Since having Maggie, I have been catching up on a lot of books I have been meaning to read. One of them is When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.
One thing we are learning since we have moved to St. John is how difficult it is to discern exactly how to show mercy to our neighbors. There are so many people in need but it is rarely clear how to help. Travis and I struggle with whether our actions, intended to demonstrate the love of God and help lift people out of poverty, are actually demonstrating a God complex and embedding people further into poverty.
This book provides a lot of practical and theological in figuring out how to help rather than hurt.
One of the key concepts from the book that I have found particularly helpful is that poverty is not primarily defined by a lack of material things. In western culture, we define poverty by what people do not have. They don't have money. They don't have food. They don't have shelter. But, in the 1990s the World Bank conducted a survey of over 60,000 poor people from all over the world and asked them to answer the question: "what is poverty?" The results of the study are published in a series of books called Voices of the Poor. The World Bank found that the poor across the world define poverty much differently than North Americans.
Poor people typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness. North American audiences tend to emphasize a lack of material things such as food, money, clean water, medicine, housing, etc...this mismatch between many outsiders' perceptions of poverty and the perceptions of poor people themselves can have devastating consequences for poverty-alleviation efforts. (When Helping Hurts, Corbett and Fikkert)
The difference between how North Americans define poverty and how the poor define poverty is staggering to me. And it explains why many of our ministries and services to the poor quite frankly aren't working. We are throwing simple, material-based solutions at people that need not just physical but psychological, sociological, emotional, and spiritual restoration.
I have seen this play out in a trivial, but personal and tangible way since moving to St. John. If you have ever been to St. John, you have probably noticed that there is a lot of trash, debris, and junk everywhere. When folks have broken furniture, appliances, bags of trash, large branches, construction materials, and other junk, they just go ahead and put it at the curb. Even if no one is coming to pick it up. Not only are there large piles of debris on most streets, but the litter problem is simply astounding. Keep Austin Beautiful conducts multiple "Clean Sweeps" each year in which they unleash an army of volunteers into the neighborhood to pick up trash. The neighborhood is squeaky clean for about a week. And then, completely inexplicably, it is filthy again.
Not a day goes by (not an exaggeration by any stretch) that I don't have a capri-sun or a chip bag or a plastic sack blow into my yard. When we first moved here, I would pick the trash up whenever I saw it. Who wants trash in their yard, right? But I have noticed that I don't pick it up anymore. If I see a capri-sun, I will walk right by it. I watch plastic bags blow into other people's yards from my own. Why? Because I feel powerless to change the fact that our neighborhood is junky. No matter what I do, no matter how much trash I pick up, there will always be trash in my yard when I wake up in the morning. And the feeling of powerlessness is so defeating.
The problem with St. John is more complex than can be solved by one or four or twenty clean up events. The problem with St. John is that broken people (including me) live here that feel worthless and voiceless. We need the gospel to tell us that we are valued by God and heard by God. Broken people feel that we have no hope to change our circumstances. We need the gospel to tell us that there is hope in Christ. Broken people feel powerless to make an impact. We need the gospel which is the "power of God for salvation to everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). Addressing the root issues instead of the surface ones is overwhelming and seemingly impossible. Which is a good thing. It means that in five, ten, even twenty years, when the people of St. John take care of the community and make sure that it is a clean and healthy place for families to live, Keep Austin Beautiful will not receive the glory. All glory be to God.
