Echoes in Eternity

This is a really good column by the son of Nate Saint, who was killed by the Waodani along with Jim Elliot and other missionaries in 1956. For more good reading on this subject, check out When Helping Hurts.

Often charity to help the poor attracts more people into poverty. One example I have noticed takes place when North Americans try to care for the needs of orphans in cultures different from our own. If you build really nice orphanages and provide good food and a great education, lots more children in those places become orphans. I see this happen all over. When we attempt to eradicate poverty through charity, we often attract more people into “needing” charity. It is possible to create need where it did not exist by projecting our standards, values and perception of need onto others.

So what is poverty? We in the “Wealthy West” have little understanding of “poverty.” As our standard of living has risen in developed countries, our perception of poverty has changed.

Consider how our definition of an orphan is different from most other cultures. In the U.S., you are an orphan if your mother and father have died. In South America (where I grew up), as in other contexts where extended family structures are intact, you are not really considered an orphan as long as you have a living grandparent, uncle, aunt or older brother or sister who is capable of helping take care of you. So when North Americans build an orphanage in South America, we “create” orphans by tempting family members to take advantage of our well-intentioned largess. This is seldom in the best interest of those children who are “orphaned” by our desire to meet what we perceive as their need.

Yesterday was the 113th birthday of the late great RG LeTourneau, the founder of my alma mater, LeTourneau University. In honor of the man, Donald Miller wrote a short post on his blog. I thought I would add some other interesting information about RG. For one, he holds more U.S. patents (mostly in heavy construction and earthmoving technology) than anyone except Thomas Edison. His equipment served as 70% of the U.S. Army's road-making equipment during WWII. He also took his technology over to Africa and made hundreds of roads into central Africa. He worked closely with several presidents, including George H.W. Bush. He also is credited with revolutionizing heavy equipment, including the invention of mobile offshore drilling platforms (a model of which can be seen in the museum on the LeTourneau campus). But probably the most astounding fact about the man is that he lived on only 10% of his income and gave the rest away to missions around the world. An amazing man!

This is one of the best discussions I've heard around the topic of combating poverty.

Organizations like this one and this one give me hope that Christians will finally get a clue and (hopefully) lead the West in properly attacking the problem of poverty and hunger.

"Christians can have great ministries serving the poor and the oppressed and in so doing can have remarkable opportunities to share the gospel. And yet still the history of Christianity shows that when Christians do this, the gospel quickly becomes secondary and the work itself becomes the gospel. I still see the Bible primarily emphasizing charity given to other believers; when I look at Acts and the epistles, this is what I see most--Christians helping other Christians as a sign of love and fraternity. Now of course there will be some who engage in humanitarian work outside the context of the local church, but it seems to me that the closer we come to making this a necessary part of the Christian mission, the more likely we are to see the gospel diminish." - Tim Challies

This New York Times column shows why just throwing money at Third World poverty will continue to reap nothing but more poverty. It's even more true in the U.S. Many times, economic poverty is led by the nose ring of impoverishment of the soul. You can't cure the former without first fixing the latter.

"Charity - giving to the poor - is an essential part of Christian morality... I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them." - C.S. Lewis