Toxic Charity Book Review.

I’m very interested in what it might look like to implement a lot of the practices that I learned from reading When Helping Hurts from the first class, so reading Toxic Charity was a great suggestion concerning community development and how churches and organizations, religions and secular, can give help to those who need it without demeaning them or making them feel lesser than the giver. The author is blunt yet sensitive in presenting the critique on our ways of giving. In the very first chapter, the author immediately presents the reader with a list of rules of how to give compassionate service in a healthy way that is beneficial to both the giver and the receiver. Lupton’s rules are simple and set a great foundation for giving of any kind. He challenges the reader to take The Oath for Compassionate Service, as he calls it, which is a follows:

1. Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
2. Limit one-way giving to emergency situations
3. Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
4. Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served
5. Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said-unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
6. Above all, do no harm.

This oath will ensure a kind of service that will be successful in creating an environment where the giver and the receiver both feel empowered through service and being served.
Paternalism is our greatest enemy when it comes to helping the poor, or as Lupton calls them, the “have lesses”. Avoiding paternalism and encouraging people to do what they can to help themselves immediately shuts down most of the service that is seen today. Our culture is very concerned with helping people and giving to the less fortunate, which is great, but it seems that though the intentions are pure, the help does more harm than good. For example, when a single mother loses her job and is evicted from her home, giving her and her children an apartment free of charge and providing her with food and clothing for the children “until she can find a job” may not be the best thing for her. In fact, it creates a dependency that is unhealthy. Soon, you may find out that this mother isn’t searching for a job as intently as you would have expected and hoped. Who can blame her? She is being given food and clothing, and a place to stay for free. Why work when you’ve already got everything you need?
Our society says that all aid is good aid, when the fact of the matter is that often times our aid falls into hands that misuse or abuse our aid, making seem that not giving aid is more helpful than actually giving aid in some regards.  For example, trillions of dollars have flooded into Africa in the last decade and still very little progress has been made due to corrupt governments and the fact that our aid actually puts people out of much needed jobs. The greatest problems with dead aid is that many have no clue what is happening with their money once it is given and relief aid is often given too long, which keeps a community down instead of encouraging it to pick itself up.  Providing emergency type aid is not usually necessary except in cases such a natural disasters. It is temporary and should quickly move to rehabilitation which over time should move to development. Rehabilitation and development are harder and take a lot of time, so often, they are pushed to the side and supplemented by quick fixes that ultimately don’t help much over and extended period of time. The sad thing is, people simply don’t know the difference. The US is extremely uneducated when it comes to aid giving. We need to find a way to figure out what to do with our money that is healthy and beneficial. I hope that after time the news will spread and rehabilitation and development will become the new goal when it comes to raising money.
I think often times the poor are forgotten when it comes to trying to help them. We have this preconceived idea that the poor need us because they can’t help themselves, which is ridiculous. People in poverty have loads of gifts and abilities that as an outsider looking in, we would never know without building relationships with these people. The poor are not completely helpless and inept, they are important, capable, gifted human beings that for some reason or another have found themselves in a place where they need some help. Those with less know their situation, their community, and their lifestyle a million times better than we do. Don’t you think we should ask them about their own ideas for changing their own situations, communities, lifestyles? Often in our attempts to do something for someone, we find ourselves doing to them instead of doing with them. It’s a top down approach. We are at the top throwing down our ideas and gifts on top of people whose own ideas and gifts are being ignored. Sounds a little brutal to me. On the other hand, when we take the approach of giving in a way that is from the same level, it is easily reciprocated, and then you have the chance to learn and give back and forth to each other. There is no fear, there is no power.  That is the beauty of giving, and serving in a way that inspires ideas, and does not create a spirit of dependence or fear, but rather a spirit of fulfillment and beautiful community. Sounds a little like a relationship to me.
I have basically taken it upon myself to tell everyone I know about these books in order to change their view on poverty alleviation and what it really means to give. These books have changed the way I view ministry, life, and service. It has helped to transform my thought processes, and the way I respond to opportunities to help out. I pray that I will use the information I have learned for the glory of God and that these wont just become a list of rules to follow, but rather a mindset and way of life. I have already had conversations with my boss in Guatemala about how we can change little things in our ministry to make sure that we are empowering the people we give to regularly. It’s been a fantastic starting point when it comes to brainstorming ideas. It feels like what I have learned from Toxic Charity is more applicable in my life than what I learned in the first twelve years of my education. It has changed my worldview, and messed up my world in a very good way. I’m inspired, and the Lord knows what happens when I get inspired. You, on the other hand, will have to wait and see.