Yesterday I tweeted about how World Vision’s gift catalog promotes donations by giving the impression that you are able to buy farm animals and other items for families in poor countries — but it turns out that they often don’t buy the actual animals that the donor thought they purchased.

Puzzling? Yes. Warren Throckmorton quotes a World Vision representative as saying “As you can imagine, the reality of our programming in the field is much more complex and nuanced than simply giving a family an animal in isolation from other programs and services.”

Now, I can understand that. The problem is: if you give people the impression that they are actually buying a goat or other item for a family, when in fact they are not doing so, that is deceptive. 

There is absolutely no place for that. Marketing needs to match reality.

Further, why in the world would you try to motivate someone by means of half truths? Truly, this makes no sense to me.

Another organization, Oxfam, which follows the same practice, says they have never made it a secret that they might buy other items with the donation. So maybe they do a better job of making that clear. But as Warren Throckmorton points out regarding World Vision, a standard visitor to their site who donates through the gift catalog would never get this impression.

Note that the issue is not that these funds are being abused. It sounds like they are still being used for the sake of the poor. The problem is one of marketing. Donors are given the impression that they are buying specific items for the poor in the developing world, when in fact they are not.

Now, this raises a bigger question as well. And that question is: are there better ways of helping the poor in the medium to long term that go beyond giving things altogether? While giving is important, increasingly organizations are recognizing that the answer is yes.

I’ve interviewed Paul Larsen on this question, a pioneer in developing commerce-based approaches to helping lift the poor out of poverty.

Paul is director of the 128 Foundation, where he speaks and provides resources that help Christians think more holistically about human flourishing and poverty relief. He is also vice president of Cheetah Development, where he works with donors, investors, and strategic partners to incubate, lunch, and expand businesses in the for-profit value chain that link the poorest of the poor profitably to the marketplace.

1. What are the main problems with the current approach to helping the poor in the developing world?

I would say the key problems include dehumanizing dependency, perverted incentives and conflicting agendas.

The first “Great Commission” in Scripture is the Creation Mandate. Genesis 1:28 tells us that God’s first word to man was the mandate to get to work. It has been well said that the command to create culture is the command to organize the raw material of creation in ways that allow human beings to flourish as images of God. We are designed to create and produce value. Man flourishes when he creates more than he consumes. And to the extent that poverty programs hinder human flourishing, they dehumanize the poor.

What is unfortunate about even well-intentioned aid is that when short term relief turns into long term aid it not only subsidizes chronic problems that lead to poverty (see When Helping Hurts by Fikkert and Corbett), but also creates a subsequent dependency that hinders and handcuffs the ability of the poor to be obedient to the first command given to mankind.

NGOs and aid organizations play a very important role in emergency relief, in organizing people into groups (for training, etc.) and collecting data. But turning raw materials into food and other goods requires the development of ‘value chains,’ which require the incentives under which businesses operate to create real, rational markets. Aid organizations are set up to spend donor funds and profits would undermine the model.

After pumping some $2 trillion into Africa in the last 40 years, the poverty needle has not moved. Sometimes we chuckle when socialists are asked why socialism has never worked, and they reply that it’s just because the right people have not been in charge. The tragedy in this is that Africa, which has enough land and water to feed 5 times their population, are importing 80% of their food — up from 15% in the 1970’s.

Packing boxes of grain, loading containers full of used clothing (destroying a once robust textile industry in Kenya), asking groups to go overseas to paint schoolrooms, donating money for sheep, goats, chickens or cows and writing checks feels real good because we like to be benefactors. But benefactors need beneficiaries and we must ask if a permanent needy underclass perpetuates that desire.

While it’s easy to develop a heart for the poor, the challenge is to develop a mind for the poor.

2. What is the relationship that you see between business and helping the poor?

The first suggestion is to do the math. If you were to redistribute all the resources in the world available to charity among 7 billion people you would use it up in 30 days or less. So the goal must be to create wealth and value — and that is what business does better than anything else that humans can do.

Regarding resources, using Africa as an example, we see that it contains roughly 30% of every natural resource we can measure, yet only has 15% of the world’s population — but only generates 2% of the world’s GDP. The problem is that Africa has always been considered the place where you extract cheap resources, only to bring them home and make something valuable out of it. The wealth isn’t in the resources, it’s in the engineering, business systems and technical operations that make those resources useful.

In the 1770’s Adam Smith wrote the first book that really made economics something many could finally get their arms around. At that time, both North and South America were being developed and there was a real question about which continent would prevail. South America had some 10 times the natural resources and a much better climate, but Smith predicted that North America would prevail given its particular religious roots and belief in the creativity of individuals which led to, among other things, some of the first patent laws — the ability to own and profit from your ideas.

Over the last 500 years we see that there are no economically flourishing cultures that developed through foreign aid and volunteers. North America, with relatively few natural resources and a difficult climate showed that it’s human innovation and trade, fueled by capital.

3. How does 128 Foundation and its partners seek to help families in the developing world thrive, without giving them anything?

Over 60% of the poor are subsistence farmers, which means some 600 million families are farming to barely starve. In Africa it averages over 70% of the population. Our work focuses on incubating the financial models and value chain businesses that profitably connect the poorest-of –the-poor to the marketplace. Our typical family experiences a 10-fold increase in income and even savings in the first 12-14 months.

We are happy to report that some major aid-based NGO’s are looking for ways to advance our model, so we need to scale up — and we have opportunities for donors, investors and strategic partners.

Paul Larsen is Founder and Director of 128 Foundation and Vice President of Strategic and Faith-Based Partnerships at Cheetah Development. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and loves engaging with those who seek human flourishing for God’s glory. You can contact him at: plarsen[at]128foundation.org.

So today is Giving Tuesday, a much more important day than Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

One of the most fun and innovative ways to give is through a gift catalog.

This is what Food for the Hungry has been doing for a few years now, and it’s pretty cool. They have a catalog of items, except the items are not consumer goods that you buy for yourself or those on your Christmas lists. Rather, the catalog consists of items that you buy for the poor and which they can use to meet their needs and sustain themselves.

You can buy seed, cows, goats, wells, water purification facilities, and much more — all for the poor. This is pretty cool. It’s a whole other dimension than simply giving a gift of money, because you are able to purchase specific things that are needed.

Food for the Hungry’s efforts here represent a great way to bring innovation and creativity to the fight against global poverty. Their efforts show that innovation and creativity shouldn’t just apply to the for-profit sector — they are just as important in the cause of social good as well.

Their gift catalog is online and is well worth looking through. Plus, as I mentioned above, it’s a lot of fun!

This is a great article in the latest issue of Christianity Today on a new approach to helping lift Africa out of poverty through commerce.

My friend Paul Larsen, who is doing great work in this arena, is quoted several times in the article. (You can also check out the in-process website for the organization he is starting, called the 128 Foundation. Its mission is to drive social, economic, and spiritual progress in the developing world.)

Here’s the start of the article:

Three years from now, the largest port in all Africa is set to open its docks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. But the hands that are building the $10 billion port are not Tanzanian; they are Chinese.

China has emerged as a powerhouse in the global market, and many expect it to surpass the United States as the world’s economic superpower in years to come. But the same growth that has improved the quality of life for millions of Chinese is arguably hampering it in Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, and other African countries where China is buying land at astonishing rates. For example, in just two years (2011 to 2013), China’s investments in Tanzania grew from $700 million to $2.1 billion. “China is very keen on establishing brand-name equity or recognition among African consumers, because the African population is going to double by the middle of the century,” Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent, recently told NPR.

Critics of “land grabbing” say the widespread practice displaces local workers, provides fewer jobs, and extracts natural resources (oil, coal, gold) that skip local communities and go straight to international corporations. “Poor farmers and cattle herders across the world are being thrown off their land,” says investigative journalist Fred Pearce. “Land grabbing is having more of an impact on the lives of poor people than climate change.”

One for-profit corporation founded by Christians, however, sees growth potential in poor people themselves. Part of a relatively new investment category called “impact investing,” the company is tilling fertile ground in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ukraine not only for economic growth but also for spiritual revival.

Read the whole thing.

Tim Keller recounts this story in Generous Justice:

When I was a young pastor at my first church in Hopewell, Virginia, a single mother with four children began attending our services.

It became clear very quickly that she had severe financial problems, and several people in the church proposed that we try to help her. By that time I had begun to share my doctoral research with some of the church’s deacons. I pointed out that historically church deacons had given aid in exactly these circumstances. So the deacons visited her and offered to give her church funds for several months to help her pay off outstanding bills. She happily accepted.

Three months later it came out that, instead of paying her bills with the money we had been giving her, she had spent it on sweets and junk food, had gone out to restaurants with her family multiple times, and had bought each child a new bike. Not a single bill had been paid, and she needed more money.

What would you do?

Here’s how one deacon responded:

One of the deacons was furious. “No way do we give her any more,” he said to me. “This is the reason that she’s poor — she’s irresponsible, driven by her impulses! That was God’s money and she wasted it.”

That is exactly how not to respond. It sounds reasonable. “She wasted the money.” But it is arrogant and judgmental.

Here’s why. That very deacon is guilty of doing the very same thing with God’s gifts to him. Every single gift that God gives us we misuse in some way. And yet God keeps giving.

He can say “well, she did it much more flagrantly.” But to say that would be to move too fast and miss the main point.

As sinful people, we are all guilty of squandering God’s gifts to some extent. For example, God gives the gift of speech. Yet we sometimes use that to discourage and talk down to people. He gives us the gift of our minds, but we sometimes use them to covet and disobey his commands. And even the most “responsible” person with his money will make some selfish decisions.

Does God say “well, that’s all then. I’m not going to let you speak any more, or use your mind, or enable you to earn any more money.” No, for Jesus says “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matthew 5:45-46).

And we must also remember that Jesus came to save us from a situation that was entirely our fault. 

Jesus clearly does not have the mindset that when a person wastes something, we need to let them stew in their own juices. The problem with such a view is that it lacks mercy, and God is after mercy in our hearts — not simply absolute justice (Matthew 9:13). The whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that we are commanded to be more than just — we are to be merciful.

If God were simply after absolute justice, he would never and could never have sent Jesus — whose mission was to forgive and show grace. This means that mercy and grace now become an essential part of the righteousness God requires of us — and not simply things like “stewarding money well” (which, oddly enough, is often defined in a way that excludes grace — the very thing God requires his money be used for). 

I think one reason for the centrality of mercy is that mercy most of all demonstrates our utter dependence on God. To fail to be merciful is to fall into thinking that you are the source of your own advantages, rather than God.

Hence, I would suggest that this deacon was actually the greater sinner in this situation than the woman who possibly wasted the money. For the woman is simply guilty (perhaps) of wasting money, whereas the deacon is guilty of lack of mercy. 

But was this woman even in sin at all? This is the second problem with the judgmental attitude of the deacon. It blinded him to seeing perhaps some greater realities going on here that show that the woman’s behavior may have in fact been much more understandable (though contrary to cultural expectations) given the circumstances of her pain. 

In other words, the poor are in great pain, and being in pain changes things drastically. The deacon is looking at the situation without accounting for her pain. Given her pain, her actions actually make a lot of sense. I know it is counter cultural to say that, but this comes to light as we read the rest of what Keller has to say on this story:

I countered with some passages from the Bible on doing justice for the fatherless and needy….[Then, applying some of Jonathan Edwards’ answers to objections to giving to the poor], I got our deacons to continue their aid to the single mother.

As time went on it became clearer to the deacons that the reason she had squandered the church’s money on restaurants and new bikes was that she felt terribly guilty for the poor life she was giving her kids. “It’s so hard being the child of a single mom in this town. And I can’t buy them the nice things other kids get.” When she had the church’s money in hand, she could not resist the temptation to take the children out to restaurants and buy them bikes, because it made her children feel like they were now part of a normal family.

When we began to look at her in this light, her behavior not only made more sense, but our hearts were touched. Her actions were not simply selfish.

When we understand that, we see that the woman was not being quite so irresponsible as the deacon had accused her of.

Now, I’m not saying that this woman should have bought the bikes for her kids and failed to use the money to pay the bills. As Keller also says, though her actions were much more understandable, “nevertheless, she had not kept her word to us, and we showed her that what she had done was shortsighted.”

My point is this: Though her decisions were not necessarily the wisest thing to do, judging her and cutting her off as the deacon initially did was an even greater sin because it lacks compassion. We need to understand this before we go about assessing and judging the way people in poverty allegedly spend their money.

The thing we need to understand about compassion is that it is not just about helping a person in need. The deacon had that — initially — and so we might wrongly think he was being compassionate, because he tried to help at first.

But that is only surface-level compassion. It was a compassion fail because the deacon failed to understand that true compassion has a much deeper dimension.

The way compassion works is that it makes allowances for peoples mistakes. This is the true test of compassion, because it is how God treats us: true compassion makes allowances for mistakes and keeps working with people anyway. 

A compassionate response to the woman would have first realized that there may be larger factors going on here which show that the behavior was not simply selfish. Then, a compassionate response would not have sought to end the aid to her because of the mistakes she made, but would rather have recognized that moving through mistakes is part of the process of growth, and thus must be allowed for.

If she would continue to refuse to pay bills with additional money given, that would indeed be a bad thing. But to refuse to give allowance to people, even when it seems that what they are doing is a bad idea, is very contrary to the nature of compassion and how God treats us. 

Second, true compassion would recognize that perhaps money for bikes and restaurants would be wise to have given her as well. For why should someone be left in pinching want, with just the necessities of life, and withheld some of the fun things in life that most people take for granted? Why do we so often have this minimal approach to helping the poor? Once again, God does not limit us to just the necessities of life, even though we have sinned greatly against him.

Third, and most of all, compassion means this: ditching the superiority complex. The root problem behind the deacon’s thinking was that he was exhibiting the superiority complex. He came in and thought he could judge and assess this woman. This failed to recognize, as we have already seen, that he was surely himself guilty of “abusing” God’s gifts in various ways in his own life — and yet God had not responded to him the same way he was responding to the woman.

Beyond this, though, the superiority complex also manifests itself in assuming you know exactly how another person should proceed. Instead, compassion recognizes a place for individual differences and the need for the poor to be able to utilize their own judgment as much as possible. Using one’s own judgment is part of learning how to escape poverty, and thus if it is denied to the poor, then the entire endeavor of helping them escape poverty is defeated.

And part of learning anything includes making mistakes. That’s why, while seeming “wise” and “responsible,” the deacon’s initial response would actually have kept the woman in poverty because it would have cut her off from the path of learning how to begin using money better — a path which requires the development of judgment, and thus includes mistakes.

 

From Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just:

If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life – you are failing to live justly and righteously.

One of the best sermons of all time is Jonathan Edwards’s “The Duty of Christian Charity: Explained and Defended.” In it, he argues that helping the poor is one of the highest duties of the Christian. It is not a just a small duty, but a great duty — and even heaven and hell lie in the balance with how we respond to the poor (Matthew 25: 41-46). Further, Christians are not just to help the poor from a little bit of their surplus, but are to be abundant, liberal, and utterly generous in giving to the poor (Deuteronomy 15:7-11; Psalm 37:21, 25-26; 112:5; Proverbs 11:24-25; 2 Corinthians 8:1-7; 9:6-11). 

Edwards not only goes into all the passages which command helping the poor as “one of the three chief duties of true religion” (Micah 6:8; Matthew 22:23; 1 John 3:17-19), but also all the commands to do this with great generosity. Then, he goes into the vast promises that God makes to those who help the poor. The promises Edwards outlines are amazing and incredible (Deuteronomy 15:10; Psalm 37:25-26; Proverbs 11:24-25; 12:9; 19:17; 28:27; Ecclesiastes 11:1-2, 6; Isaiah 32:8; Luke 6:35-36; 12:32-34; 14:13-26; 2 Corinthians 9:6-11), and show that the ultimate foundation and motive for helping the poor is not only love but also faith — faith in God to fulfill his promises. (Thus, refusal to help the poor reveals not only a lack of love for people, but also lack of faith.)

Edwards argues that “God, in his providence, generally smiles upon and prospers those men who are of a liberal, charitable, bountiful spirit,” whereas “God has threatened to follow with is curse those who are uncharitable to the poor [consider Proverbs 21:3; Ezekiel 16:49].” In calling Christians to take seriously these promises that God makes to generosity, he encourages us to remember:

It is easy with God to make up to men what they give in charity. Many but little consider how their prosperity or ill success in their outward affairs depends upon Providence. There are a thousand turns of providence, to which their affairs are liable, whereby God may either add to their outward substance, or diminish from it, a great deal more than they are ordinarily called to give to their neighbors.

And:

When men give to the needy, they do as it were sow seed for a crop. When men sow their seed, they seem to throw it away; yet they do not look upon it as thrown away; because, though they expect not the same again, yet they expect much more as the fruit of it….

If it be not certain that they shall have a crop, yet they are willing to run the venture of it; for that is the ordinary way wherein men obtain increase. So it is when persons give to the poor; though the promises of gaining thereby, in our outward circumstances, perhaps are not absolute; yet it is as much the ordinary consequence of it, as increase is of sowing seed.

At the end of the sermon, Edward then lists and answers the chief objections people make about helping the poor. Edwards’s answers are penetrating and especially important, because I think most of us see ourselves in many of these objections. He shows that these objections are based on bad theology (best case) or just plain excuses (worst case).

In light of Ann Coulter’s insensitive article on the Ebola doctor (and see my response), I thought it would be helpful to post my notes on this section of Edwards’s sermon. While he obviously isn’t directly addressing Ann Coulter, Coulter’s assertion that Christians should focus on helping America rather than going overseas is simply a species of some of these objections.

More than that, though, is that this discussion in general simply points out the importance of making sure we all have a good theology of helping the poor. Time and again I have seen people (and churches!) refuse to help those in great need on the basis of some of these objections. That is a true disgrace to the name of Christ — not to mention inhumane. Such a thing is worst of all when done “in the name of reason and sensibility.”

Yet, many of these objections do sound reasonable at first. The biblical call to the poor is in some sense very counter intuitive. That’s why it’s so important that we not settle for stage one thinking, but probe deeply into what the Bible actually teaches. If we don’t do that, we easily end up refusing to help those in legitimate need on the basis of what Edwards shows to be superficial and unbiblical objections such as “they aren’t in extreme need yet” or “they brought this on themselves through their own fault” or “they haven’t asked for help; I only help people who ask.”

For that reason, as Christians we need to make sure we have a better theology of helping the poor. Edwards’s sermon is a great start, especially his answers to these 11 objections.

There is a whole theology of helping the poor in these notes. Edwards’s answers reflect an incredible grasp on the biblical teaching on why we should help those in need, and why it is actually hypocritical to refuse to help the poor even on grounds such as “they don’t deserve it” or “they are not in extreme need.”

And for those who love theology, considering Edwards’s answers to these objections is an incredibly sharpening and even enjoyable theological discovery in its own right. His answers (and the whole sermon) are an incredible manifestation of the truth that the best theology is ultimately very practical, and right practice is ultimately highly theological.

Here are my notes:

 

1. If I give to the poor, it will not be with a right spirit, and so I would get nothing by it.

You could say this about any other duty of religion as well. You are to obey and seek the heart from God.

 

2. If I am liberal and generous, I will make a righteousness of it, and it shall do more hurt than good.

But you could also say this about any other moral duty.

God has counseled you to do this, and doesn’t he know what’s best?

 

3. I have given to the poor in the past, but never found myself the better for it.

Perhaps you looked for the fulfillment of the promise too soon. And perhaps you have actually been sparing and grudging.

The promises are not made to every man who gives any thing at all to the poor. The promises are made to mercy and liberality.

If you give by compulsion and little, that may be more an expression of covetousness than generosity.

How can you tell how much greater calamities and losses you might have had, if you had not been generous?

“If you expected to meet with no trouble in the world, because you gave to the poor, you mistook the matter.”

And how can you tell what blessings God has yet in reserve for you, if you continue in well doing? The time may come when you see it remarkably.

We should not say “I cannot afford to give,” for he who observes the winds shall not ever sow. Ecc 11:4. And the context there is giving.

Do not grow weary in doing good, for in due season you will reap: Gal 6:9

 

4. We may object to charity against particular persons, that we are not obliged to give them anything, for though they are needy, they are not yet in extreme need. They do meet with difficulty, but not so as they cannot live.

“It does not answer the rules of Christian charity, to relieve those only who are reduced to extremity.”

a. We are commanded to love one another as brothers and show pity: 1 Pt 3:8

Is it like brothers to refuse to help one another, except when extreme need?

“The rule of the gospel is, that when we see our brother under any difficulty or burden, we should be ready to bear the burden with him”: Gal 6:2

“The Christian spirit will make us apt to sympathize with our neighbor, when we see him under any difficulty.” Ro 12:15

“When our neighbor is in difficulty, he is afflicted; and we ought to have such a spirit of love to him, as to be afflicted with him in his affliction. And if we are afflicted with him, then it will follow, that we ought to be ready to relieve him; because, if we are afflicted with him, in relieving him we relieve ourselves.”

“Christianity teaches us to be afflicted in our neighbor’s affliction; and nature teaches us to relieve ourselves when afflicted.”

We are fellow travelers together. If brothers are on a journey together, and one meets with need, don’t they all help?

We should not be overly exact and fearful lest we give others too much.

b. Loving our neighbor only when he is in extreme need does not fit with the fact that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.

We do not wait until we ourselves are in extreme need to meet our own needs; so neither should we wait until our neighbor is in extreme need.

 

5. We may object against charity to someone because he “deserves not that people should be kind to him.” He has a temper, an ungrateful spirit, and treated people poorly.

a. But Christ teaches us to love even our enemies.

And the parable of the Good Samaritan shows that our enemies are included in the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

b. We are commanded to love one another as Christ has loved us John 13:34

This opens up our duty to love in a new manner, and goes to a further degree than loving our neighbor as yourself.

Christ loved us so as to be willing to deny himself, and suffer greatly, in order to help us. So also we should be willing to deny ourselves, in order to help one another.

Christ loved us though we were far below him.

Christ loved us though we were unable to repay him.

Christ loved us, though we were evil and hateful and not deserving any good.

Christ loved us though we were his enemies and had treated him ill.

c. Many particular rules also oblige us in this way.

We are to be kind to the unthankful and evil, thus following the example of God Mt 5:45

 

6. I have nothing to spare

a. Some are not obliged to give by reason of their own circumstances

“For instance, if there be a contribution for the poor, they are not obliged to join in the contribution, who are in as much need as those are for whom the contribution is made.” “It savors of ridiculous vanity in them to contribute with oth3ers for such as are not more needy than they. It savors of a proud desire to conceal their own circumstances, and an affectation of having them accounted above what they in truth are.”

b. There are scarcely any who may make this objection, as they interpret it

“There is no person who may not  say, he has not more than enough for himself, as he may mean by enough.” He may mean he has not more than he desires, or more than he can dispose of to his own advantage, or not so much but that, if he had anything less, he would be in worse circumstances than he is now. He could live if he had less, but not well.

All can say they have not enough for themselves—rich, middle class, and poor. “Thus there will be found none to give to the poor.”

c. “In many cases we may, by the rules of the gospel, be obliged to give to others, when we cannot do it without suffering ourselves.”

For we should be willing to suffer with our neighbor, and take part of his burden on ourselves; otherwise “how is that rule of bearing one another’s burdens fulfilled?”

Though we may not have much excess, we may be obliged to afford relief to others who are in much greater necessity: Lk 3:11

They who are very poor may be obliged to give for the relief of those who are in even greater distress than they.

The Macedonians were generous in their giving even though they had almost nothing: 2 Cor 8:1,2

d. A farmer who is having a hard time having enough to eat will still sow seed that he may be able to eat in the future.

Giving “doth not tend to poverty, but the contrary; it is not the way to diminish our substance, but to increase it.”

“All the difficulty in this matter is in trusting God with what we give, in trusting his promises. If men could but trust the faithfulness of God to his own promises, they would give freely.”

 

7. We may object that we do not know whether a particular person is an object of charity or not. We do not fully know their circumstances or what sort of person they are. Or how he came to be in want, and whether it was by his own idleness and wastefulness. Thus they argue that they cannot be obliged, until they know these things.

a. This was Nabal’s objection, for which he is condemned in Scripture: 1 Sam 25

“This story is doubtless told us partly for this end, to discountenance too great a scrupulosity as to the object on whom we bestow our charity, and the making of this merely an objection against charity to others, that we do not certainly know their circumstances.”

“It is better to give to several that are not objects of charity, than to send away empty one that is.”

b. We are commanded to be kind to strangers whom we know not, nor their circumstances.

We are not to neglect to entertain strangers, for by such some have entertained angels: Heb 13:2

 

8. But we are not obliged to give to the poor, till they ask. If any one has need, let him come and make it known to me.

a. “It is surely the most charitable, to relieve the needy in that way wherein we shall do them the greatest kindness. Now it is certain that we shall do them a greater kindness by inquiring into their circumstances, and relieving them, without pitting them upon begging.”

There is none of us but who, if we were in the situation, would look upon it more kind in our neighbors to inquire into our circumstances and help us of their own accord.

“To put our neighbors upon begging in order to relief, is painful.” “It is more charitable, more brotherly, more becoming Christians and the disciples of Jesus, to do without. I think this is self-evident, and needs no proof.”

b. This is not agreeable to the character of the liberal man in Scripture, for it is said that he devises liberal things. Is 32:8

“It is not to devise liberal things, if we neglect all liberality until the poor come a begging to us.” “But to inquire who stand in need of our charity, and to contrive to relieve them in the way that shall do them the greatest kindness, that is to devise liberal things.”

c. This is not how we would treat our own brother or sister. And Christians are commanded to love as brothers.

d. If we heard of a people where they took diligence to identify needs proactively and meet them, wouldn’t it appear well to us? Wouldn’t we all commend that?

 

9. “He has brought himself to this by his own fault.”

But what do you mean by fault?

a. Do you mean lack of a natural faculty to manage affairs to his advantage?

If so, that is to be considered as his calamity. Such a faculty is a gift that God gives to some, and not others. It is not owing to themselves. And it will be a very suitable way for you to show your thankfulness, to help those to whom that gift is denied, and let them share the benefit of it with you.

b. Even if it is by some oversight on their part, this does not free us

If we should refuse to help them because of that, it would be for us to make their inconsiderateness an unpardonable crime, which is quite contrary to the rules of the gospel, which insist so much upon forgiveness.

And we would not resent such an oversight in any for whom we have a dear affection, such as our children. We would not refuse to help them.

c. If they came to want by a vicious idleness and prodigality, we still are not excused from all obligation to relieve them, unless they continue in those vices.

If they continue not, the gospel directs us to forgive them, and if their fault be forgiven, then it will not remain to be a bar in the way of our charitably relieving them.

If we do otherwise, we shall act in a manner very contrary to the rule of loving one another as Christ has loved us. Christ loved us by laying himself out to relieve us from the misery which we brought on ourselves by our own folly and wickedness.

d. If they continue in the same course still, that still does not excuse us from charity to their families that are innocent.

And if we cannot relieve those of their family without their having some of it, that not be a bar in the way of our charity.

If we look upon that which the heads of the families have of what we give to be entirely lost, yet it is better that we lose something of our estate than suffer those who are really proper objects of charity to remain without relief.

 

10. “But others do not do their duty; if they did, the poor would be sufficiently supplied.”

But we are to relieve those who are in need even though it be another’s fault.

“If our neighbor be poor, though others be to blame that it is so, yet that excuses us not from helping him.”

And notice also the parable of the good Samaritan.

 

11. The law makes provision for the poor, and the government

This is built on two false suppositions.

a. It is a false assumption that the towns are obliged by law to relieve every one who otherwise would be an object of charity

It was never the design of the law to cut off all occasion for Christian charity.

It is fit that the law should make provision for those that have no estates of their own. “They are in extreme necessity of relief, and therefore it is fit that there should be something sure for them to depend on,” and by this he means the government and law. For “voluntary charity in this corrupt world is an uncertain thing.”

But it was not the design of the law to make such provision for all who are in need, as to leave no room for Christian charity.

b. The town does not always in fact do this.

PovertyCure now as an app that makes their content easily available for your iPhone.

I love PovertyCure’s vision because they actually understand how to overcome poverty. It can be done — as long as we understand the correct principles (which most initiative so far haven’t). So I highly recommend checking out their site as well as their app.

Here’s their vision:

PovertyCure is an international coalition of over 250 partner organizations and 1 million individuals spanning 143 countries and counting. We produce films and educational resources advancing partnership-based solutions to poverty that challenge the status quo and champion the creative potential of the human person.

In our efforts to combat poverty worldwide, we too often fall into paternalistic, donor-recipient models that fail to distinguish short-term relief and long-term sustainable development. Oftentimes this approach can have tragic unintended consequences. Our call to solidarity with the poor means more than providing institutional assistance and aid. It demands a deeper view of the human person predicated on an appreciation for the creative capacity of each and every human person. Effective compassion situates those afflicted by poverty not as objects of our charity, but as subjects and protagonists of their own integral development. When we understand people as made in the image of God and endowed with his divine creative spark, it changes absolutely everything about how we understand poverty and development.

It’s time to shift our focus from aid to enterprise, from paternalism to partnerships, from poverty alleviation to real human flourishing.

Very, very well said by economist Michael Novak, quoted in Compassion International’s short booklet Poverty:

Economists affirm that the chief cause of the wealth of nations is not material at all, but knowledge, skill, know-how — in short, those acts and habits of discovery, invention, organization, and forethought that economists now describe as “human capital,” which is located in the human spirit and produced by the spiritual activities of education and training and mentoring. Human capital also includes moral habits, such as hard work, cooperativeness, social trust, alertness, honesty, and social habits, such as respect for the rule of law.

As a result, as the booklets says right before this, the true engine of sustainable and transformational development among the poor is the development of people’s internal capacities — knowledge, hope, social connection, diligence, and so forth. It is through fostering the growth of these capacities that people are enabled through their own efforts “to improve their external context.”

This is why helping the poor is about far more than giving fruit baskets at Christmas. Aid, while it has its place and is essential in emergency situations, does not go to the root cause of poverty and that’s why it will never provide the ultimate solution. An exclusively aid-based approach to fighting poverty is based in the false notion that wealth is produced by externals, rather than bringing people empowerment and helping them grow in their capacity to create, identify, and seize opportunities and fight against the oppressive situations in which they often find themselves.