When Helping Hurts
When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert is an in your (our) face critique of the way individuals and churches often approach missions — the wrong way. Both men serve in the economics department at Covenant College in Chattanooga, TN (a PCA school for those unfamiliar with Covenant). They have also served extensively in missions, both in going and in training. So their observations are worth noting both didactically and practically.
One of the main concerns the book points out is what is called the “god complex” that many in America have when it comes to the work of missions around the globe, particularly in alleviating poverty in poor nations. This “god-complex” is defined by one author as something “the economically rich often have… a subtle and unconscious sense of superiority in which they believe that they have achieved their wealth through their own efforts and that they have been anointed to decide what is best fo low-income people, whom they view as inferior to themselves.” As the authors note, few are conscious of having a god-complex, which presents a major problem in missions in poverty: One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being economically rich–their god-complexes–and the poverty of being of the economically poor–their feelings of inferiority (p. 65).
This “poverty of being” is a reminder that we all suffer from poverty, we all have broken relationships that need to be restored. This is the essence of poverty: Poverty is the result of relationships that do not work, that are not just, that are not for life, that are not harmonious or enjoyable (p. 62). Poverty then is rooted in these broken relationships with (1) God, (2) self, (3) others, and (4) the rest of creation. Obviously, then, all suffer from poverty as an effect of the Fall. Every human being is poor in the sense of lacking in these four areas of relationship.
So how do we work to alleviate poverty? We need a paradigm shift in our approach to missions that begins by recognizing our poverty (“god-complexes”) and the brokenness experienced by all mankind. The key to alleviation is to reconcile these relationships so that others can live in right relation to God, self, others, and His creation. Then we can move forward — but how? We must then discern what is needed to alleviate the poverty: Relief, rehabilitation, or development. “Relief” is an urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to reduce immediate suffering from a natural or man-made crisis. “Rehabilitation” begins as soon as the bleeding stops and seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their precrisis conditions. “Development” is a process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved–both the “helpers” and the “helped”–closer to being in relationship with God, self, others, and the rest of creation. Development is not done to people or for people but with people. One of the biggest mistakes that North American churches make–by far–is in applying relief in situations in which rehabilitation or development is the appropriate intervention (pp.103-105).
The book then offers ways in which individuals and churches can design and implement practices that are helpful in alleviating poverty. I strongly recommend this book to all who have a heart for missions, whether it be at home urban and suburban or internationally. It is possible that while our hearts might be right, our methods can be disastrous.
