What are those temptations that rule you and make you turn away from those in need? Poverty, disease and hunger?
I am actually really glad this is one of our questions to consider because this is something I have been struggling with lately.
I am currently wrapping up my last few semesters as an undergraduate, pursuing a degree in Global Studies as well as Spanish. Something I absolutely love about my major is that Global Studies does not have its own department or college. I get to take courses from a variety of disciplines without taking the lame fluff classes. My area of focus is politics and environment but I have also been taking a lot of Anthropology seminars. Currently I am taking a class about Human Rights, which is extremely interesting and sparking a lot of questions and possible next steps for me. However, the class that has really messed with me is the seminar I took last semester about development work.
This course literally ripped apart every approach I have ever heard of for “development” programs all over the world. We covered all kinds of topics from gender to education to health to poverty and everything else you could think of. I went into this class as an idealist and came out a skeptical realist. Which sounds not so productive but I could not be more thankful. That class was one of the most challenging courses I have taken because it really made me dissect my ideas about how to help people and what my place is in that dialogue.
Now, deconstructing ideas we have come to accept as almost concrete is always a great idea. That is how we grow as people and interact with God’s world and its many facets. However, I feel like I am now extremely timid about how I help and when I help because this class has totally freaked me out. Not to mention I am surrounded by my anthropology colleagues who are always so willing to lend a critical eye.
For the last few months I have been so terrified that I am going to do something to help someone that ultimately will hurt them even more in the long run. The Church loves to throw “social justice” around like its some concrete thing that everyone understands but what we miss is that “social justice” is huge. It encompasses global markets and economies, relationships between developed and less developed nations, the World Bank programs to “help” underdeveloped countries, immigration, language, genocide, oppressive governments, gender, class, education, sketchy CIA operations and a million other things.
That is so overwhelming. How could I ever know enough about how this world works to really make informed decisions about how to intervene and how not to?
That is where I need to take a step back and realize that nothing, good or bad, will ever happen if I choose not to act because I am afraid.
Something that goes along with that is this temptation, one I know a lot of Americans do, is thinking “I am helping them“. There is no them. It’s just we. We are all just trying to get by and I am no better than the person I am helping. I am not worth more in the grand scale of morality because I am helping. I am just living and the person I am buying a meal for is just living and we are both trying to figure out what life is all about. So what if I decide to do something to help that might not have been the smartest or best way to go about it? We will figure it out. And I will trust the power of reconciliation in Jesus Christ to help me clean up my messes when my ignorance gets in the way.
in Christ,
J.
The Patio 
Even in the complexity there is wholesome, good work to be done. Thanks for posting, I especially thought the closing paragraph was a helpful reflection. ‘I am no better than the person I am helping.”