When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself

This past fall, Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN did a sermon series entitled "Compassion by Command". Greg Boyd taught most weeks, but others contributed valuable insight throughout the process. It really got me thinking about poverty alleviation, and also made some significant connections with my dissertation. I would strongly encourage you to take the time to listen/watch to these sermons online at the link provided above.

One of the resources that kept being mentioned was this book, When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. I decided to pick it up, and after reading it, I believe it is an essential resource for any organization that works with the poor in any way, shape or form.

The basic thesis of the book is that poverty alleviation is "the ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation" (78) and that material poverty alleviation is "Working to reconcile the four foundational relationships (God, self, others, rest of creation) so that people can fulfill their callings of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruit of that work." (78)

When poverty alleviation is defined in these terms, it is clear we are all in poverty, in need of poverty alleviation. We are all broken in our relationships. We need each other to help through this process. Recognizing our poverty is one of the keys to bringing about poverty alleviation for ourselves and for those around us. Poverty is more than a lack of resources, education, or money. It is a lack in your relationships, which undermines you and your self-confidence. This is a large part of why poverty alleviation is found in rebuilding relationships with other people and with God.

The authors say that there are three responses to any situation of involvement: relief, rehabilitation, and development. Most churches and organizations respond in the manner of relief in every situation, although only a handful of situations actually call for relief. Relief should be used in situations where there has been some kind of disaster and used to "stop the bleeding". Rehabilitation is trying to move from the post-disaster situation to a level similar to the pre-disaster situation, while development is moving people beyond their present or previous situations into a better place. Development is what is typically needed, but it is the most inconvenient one of the three. Development cannot happen by throwing money at a situation, or material goods, or even simple education. Those are more appropriate for relief than development.

Development requires building relationships with people. Development is not about telling people what to do, but helping them decide for themselves what to do and working with them as they work toward that goal. They strongly advocate for Asset-Based Community Development, where instead of going into a community and asking "What can we do to help?", you go into a community and ask "What are your gifts?" Asking this question not only informs you what the community is capable of doing, but shows them what they are capable of doing and being, empowering them to move in that direction. When the community takes initiative for themselves, that is when poverty is most likely to be alleviated. This process is often unappealing to churches and organizations because it is a slow process that often lacks any kind of immediate return, but the authors argue that working through development is where true poverty alleviation occurs.

The authors include many stories of failures and successes, addressing issues both domestically and overseas. There is an especially direct chapter about the damage that often occurs because of short term mission trips, while also giving suggestions for how to make short term missions trips successful for both those who go on the trip and those that are supposed to be helped on the trip.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I think that everyone who is at all involved in attempts at poverty alleviation needs to read this book. The book is set up in a way that is incredibly conducive to small groups going through this book together. This book (and the Compassion By Command sermon series) challenged me to reevaluate my belief about the way to approach poverty alleviation and affirmed the role that treating one another with human dignity must play in our relationships. Please, read this book. Of the books I have reviewed to this point, there has not been a book that I feel so strongly about the need for people to read it. If reading this book stops people, churches and other organizations from the destructive behavior in which they typically engage (with the best intentions) when it comes to poverty alleviation, it will help things out immensely. If it actually leads people to act in these difficult, but helpful ways, true poverty alleviation could start.

Justification

Some people write books to present ideas that they have. Some people write books to critique the ideas others have. Yet others write books to respond to critiques that others have of their ideas. Justification by N.T. Wright would be primarily the third kind of book, yet displays the first two kinds as well.

In 2007, John Piper wrote The Future of Justification in which he heavily critiqued Wright’s view on justification, by taking things Wright has said throughout his corpus of work and showing why he finds them to be incorrect. Upon the release of this book, Wright got to work on this book, as an attempt to clearly state what his views on justification are and to argue why his view is more correct than Piper’s.

It is probably good to ask the question, “What does it mean to be more correct when it comes to one’s view of justification?” There are multiple ways this question can be answered, all of which should carry some weight. Among these answers are: faithfulness to Scripture, faithfulness to tradition, coherence across both Scripture and tradition, faithfulness to a certain interpretation of Scripture, etc. Both sides of the debate would claim faithfulness to Scripture as one of the main standards of their “correct” answers. However, given that both sides are working from within certain traditions and perspective, the question may actually be, which of these perspectives is the better of the two in giving an answer that presents a cohesive, coherent picture of all of Scripture.

As one can imagine, this question cannot be answered in a blog post. Wright tries to do it in a 250-page book, with a reasonable level of success, in part, because he often points to other writings he has done for further reference, or promises to deal with them in a forthcoming book on Paul. In other words, the 250-page book doesn’t really answer this question either.

With that being said, Wright was clearly frustrated in writing this book. He felt that Piper had presented Wright’s view in a less than charitable manner with misunderstandings throughout Piper’s book. Wright wrote this book, in part, to lay out his view on justification in a single source in an attempt to make clear what his view is on justification and to prevent future critics to cherry pick from his great corpus of work to construct of straw man of Wright’s position. In the process he turns critiques back on Piper and makes the case for his position.

To make a long story short, for Wright, justification is a global concept. Justification is not just about individual humans, but instead, is about all of creation. As Wright continually notes throughout the book, justification is about God’s covenant with Israel. It is his “single plan to put the world to rights” and to do so through Israel. God’s goal from the beginning to was to bring the world to rights through Israel. Justification is not about moral righteousness, but about God’s faithfulness to that covenant. Wright spends the first half of the book establishing this idea, while explaining the first century world in which Paul was writing these ideas and exploring different motivations for different interpretations. The second half of the book becomes a case study where he goes through the main passages in the Pauline epistles and shows how a fuller understanding of the context surrounding the typical proof-texts of the opposing position actually makes the case for his interpretation of the idea of justification, rather than the other perspective. He ends by taking an extensive look at Romans, showing the arc of the entire book to be that of a global justification, rather than particular justifications for individual humans. The final 30 pages of the book moves from the theory to the practice, connecting themes that one finds in other of Wright’s writings with the concept of justification in a way that brings new life and meaning to both.

Of course, there is much greater detail than what I am giving, but I am assuming that most people reading this blog who are interested in this book will be reading it themselves and that those who are not interested are skimming this blog to see if I see anything interesting. Let me say that Wright makes a very compelling case for his view of justification and answers questions that have always lingered in my mind. However, it is clear that your commitments will determine how convincing you find his arguments to be, which leads back to the question I raised earlier about what commitments should determine our reading of Scripture, which are far too big to answer in a single post.

On a final note, if you’re looking to read N.T. Wright and you’re not a scholar, I would highly recommend that you read his book, Surprised by Hope. In that book he addresses the role of a physical, bodily resurrection in relation to Christianity, and finds it to be a core tenant of our faith that is far too often ignored and also gives us far more hope and meaning to our Christianity than we have without it. If you’re looking to get into Wright, I would start there and after that book, maybe move on to Justification, although Wright has written so prolifically, you can really move in many directions depending on your interests in theology. Although this review is the first on N.T. Wright, I can guarantee it will not be the last.