we REALLY get some serious snow up at our office. It is almost 2000 feet higher in elevation up at the office.

So I am working from home today. The change of scenery is nice and Sol (my black lab) is curled up at my feet. (Although that is not all that different from a normal day because Sol comes up to the office with me most days, Healing Waters is a dog friendly workplace.)

Snowy days like this make me think about our field offices in Mexico, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Some of our field staff and most of the people that benefit from our water projects have never seen snow.

This makes me realize what a true life of privilege that I live. Here I am sitting in Denver with six inches of snow on the ground and watching it fall. On Sunday I will be hopping on a plane and flying down to Guatemala for work. When I am there, we stay in Antigua, which has an average late Oct. temperature of 75 during the day.

Beyond being able to jet-set around for a change of scenery and weather, I am really privileged to be able to go to my sink for a glass of water. Just like the people who get water at our projects have never seen snow, they have also never been able to get a glass of safe drinking water from the taps in their home (if they even have taps in their home.)

So my snow day is making me reflect on my privilege in life. And with privilege comes empathy and responsibility.

Empathy arises from a profound realization of intrinsic interconnectedness between all humans, a sense of connection that God calls us to recognize. As a result, I feel the suffering and pain of others - to varying degrees - and am called by something very deep inside to do what I can to help them.

Jesus words in Matthew 25:34-40 really speak to me on this point. The version below is from The Message:

34-36"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
Iwas sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'
37-40"Then those 'sheep' are going to say, 'Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?' Then the King will say, 'I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, (to the least of my brothers and sisters) that was me—you did it to me.'

So that is how a snow day in Denver and Matthew 25 are related.

Below is a video that we filmed at our office in Denver back in September. Ed Anderson, our CEO wanted to record a message for the inauguration of our 35th water system in the Dominican Republic. The day we decided to record the message we were getting one of our freak Colorado September storms. Kind of puts the snow day, and the work we do for Healing Waters in perspective. Enjoy!