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"What Do You Mean by Fault?" On Helping the Poor Who Seem to be Making Bad Decisions

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Sometimes people argue that we should not help those in need when the need is a result of “their own fault.”

This is a deadly view. For example, imagine if Christ had said that about us? “I will not go help them and deliver them from their sins — they brought their misery upon themselves by their own disobedience. I will give to the good angels instead.” To refuse to help someone on the grounds that they “did this to themselves” is a denial of the gospel itself.

This view, however, is not just deadly; often, it has just plain misunderstood the situation.

Sometimes a person’s situation is indeed a result of their own sin or poor choices. But very often when we think the person has brought their difficult situation upon themselves, our assessment is actually incorrect. What looks like “their own fault” is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

The great 18th century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards brings this out very well in his sermon “The Christian Duty of Charity to the Poor.” In answering a set of “objections to giving to the poor,” one of the objections Edwards takes up is the objection that “he has brought himself to want by his own fault.” Edwards’ response is incredibly insightful:

In reply, it must be considered what you mean by his fault. If you mean want [lack] of a natural faculty to manage affairs to his advantage, that is to be considered as his calamity. Such a faculty is a gift that God bestows on some, and not on others; and it is not owing to themselves.

You ought to be thankful that God has given you such a gift, which he has denied to the person in question. 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.

This is as reasonable as that he to whom Providence has imparted sight, should be willing to help him to whom sight is denied, and that he should have the benefit of the sight of others, who has none of his own….

Edwards’ point here is deepened by modern research, which now has found that “being broke saps mental bandwidth.” A recent study has found that “just being broke, in and of itself, damages abilities to make good decisions in a way roughly equivalent to losing 13 IQ points — or constantly losing a night of sleep.”

In other words, in many cases “rather than the poor being poor because they make bad decisions, they make bad decisions because they are poor.”

This shows us just how important it is that we take Edwards’ counsel here. If some of those who are poor seem to be making bad decisions and we refuse to help lest we fear that we will be “aiding and abetting” their “bad decisions,” we will actually be making the problem worse. Hence, the solution is to get off the high-horse of our superiority complex and actually help tangibly, financially, and concretely. Counterintuitively, giving financial help in spite of the appearance of some bad decisions is often the way to help restore good decision-making.

This study also helps guard us from one mistake we could make in applying Edwards’ point. Though it would be totally contrary to what Edward’s is saying, one mis-application we could make is to begin setting ourselves up as judges of people who are in need who continually begin to stereotype the poor by too quickly saying to themselves “this person must intrinsically lack the ability to manage their finances well.” As Edwards’ points out, of course, there are some people that simply have less ability in this area. However, as this study helps us see, there are some people who are suffering not a permanent lack of ability in that area, but a temporary lack, simply because that can be the very effect that poverty has on a person.

What is the solution? The solution is not to set yourself up as the person’s superior, because you are “wise” and they are “unwise” and clearly in need of your superior understanding and guidance. The solution is not to begin giving the person advice. The solution is to stop being afraid of actually giving money to the poor, and to stop tying so many conditions to it. The solution is to have an approach to helping the poor that is based on respect for the individual, dignity, and empowerment. It means we need to see those who are in poverty as capable individuals. This means being willing to give money, among many other things, to help those who are poor get out of the condition of their poverty and, among those who may be experiencing this phenomenon, thereby enabling their decision-making faculties to heal back to normal.

In other words, sometimes the solution to poverty is not to seek to educate the person so that they can then get themselves out of poverty, but rather help them get out of poverty first, in which case we will find that the problem the whole time was not lack of decision-making skills at all, but simply the nature of poverty itself.

Don't Forget!

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Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

maintain the right of the afflicted and destitute.

Rescue the weak and needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

— Psalm 82:3-4

Help 500 Children in the Developing World for $25

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I saw this on Food for the Hungry’s Twitter feed the other day. What a great opportunity: For $25, you can provide medication and everything else necessary to deworm 500 children who have been infected with parasites due to poor sanitation.

Here’s the description on their site:

In the areas we go, dirty water, lack of sanitation and poor hygiene result in almost every child being infected with parasites. Malnutrition and even death can result. The good news is — on average, it costs about a nickel to deworm 1 child. Treatment keeps a child healthy for 6 months or until clean water and sanitation become available.

There is no reason not to do this. For a very small gift, you are able to make a very large impact in the lives of a large number of people. If you can, up your donation to 100 and help 2,000 people.

The True Meaning of Justice in the Workplace

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Biblically speaking, to be just means to use your strength on behalf of the weak.

Justice most certainly includes an overall “fairness” and truth and integrity and honesty and refusing to show partiality.

But the essence of justice goes beyond that.

The essence of justice is that those with greater authority and influence are to use their stronger position in service of those who are in a weaker situation.

Helping those in a “weaker situation” might mean helping those suffering from poverty or sickness or some other harm, but it doesn’t have to be. It means helping anyone without the influence of formal authority you have. Which means, if you are a manager or leader in an organization (or in politics or anywhere), that it includes those who work for you.

Some people think that the biblical commands to be just in this sense and their corollary, radical generosity, do not apply inside the bounds of an organization. Inside an organization, “business rules” apply, which is interpreted to mean that people must be impersonal (a distorted notion of the concept of being “impartial”) and that doing things for your own advantage primarily is correct and right.

But this is wrong. The biblical commands to be generous and to be just apply in all areas of our lives, without exception. The Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12) and commands to be merciful as God is merciful (generous to all, especially the undeserving, Matthew 5:43-48) do not cease to apply at our jobs and in our work and in our organizations. They are not simply for the personal realm.

Their manifestation may look different in each area of life. But these principles of justice and generosity still apply in every area of life and we must be diligent to apply them in all areas.

So, here’s one example. Let’s take the workplace. Being just and generous in the workplace means that, if you are in authority over people, you use that authority in the service of everyone you interact with — including those in the organization who directly work for you, those around the organization who don’t work for you but you are in a position to influence, and those outside the organization that you interact with. It means you see yourself as the servant of all, and that you see your authority and position and role as existing not as some statement of how great you are or how hard you’ve worked, but rather as existing for the sake of those around you. Your authority exists to do them good.

Now, immediately here we run into “the fallacy of doing good,” which is the tendency of people to act contrary to the purpose and role of their vocations in in their attempts to “do good,” which ends up making things worse. One example might be a chef at a restaurant who gives away dozens of free meals every night out of a spirit of generosity, when it’s not his restaurant and the owner has not given him the authority to do that. In this case, the chef’s generosity of spirit is right, but the way he carries it out is not. (If he owned the restaurant or had been given the leeway to do that sort of thing by the owner, however, go for it!)

So, what does using your authority and role to “do good” at your job look like when done right? A lot could be said, but let me just say one simple, yet core, thing.

It means being for the people who work for you. Which means believing that they can excel and do good work and make a contribution, even when few other people might be able to see it. And it means using your influence to give them opportunities and, yes, advance their career whenever you have the chance.

Note I’m not saying you shouldn’t be smart and discerning. But I am saying that you should have a default belief in people and therefore do whatever you can to give them a chance, to give them greater opportunities, and to give them a break whenever you can and whenever it seems they will be able to meet the opportunity and succeed in it.

And it means, even when you aren’t in a position at the moment to help advance someone or given them an opportunity, that you are encouraging and always seek to be the type of person that builds others up and helps them get better at what they do.

So much here is about your spirit and attitude — the disposition you have and with which you carry yourself. You need to see yourself as existing for the good of others, and charged with the responsibility from God to use any influence, authority, and resources you have in service to others.

But note that I’m not simply saying “be for other people.” That is a critical thing. But it’s not enough, because it’s so easy to say that we are “for” someone but never take action. It’s easy to say words that we don’t back up with our behavior. The true disposition of a servant is to be for people and to be diligent and forward and effective in identifying ways to promote their welfare.

This is a call to give thought to improving in both our dispositions and our concrete actions. See yourself as existing in your role for the good of others, and be proactive in finding real opportunities to use your authority and influence and resources to serve others and build them up.

That’s a how true Christian operates in his job and lives his entire life.

Less For-Profits, More Non-Profits

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When I was at ETS two weeks ago, one of the sessions I went to was on a biblical view of economics. Wayne Grudem argued for a largely capitalist framework (which I agree with) and Craig Blomberg argued for a “third alternative” between capitalism and socialism.

I think Blomberg was confused, not rightly understanding the definitions of capitalism and socialism, and thus not realizing that there is no “third alternative” here (though there are degrees). But, it was great to hear Blomberg, as he is a very solid NT exegete and theologian (his essay on the Sabbath in the recent Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views is excellent, for example; on the other hand, I cannot recommend as highly his book on money and possessions, Neither Poverty Nor Riches, because I think it suffers from much of the confusion that was evident in his presentation at ETS).

In the question and answer session, one objection Blomberg made to capitalism was its tendency to create a proliferation of useless items, such as pet rocks and those really dumb singing fish you can put on the wall.

Now, the first point to make in response here was made by someone in the audience who had actually bought a pet rock during family night with his kids a few weeks ago, and it made for a memorable experience. I myself think pet rocks are pretty neat (though I don’t have any), though I think those singing fish really are quite atrocious. So much is in the eye of the beholder. Who gets to make the call? The point of capitalism is: you. You get to make that call, not the government. Amen.

The second point, though, is that there is nothing in capitalism itself which says people need to make pet rocks or annoying singing fish. The essence of capitalism is simply that people are able to pursue whatever endeavors are of interest to them. Capitalism does not say you have to make singing wall-mounted fish to make money; it does say that, if that’s what you want to do and you can (somehow!) get people to buy them, you are free to go for it.

So, I defend people’s right to make those singing fish that I hate so much. But, having recently been to Australia and overdosing (probably) on souvenirs for the kids, and right now feeling like my wife and I are starting to drown in the “stuff” that accumulates after 13 years of marriage and having 3 kids and so forth, I have a better proposal.

Even though we are in the midst of a quite severe (and long-lasting!) economic downturn, we are still a society of extreme abundance. An economist friend of mine recently pointed out that the US produces 1 billion units of clothing per year. The number could even be 100 billion; I can’t remember for sure. But it was simply massive.

I’m glad we produce a lot. I think that is a partial fulfillment of the creation mandate, and that it is good, not evil. However, I suggest that we could get by with producing less of some things in order to produce more of other things. We need more pastors. We need more missionaries. We need more people devoted to serving those in need. We need more people devoted to the causes of fighting large global problems, like extreme poverty and corrupt leadership. Many of these things cannot in themselves be done at a profit, but can and must be done.

When society reaches a point that we have a proliferation of trinkets and other such things, it’s not a sign that capitalism has gone bad. Rather, it’s a sign that we need to use the freedom that capitalism affords us to point our efforts more fully in another direction — namely, the social sectors. We need more non-profit organizations, more churches, and more people going in to ministry and non-profit work in general. We can afford it. It will mean less singing fish, and perhaps less pet rocks. More seriously, maybe we won’t be producing exactly the 1 billion articles of clothing per year (which I am fine with as long as Banana Republic doesn’t go out of business). The point of our prosperity is not simply or mainly to enable us to keep buying more stuff, though the desire to accumulate is not evil in itself. The point of our prosperity is, rather, to divert some of our ability to accumulate more to efforts that focus more directly on using our abundance to meet pressing global needs.

I know there is one important consideration and possible objection here, which is actually a point I’ve made for years and that I make in my book (if I don’t cut the chapter due to length). And the objection is that I may seem to be pitting business against social good, when in reality it is business, not charity, which is the long-term solution to global poverty.

So I want to say clearly that I am not doing that. I do believe that business is the only long-term solution to large global problems like global poverty. And I’m not saying that when a person opens a business and makes money that he is not contributing greatly to the welfare of society. They are. But business cannot do this alone, because not all needs can be met at a profit, and there is injustice blocking the way in many instances. We need to be a society of both excellent businesses and great non-profits.

This is not anti-capitalistic, but is precisely the freedom that capitalism upholds and champions. Start the organization you want to start, not looking to the government to keep you afloat but rather, under the grace of God, your own efforts and ability to produce things of value. Capitalism is about freedom, and starting non-profits is just as much in line with capitalism as starting for-profits.

What I’m saying is that we are at a point as a society where the enormous wealth we have created virtually demands that we give much more consideration to using that wealth not to buy more things and enhance our own positions, but rather to fund those who are meeting the types of essential needs that cannot be met at a profit.

Don’t stop buying better things altogether, or even to a huge degree necessarily, but do direct more of your money this year to your church, to missionaries that are raising support and, for some of you, to starting organizations devoted to meeting pressing needs on a global scale.

Good Leadership and the Cause of Global Justice

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My guest post at the Willow Creek leadership blog.

Here’s the first part:

One of the major themes about Christ in the book of Isaiah is that he cares a lot about justice. For example, Isaiah says that “he will bring forth justice to the nations” (42:1), that “he will faithfully bring forth justice” (42:3) and that “he will not grow faint or be discouraged until he has established justice in the earth” (42:4).

In his book Good News About Injustice, Gary Haugen points out that justice is “the right use of power.” To use power rightly means to skillfully exercise it in the service of others — especially those who are in need or in a situation where they are unable to help themselves. That’s why the Bible lays substantial emphasis on caring for the orphan and the widow: “Seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17).

One implication of this that is rightly getting a lot of attention in the church today is that we should spend ourselves radically in the fight against global poverty, human trafficking, and other injustices. A concern for justice means a concern for addressing large global problems.

A concern for justice also implies a concern for something else that is sometimes overlooked–namely, leadership. For if justice is “the right use of power,” then good leadership is a form of justice. And, conversely, bad leadership — even if unintentionally so — is a subtle form of injustice.

Read the whole thing.

Justice — Even in the Secular Arena — Is God's Work

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“A just balance and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.” (Proverbs 16:11)

And, God doesn’t have the sacred / secular distinction that many today have, in the sense of implying that the secular arena is insignificant and unimportant. For God is not only the one who is ultimately behind all justice; he actually takes delight in it:

“A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.” (Proverbs 11:1)

For more on this, see John Piper’s sermon “The Pleasure of God in Public Justice.”

New from John Piper Next Month: Bloodlines

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John Piper’s latest book, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, will be released September 30 and is available for pre-order.

Here’s a summary:

JOHN PIPER brings the light of the gospel to bear on racial issues in this groundbreaking book. Bloodlines begins with Piper’s confession of his own sins and experience with racial tensions, along with how God has been transforming him and his church. He enables readers to grasp the reality and extent of racism, and then he demonstrates from Scripture how the light of the gospel penetrates the darkness of this destructive sin. The book concludes with sections on what Jesus’s atoning death means for racial issues, interracial marriage, and prejudice. With great sensitivity and compassion, along with a careful reading of the Scriptures, Piper helps readers navigate the painful landscape of racial sin, showing that in the gospel we all have a common bloodline and that through the blood of Jesus, race and ethnicity become secondary for a common people of God.

Learn to pursue ethnic harmony from a biblical perspective, and to relate to real people different from yourself, as you take part in the bloodline of Jesus that is comprised of “every tongue, tribe, and nation.”

And here are a few endorsements:

“For years, I have yearned for a biblically sound, theologically anchored resource on race. God has answered that prayer. This is an important, foundational work and I am sure it will be used of God to remind all of us of the power and precious, priceless dignity of the gospel.”-  Crawford W. Loritts Jr., Senior Pastor, Fellowship Bible Church, Roswell, Georgia; author, A Passionate Commitment

“John Piper has given us an exquisite work on the matter of race. He addresses the issue with biblical and theological soundness coupled with personal sensitivity and practical advice. This is a must read for those who wish to pursue unity God’s way.” – Tony Evans, Co-founder and Senior Pastor, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship

Fast Forwarding the End of Poverty: 58 The Film

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Here’s the trailer for 58: THE FILM from Live 58, a Christ-centered global initiative to end extreme poverty in our generation:

The film releases in October. Here’s the synopsis:

WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED. WILL WE DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES?
Premiering this October, 58: is the inspiring true story of the global Church in action. Witness bravery and determined faith in a journey from the slums of Kenya to the streets of New York. Confront the brutality of extreme poverty and meet those who live out the True Fast of Isaiah 58 and create stunning new possibilities for the future.

Travel from the sun-scorched plains of rural Ethiopia to British shopping centers, from Brazilian ganglands and the enslaving quarries of India to western churches, businesses and conferences.

58: invites audiences to discover the incredible work of God through His people in our hurting world. Meet ordinary people, hear their stories, and see their struggles and their victories as 58: shows the relentlessly loving God at work through His Church bringing hope to the darkest challenges of our day. Experience eye-opening reasons to lift our expectations of the future.

Woven with Biblical truth, this film draws audiences into life-changing examples of the True Fast of Isaiah 58 — a young British woman prevailing over the pressures of consumer society, Ethiopian Christians working to restore their environment, an American business owner promoting Fair Trade coffee and connecting his local community with the work of ending poverty, a local pastor in India working to be a Good Samaritan to those enslaved by bonded labor, and the sacrificial generosity of New York youth giving up their own food for the sake of those with even less. These impatient revolutionaries and ordinary prophets present viewers with an empowering vision of the Church rising up to its remarkable potential to end extreme poverty, by bringing God’s words through Isaiah to life in our time, in our day.

Experience 58: this October on television, online, on DVD, and at screening events throughout the U.S.