‘When Helping Hurts’

by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkart

“Helping people can hurt them.”

 But Christians are helping people. How can they possibly be hurting them?

As I mentioned when recommending “Unlikely” by Kevin Palau, I was interested by Kevin’s reference to ‘When Helping Hurts’ by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkart. My first reaction was “What! Christians are helping people. How can they possibly be hurting them?”  So… I read this book too and I highly recommend it! Here are some of the insights I learned to whet your appetite to read the book and to consider what your church is doing in your community.

Poverty alleviation needs to address more than just the physical. Humans are spiritual, social, psychological, and physical. If only the physical symptoms are treated, people may not get better and may in fact get worse. As Christians try to help people by providing immediate relief, they can actually be harming the person. 

The materially poor are trapped by multiple, interconnected factors – insufficient assets, vulnerability, powerlessness, isolation, and physical weakness. Our goal should be to see people restored to being what God created them to be: people who understand that they created in the image of God with gifts, abilities, and capacity to make decisions and to effect change in the world around them; able to steward their own lives, communities, resources, and relationships, to bring glory to God. Humans were created to be in good relationship with God, self, others, and creation. Poverty is the absence of shalom.

We need to provide relief when appropriate and work with people, not for them. However, relief should not be provided when rehabilitation or development is what is needed. Providing relief can cause more damage than good. For example, giving presents at Christmas time can embarrass people and reinforce their inability to provide for their children, and may decrease their self-image and affect their confidence to apply for jobs. Ministries are needed that help people get out of the hole they are stuck in, not just provide the relief while they are stuck in the hole.

Rehabilitation and development ministries need to be highly relational, and process focused, ready to consistently develop and maintain long-term relationships so that people can be mobilized to participate in their own recovery. Within a community, different groups can focus on providing relief, rehabilitation, and development. This way, needs can be met in the short term while the deeper causes are also addressed. Are there groups in your community that are providing rehabilitation and development so that people’s situations can change? Or are they all focused on providing relief? We need to look at the bigger picture and consider what is causing people to be stuck.  Are there economic, social, or political systems that are being unjust and oppressive?

The book also gives great insights into how to not be paternalistic in endeavours; advice is given such as empower people to do what they can for themselves including deciding on the best choice of action, managing projects, and providing the labour. One example story explained how local businesses were crippled after a paternalistic decision was made to bring in resources from outside the community rather than using local resources.

Hopefully this has whet your appetite to read this book and to consider how Christians need to work within their communities to enable long term change, not just bring short term relief. Long term change can only happen when people are restored to a relationship with God and rehabilitation and development ministries exist.

 (Written by Julie Young 2016)