If you’re a Christian, you can’t help but read the Bible and be overwhelmed by God’s concern for the poor, weak and marginalized in society.
He tells us to be concerned for the widow and the orphan. Jesus himself said in Matthew 25 that, “As you did to one of the least of these, you did to me” meaning that if we gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty and clothes to the naked, it’s as if we did it to Jesus!
There are over 2,100 verses that describe God’s love and heart for the poor, weak and infirmed.
As Christians, I don’t think any one of us would deny that we should help the poor – and yet, we oftentimes don’t have a heart for the poor, we don’t care like we should that there are many without proper food, shelter or healthcare.
Why is it that God has such a heart for the disenfranchised and we don’t?
Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of us who are doing some great things to help, but what’s the best way to help the poor?
I write this as someone asking these very questions to myself and trying to break through some stereotypes that I have regarding the poor.
For example, should you give money to a homeless person? Should you give money to someone in need only if they deserve the money? Should you provide food, clothing and shelter with strings attached? Should we just give money to organizations and let them handle everything?
My goal with this post is to get us thinking beyond ourselves to try to stir in our hearts (and my heart) a deep love and passion for loving our neighbors as ourselves.
So let’s take a look at a few categories that we may fall in to when we approach helping the poor.
Help Those Who Deserve to Be Helped
Oftentimes, we take an approach to helping the poor that says, “you got yourself into this mess, you need to get yourself out – and then I’ll help you”
In other words, you don’t deserve to be helped because you’ve made some bad choices, or you have dependency problems, therefore I won’t help you until you first help yourself.
Or, this camp will also say, “I’ll only help when things get really, really bad because I want you to suffer the consequences of your poor decisions”
So, essentially, they view the poor as ones who have brought their poverty upon themselves – and only until they prove themselves worthy, or if they are destitute enough, then they can some help.
Here’s the problem with this category – if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves we would surely help ourselves long before we are destitute, and we’d surely help ourselves work through our bad choices long before it gets too bad.
We withhold mercy because we feel the poor needs to prove themselves! What if God gave His mercy that way?
We’d all be in big trouble.
Help Whether They Deserve It or Not
This camp can be just the opposite. They give to the poor no matter what – and they keep giving, sometimes to the same people, and the poor makes no progress.
This camp is only concerned about providing mercy, which is great – but at some point if the poor is not willing to help themselves and are only looking for handouts, then we become an enabler to their problems.
Sometimes churches will get themselves into this situation where they give money to an impoverished person with no strings attached and the same person comes back a week or two later. The church feels bad because this person is in really bad shape and they give more money.
The next thing you know you’ve got more and more people coming to the church to receive aid because word got out that this church gives out money.
Here’s the problem with this category. Providing aid to the poor without any demands of progress will actually result in more negative affects and create bigger dependency problems than if no money is given.
Help by Providing Relief and Development
So, what is the best way to help the poor? The first thing to realize is this – it’s only by God’s grace we are not in that situation. We need to be humble. You didn’t choose your family or the way your parents raised you, or if your parents got divored, or the town where you were brought up. Many of the things that affected who you are as a person was not your choice. Some were, but many were not.
Secondly, I think we need to be discerning. We need to discern what the needs of the poor really are. Initially it’s money, but what is causing the money problems. What’s the root?
If they are having difficulty budgeting and blowing their money on frivolous things, I think we owe it to them to confront that and try to teach them some basic budgeting and money skills.
If they have no money because they can’t hold a job, but the reason they can’t hold a job is because they can’t afford transportation, maybe we need to look into buying a used car for them to help get them on their feet.
We need to be ready to provide relief – money as mercy up front – and development – helping them with life, job, social and money skills.
This is the hardest route to take. It means we have to talk to them and get to know them. It means we have to find out what’s going on and be willing to get a little messy ourselves!
In my opinion, being willing to provide relief and development provides the best chance of survival and progression for the poor, not only physically, but spiritually also.
When you help a poor person in this way and model Christ’s love, they will be more willing to listen to you.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Some good thoughts and a good summary of the different camps.
I would ask, why are we COMMANDED to help the poor? What is the root of everything that we are commanded in the New Testament? I would say that it is to further his kingdom by displaying Christ’s love to the world. We aren’t just giving to be nice, we are giving to be an example of Christ’s love to the world.
Making disciples should be the end game. I don’t know about you, but God kept loving me, and loving me, and loving me, and loving me when I didn’t deserve it. I still don’t.
Like you said, what if God loved us the way we love others? When I am confronted with an opportunity to give, and I start to ask myself questions about how that person is going to use the money, I try to remind myself “who the heck are you to judge this person’s motive, and who the heck are you to put requirements on someone to recieve God’s love?”
One last thought – It’s God’s money, not mine.
My heart really goes out to the poor and those in need. I pray that we as Christians begin doing more to help instead of walking/driving by because “it’s not our problem” when it actually is. What you do to the least, you’ve done to God.
Gary, good point about making disciples and demonstrating Christ’s love. God’s glory is really the end game. He gets glory from the making of disciples and the demonstration of His love to others – especially those who can’t ehlp themselves.
It’s because He’s been so generous to us that we can even think about being generous to others and live that out!
I’ve been extremely poor, and I was homeless with my 4 kids for almost a year, 7 years ago. The reasons why are not important. At that time, I thought all homeless people were drug addicts or alcoholics, and imagine my surprise when I found it was mostly families in the shelter we stayed in for awhile. During that time, I have never felt more ashamed or more judged by others, including ministers who said things like, “I thank God I’m not in your shoes!”
God brought my family close, and the kids and I still have a wonderful relationship. I also got out of that situation and was able to buy a house.
What I learned, though, is that it is not up to me to judge what someone is going to do with the money I give them. I don’t care if someone scams me for gas money, I will give it to them if I have it. I don’t care if they want to take their child to MacDonald’s, if I have it, I will give it, because going out to eat is a wonderful treat when you don’t have anything. Like Gary said in the first reply, it’s not my money. It’s God’s. My job is to give. I’ll let Him sort out the motives and hearts of those I give money or food to.
The Life You Can Save, by Peter Singer.
It’s everything one needs to figure out how to best save the lives of individuals living in extreme poverty.
Life-changing read (for me at least)!
http://tiny.cc/fJIyL
One way to help the poor is to not become one of them. Get out of debt, save and give. Get out of the bondage of debt so we are able to help others. Begin giving and tithing now, even while in debt.
Cindy, thanks so much for sharing your story – I think many times we are way to quick to judge (myself included) and way to slow to sit down and listen to people’s stories.
I’m so glad God was able to bring you out of that situation and that the relationships with your kids are close!
A while ago I was in a Bible class and the topic was welfare. The punch of the lesson was when it became clear that people generally do not like the government program of welfare; however, it is a program that should have been instituted by the church. The church does do a good job of helping people in times of need, but apparently not enough if the government has to step in and require us to help more.
When giving to homeless I will first offer to buy what they need if it is possible, like a meal. If I can’t, I give some money. I have not always done this. But I came to the realization that I simply do not know their suffering and the events that preceded their current situation. I have talked with many homeless and some of them are only one bad day away from me.
One way a lot of us can help the poor is the first help ourselves. As stated in 1 Timothy 5:8, not providing for your family is worse than being an unbeliever.
Getting yourself out of debt and out of financial bondage yourself will allow you to help the poor even more. Both with your time and your additional resources.
Great summary of all the viewpoints in this article!
We need good steady jobs that pay a living wage. Most everyone I know who is poor is that way because they can’t find steady work that pays a living wage. Not because they blow their money (they don’t) or because they’re on drugs (they’re not), but because they don’t have ‘ins’ in the job world and someone else always gets hired over them, because someone else knows the boss personally or someone else is more experienced. So we just keep applying, and trying to get hired somewhere full-time, to no avail.
Giving a fish just doesn’t help long-term. We need to be able to access the pond to fish for ourselves.
Good topic. I’ve pointed out to my readers that, like it or not, people will ask or wonder if they “deserve” whatever financial assistance they get. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/budget/2010/01/when-is-it-your-responsibility-to-be-frugal/
Giving to the poor is not a question in my mind, it must be done. The larger question is what should be the Christian’s responsibility to see the situation that made them poor come to an end. I am thankful that many local shelters work to move people out of their situation and back into productive lives. I am disappointed that we keep sending relief dollars back into the same areas of the world over and over, and leave development projects that could break the cycle unfunded. While we will never see every poor person put into a self-sustaining situation, we need to balance our focus.
This is not a new problem. See if you can get a copy of “How the Other Half Lives”. Handouts don’t work unless there’s some measure of “coming along side” to help. Accountability, sure. Understanding, absolutely. The scripture has parameters in place, such as the definition of widows, the institution of the deaconate, responsibilities of men for their own households, not charging usury, and even the concept of gleaning.
One of the saddest things we’ve experienced is criticism when we’ve had financial hits. We are very frugal. My husband is a pastor and his position does not give him the freedom to ask for help, or get a second job. In a previous call, a pastor’s wife from another church found out our need. Their church gave us some money and we were told by our leadership to give it back because it embarrassed them. So we did. I had hoped our church would help. They didn’t give us anything.
I think the good coming out of difficult experiences is we’re much more sensitive to other people’s struggles. (Like Cindy said.) Since we’re still in a tight place (though not nearly as rough as before), we are very careful about how we give to those in need from our personal resources. He calls us all to faithfulness and He commends both generosity and discernment. So there’s a balance.
I think the problem I have is that I’m never sure the money is going to be put to good use. I love helping animal shelters with donations and giving food to hungry dogs, cats, etc., but with humans, who is to say we aren’t wasting money? I would hate to see my hard-earned money be spent on something wasteful. If I could be sure these people would put my money to good use, I would have absolutely no problem helping. Until then, I’ll keep helping the animals with donations.
Jason, thanks for this post. My work deals directly with people who are economically impoverished. Every day, I interact with people in an urban setting who are homeless or on the verge of homelessness. The reasons of economic poverty are diverse and can be very complex. It is easy to assume that the poor are poor because of slothfulness, lack of self-control, addictions, etc. These things are true, but certainly not always. For others, it is easy to assume that poverty largely results from social injustice i.e. government structures that suppress certain people, corporate greed, etc. These things can be true, but certainly not always. The Bible addresses both paths to economic poverty – Proverbs highlights the personal issues that lead to lack of sustenance and many of the prophets warned against the social injustice of the Israelite leadership. Discernment is key here as you stated.
With all of my clients, I find one thing that is more unique than their economic situation – their relational quotient. What do I mean? Poverty is more foundationally relational than it is financial. None of my clients have healthy relationships with God, self, family, or friends. We fail to understand poverty, when we only, or even primarily understand it financially. It is in right relationship with God, self, and others, that we gain wisdom and wholeness in all areas of life, one being financial. Seeing poverty in this light enables us to relate more realistically with the financially distressed. It breaks down the barriers of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ and demands more compassion as every person can relate to relational poverty in some capacity. The book ‘When Helping Hurts’ is very helpful in understanding poverty this way.
Jason,
Thanks so much for starting this discussion. Here’s three things that really helped me. They are different types of suggestions, but I think they make a big difference.
1. Do a police ride along at night. These are harder to these days, but if you find the right police station they will let you see what happens in the city at night.
2. Do visitation in Section 8 housing complexes. Sitting with the poor and hearing their stories is amazing.
3. Ask someone who works in an inner city ministry about their lesson and experiences. Bonus – spend the day working with them first.
Great comments here everyone – I love this type of discussion to get us thinking a bit.
Jon, I really liked what you said about the relational quotient. That is something that really needs to be highlighted more in discussions like this.
I think it was Tim Keller, author and Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian in NY that said poverty is essentially being “neighborless”. It’s the idea that not having good, quality relationships leads to poverty.
Relationships are a huge factor in spiritual maturity as well as overall “life success” for lack of a better term. Quality relationships provide accountability, direction and joy to name a few. It is quite sad when folks are missing out on that!
Olivia, I’m sorry your church responded the way it did. Receiving help should not be embarrassing – we should realize that in the early church people sold their possessions to help everyone in need – it wasn’t an embarrassment, but rather an opportunity to demonstrate the generosity and kindness of Christ!
Excellent article! We are stewards of our money, because it’s not really our money; therefore, we should use it wisely, both in purchases, investments and charity.
Additionally, our attitude about giving is even more important that how much we give (See Luke 18:9-14).
These aren’t rebuttals, obviously, just my two zinc Lincolns worth. This is a great article and these things should be brought up and discusses. Well done.
Most of the homeless poor are in their 50′s or 60′s. They need cash more than anything else, with the exception of a place to live and a phone. For a church to just refer them to other social organizations without cash, like lutheran churches I know, is not doing enough.