It's been a month since the end of my "marathon" with reading Robert Lupton's Toxic Charity. At times, I could barely make it through a page. A crazy intersection with the book, season of life, preparation for the Kenya journey, long history there with shared toxicity, and my own stuckness. Daunting, depressing, depleting thoughts about our small part in a shift to mutually healthy, honoring, deeply respectFULL giving.
A “few” excerpts (to go along with Pam's May 17 post) for your pondering:
- "The oath for compassionate service: Never do for the poor what they have the capacity to do for themselves; limit one-way giving to emergency services; strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements; subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served; listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said; above all, do no harm."
- "In the United States, there's a scandal we both refuse to see and actively perpetuate. What Americans avoid facing is that while we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or acutally harms the people it is targeted to help."
- “Doing for rather than doing with those in need is the norm. Add to it the combination of patronizing pity and unintended superiority and charity becomes toxic."
- How do we hurt others with our giving? "Dependency. Destroying personal initiative. When we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them."
- "Religiously motivated charity is often the most irresponsible."
- "We fly off on mission trips to poverty-stricken villages, hearts so full of pity and suitcases bulging with giveaway goods, trips that one Nicaraguan leader describes as effective only 'in turning my people into beggars."
- "Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people."
- "We mean well, our motives are good, but we have neglected to conduct care-full due diligence to determine emotional, economic and cultural outcomes on the receiving end of our charity."
- '[A]s compassionate people, we have been evaluating our charity by the rewards we receive through service, than the benefits received by the served."
- "When relief does not transition to development in a timely way, compassion becomes toxic."
- "Within six to eight weeks after a mission trip, most short-term mission trippers return to the same assumptions and behaviors they had prior to the trip."
- "Contrary to popular belief, most mission trips and service projects do NOT: empower those being served; engender healthy cross-cultural relationships; improve local quality of life; relieve poverty; change the lives of participants; increase support for long-term mission work.
- "Contrary to popular belief, most mission trips and service projects DO: weaken those being served; foster dishonest relationships; erode recipients' work ethic; deepen dependency."
- "Most work done by volunteers could be better done by locals in less time and with better results."
- "If the money spent on travel, lodging, food, and staff time were directly invested in the people being served, far more could be accomplished with greater effectiveness."
- One local leader describes "'how dignity is eroded as people come to view themsleves as charity cases for wealthy visitors, how they pose with smiling faces for pictures to be taken back for the marketing of the next group."
- "Again and again, we are finding that when it comes to global needs in organizational development and human development, the granting of money creates dependence and conflict, not independence and respect. By changing the equation to other means of exchange, we find that we are empowering people based on shared responsibility, mutual support and accountability."
- "Giving is no simple matter..."
- "Wherever there was sustained one-way giving, unwholesome dynamics and pathologies festered under the cover of kindheartedness."
- Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid: "The reality is that (foreign) aid has helped make the poorer poorer and growth slower. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world."
- "It is delicate work...establishing authentic parity between people with unequal power."
- The challenge is to "redirect traditional methods of charity into systems of genuine exchange."
- "Compassion is a dangerous thing. It can open a person to all manner of risks....(it) is a powerful force."
- "Mercy is a force that compels us to acts of compassion. But in time mercy will collide with an ominous, opposing force. Injustice."
- "Mercy combined with justice creates: Immediate care with a future plan; emergency relief and responsible development; short-term intervention and long-term involvement; heart responses and engaged minds...Mercy that doesn't move intentionally in the direction of development (justice) will end up doing more harm than good–to both giver and recipient."
- "In a strange twist of divine irony, those who would extend mercy discover that they themselves are in need of mercy."
- - Healthy examples: Millennium Challenge Corporation, Food Security for America, Opportunity International,
Get this crucial read, question your patterns and assumptions, meet with someone you trust...
