WHEN HELPING HURTS
I’ve had When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself for quite some time. This is my second copy. I shared my first copy with someone and never got to read it. Go figure! Keith Vandegrift, an associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Boulder used it in an adult Sunday School class last year. Flatirons Community Church, also located in Boulder County, incorporates the concepts from When Helping Hurts in their efforts to come along the under-resourced.
“One of the major premises of this book,” according to authors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, “is that until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low income people is likely to do more harm than good.” They continue, “One of the biggest problems in many poverty alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically poor – their feelings of inferiority and shame.”
Mathematically speaking, Corbett and Fikkert’s thesis can be reduced (pun intended) to this: Material Definition of Poverty + God-complexes of Materially Non-Poor + Feelings of Materially Poor = Harm to Both Materially Poor and Non-Poor.
Jesus his disciples were all about helping the poor. They endeavored to meet not only the physical needs but also the spiritual needs of those they encountered. “Simply stated, Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom in word and deed, so the church must do the same. Hence, it is not surprising that throughout history God’s people have been commanded to follow their King’s footsteps into places of brokenness.”
The Gospel, aka Good News, as shared by Jesus and set-forth in the Bible is transformational. Many of the church universal’s efforts to alleviate long-term poverty – which the authors’ term development – lack the transformation piece and therefore fail. It’s an interesting concept.
FORGIVING THE UNFORGIVABLE
Forgiving the Unforgivable has been out for more than a decade. Not unlike the late M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, it has taken me a really long time to read this book. Books that address topics that address personal pain are like that for me. In Forgiving the Unforgivable, Dr. David Stoop steps readers through the process of forgiving people for the truly awful things – think rape, incest, domestic violence, child abuse etc. – that have been done unto them.
Forgiveness is one of the central tenets of Christianity. Forgiveness also is healthy. According to Stoop, “We need to understand that our choosing the path of forgiveness is not only important for our spiritual growth, but it is also important to us in terms of our physical and emotional health.”
While forgiving someone who has done something awful to you is healthy, that does not mean that the process of doing so is either quick or easy. Stoop makes ten statements regarding forgiveness that are sometimes misunderstood. I found this helpful:
#1 – When forgiving, I should always try to forgive and forget. False.
#2 – It’s good to get angry when I’m trying to forgive. True.
#3 – I should give up all hard feelings toward the person I forgive. True.
#4 – I should try to forgive others quickly and completely. False.
#5 – Over time, my hurt will go away and my forgiveness of the other person will take care of itself. False.
#6 – If I forgive, I will never have feelings of hatred against those who have hurt me. False.
#7 – If I forgive, I am in some way saying that what happened to me didn’t matter. False.
#8 – Forgiveness is basically a one-time decision. Either I forgive or I don’t. False.
#9 – I can’t forgive until the person who hurt me repents. False.
#10 – I should forgive even if the person who hurt me does not repent. True.
I rarely read anything more detailed than a tuna label.
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