HOW TO REALLY HELP THE POOR
David S. Lim, Ph.D.
This article assumes that the reader is already convinced that the Bible teaches very clearly that Christians must be concerned for the poor. The issue addressed here is no longer why we should be concerned but how we can show this concern most wisely and most appropriately in our modern situation, especially in a context characterized by mass poverty.
This article also assumes that the reader is a Christian who affirms the importance and necessity of evangelism to care for the spiritual life of the ones we are concerned for. Yet we want to evangelize with utmost care, lest we either produce “rice Christians” (i.e., converts who disappear once our help is stopped) or get accused of using our work of compassion as self-serving (i.e., our aid to the poor serve as “baits” to get them hooked to our religion.)
So the question is: How can Christians help the poor in the wisest or most appropriate way possible?
Types of Social Concern
Helping the poor can be classified into three kinds: emergency relief, economic development, and political action.
a. Emergency Relief is the easiest and the most popular. It is expressed by alms-giving, collecting goods for the disaster victims, donating blood to Red Cross, providing free medical services, etc. The objective is to help someone who is threatened by death due to lack of basic necessities in life. This is good and helpful, but for desperate people and bad situations only. If “helping the poor” stays on this level for a longer period of time, alms-giving and relief operation become unhelpful and detrimental to the person’s growth. The recipient will become fixed in his dependent and mendicant condition, unable to even help himself, so the second level must follow as soon as possible.
b. Economic Development is “to teach the person how to fish,” rather than just “to give him the fish” regularly. The objective is to help the poor get out of poverty through the provision of a job and/or business opportunities. This can be accomplished through job placement bureaus, skills training programs, scholarship aids, capital loans, formation of credit unions or cooperatives, and other activities which will enable the poor to help themselves. Although this requires more expertise and investment resources, this is a more effective means of helping the poor. Nevertheless, there are more obstacles for the poor to overcome, so a third level of action must be done.
c. Political Action is to provide the structural framework by which the poor can be free to use their development skills, by taking away oppressive traditions and systems that keep the poor poor. Its goal is to put as much resources (like land, fishponds, technology, capital, etc.) as possible in the hands and control of the poor, so that they have direct access to the various means of production themselves. This means that we work for a new economic order like working for the legislations of effective agrarian reform and urban reform programs, monitoring the implementation of government programs for economic development, reforestation, encouraging rural industrialization, decentralization of the bureaucracy, organizing and empowering grassroots groups, etc.
All these three types of “helping the poor” have to be done at the same time, or else the poor cannot be fully helped. All these types need professional expertise, and so many mistakes have been committed in the past, even by sincere and compassionate Christians. Due to limited space, and this no space to explain the basic principles for wise social concerns, let us just enumerate some of the important considerations for each type.
Emergency Relief
Unfortunately, most Christian relief operations have primarily been “random sowing” or “hit-and-run” evangelism” (like inserting tracts in relief packages.) There is actually lack of long-term planning so as to provide lasting economic and spiritual impact in the poor community. Here are some suggestions for long-term help:
(1) Help must be given by local Christians. After all, they will be the most effective agents of follow-up. Besides, they will gain reputation of being concerned for the welfare of their locality. Such partnership becomes a beautiful picture of unity in the body of Christ. Preferably, the project should be in the name of the local Christian group in the locality. If there is no Christian presence, a missionary couple or a Christian mission team has to be formed and assigned to that area.
(2) Help must be planned and implemented with the local people. It is easy to provide assistance to the poor and package programs for the poor, but in the end the poor will not really be helped—they remain as mere passive recipients of aid! They need to be activated and educated—by participating in the planning and implementation of the project. So we need to approach the community leaders, with the local Christians, and aim to plan and work together with them. Hereby, we gain friends among the poor…for long term impact.
(3)Help must be in the community itself-on site. It is easier to bring the poor to a place where we can dispense aid in our area, according to our convenience, and with less risks. But this will again deprive the poor of the opportunity to gain self-respect and increase community solidarity. The project will again be done for the poor and not with the poor. There is no better place to give help than in the location where the people reside. This will force us to include education on sanitation, employment skills, and the other community needs in our programming too!
Economic Development
Here also are some suggestions for planning effective economic development programs (EDP):
(1) EDP must be managed by a committee. Most Christian groups and churches have a Benevolence Committee to take care of emergency needs of fellow believers. Some have a Social Concern or Relief Committee to take charge of emergency relief operations such as medical mission, and other social outreach projects. But very few see the necessity to bring together church members who have expertise in social work, human ecology, agriculture, community health, business, community development or community organization and even engineering to form into an EDP Committee. Pooling their expertise together will surely do wonders to the social involvement of the church!
(2) EDPs must be supported by a Development fund. Going into EDPs will surely require bigger fund allocations, especially to provide skills training, scholarships, capital loans, etc. to the deserving poor. So besides forming the EDP Committee, the church must help provide the financial resources by which the committee can fully function. For a start this Development Fund may be used to support Christian groups that have EDPs so that the committee may gain experience. In the long run, Fund should be able to have full-time personnel to facilitate, motivate, or even implement the church’s own EDPs.
(3) EDPs must have a macro-perspective of the economy. Most of the EDP done by Christian groups have primarily been low income-generating for the poor and for the Philippine economy. Like the government, these livelihood projects are intended to just supplement the major means of income for the poor family. Without long-term planning, the man-hours of the poor have been used to earn a just enough (or even not enough) income for survival below the poverty line. The challenge before us is to develop businesses which will help the poor families earn higher income, while at the same time increasing the dollar-earning (export) and decreasing the dollar-draining (import) trade programs of the Philippines. For more details please read Deo Reloj’s article in this issue.
Political Action
Moreover, there are recommendations for good political action by Christians which will really help the poor:
(1) Political action must be discussed and planned by a committee. Just as the previous activities to help the poor need the leadership of committee experts and interested parties, our involvement in politics must also be managed by a Political Action Committee (PAC). This committee can be composed of Christians who are trained and/or involved in government, law, public administration, military, and even business. Together with the church leadership, the PAC may be the best group to help work out the best legislative, executive, and judiciary agenda for the church’s participation in natural issues to help the poor.
(2) Political action must avoid being partisan. As much as possible, Christian involvement must extend beyond the divisions of political parties. There may be exceptions to the rule if the party lines and candidates show to be clearly endorsable or non-endorsable, like for instance, during the February 1986 snap elections or as the Eastern European countries for their first elections after Communist one-party rule.
(3) Political action must be in close partnership with other PACs. Since numbers are very important in politics, Christian groups need to learn how to network with other like-minded groups. Networking includes fellowshipping, resource-sharing, and acting together for some common causes. Among evangelicals at present, there are three major groups: Philippine for Jesus Movement (PJM) led by Bro. Eddie Villanueva, Institute for Studies for Asian Church and Culture (ISACC) led by Ms. Melba Maggay, who led the evangelical presence at EDSA during the People Power Revolution of 1986, and Asian Center for Transformation Studies (ACTS) led by yours truly. Compared to the Catholics, Iglesia ni Cristo, and human rights groups, evangelicals are still an almost insignificant factor in national affairs. We need to work hard on this. But nevertheless, we need to move “slowly but surely” to help our country to develop its economy and help the poor in the long run.
CONCLUSION
The suggestions here may be too advanced for some of us. Some may be at the stage that they still need to be convinced from Scriptures that God desires peace, prosperity, and progress for all people, rich and poor. Let each one of us act according to the measure of faith and understanding that we have already attained.
These ideas are shared for the sake of discussion. Comments and interactions are welcomed by the author. May the Spirit of our Almighty God lead each one of us to find the best possible ways to really help the poor in our country…and elsewhere!
