Reading Material: "When Helping Hurts"

My church homegroup is currently reading "When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor... and Yourself" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, two economics professors from the Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College.  I'm less than halfway through the book but I'm really enjoying it.  Corbett and Fikkert's main argument is that poverty has spiritual, social, psychological, and physical aspects, but most poverty alleviation efforts only treat the physical rather than taking a holistic approach.  They define poverty alleviation as a "ministry of reconciliation: moving people closer to glorifying God by living in right relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the rest of creation."

One helpful aspect of this definition is to recognize that we are all poor in some way and in need of poverty alleviation, because none of us have perfect relationships.  They write, "The goal is not to make the materially poor all over the world into middle-to-upper-class North Americans, a group characterized by high rates of divorce, sexual addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness....  The goal is to restore people to a full expression of humanness, to being what God created us all to be..."  I really appreciated this point, because too often "those who have" incorrectly assume they know what "those who do not have" need.

Corbett and Fikkert then define material poverty alleviation as "working to reconcile the four foundational relationships so that people can fulfill their callings of glorifying God by working and supporting themselves and their families with the fruit of that work."  This definition reflects the biblical view that work is (or should be) an act of worship.  When an individual is empowered to earn his own wages, and when he is not merely chasing after wealth or seeking to glorify himself rather than God, he has a healthy relationship with work.

Having worked and/or volunteered in Christian Community Development with a holistic ministry for the last 7.5 years, some of this material is not new to me, especially the practical advice.  Still, the biblical rationale behind the advice and the real world examples of institution-created poverty are enlightening, and I'm looking forward to reading on.