Helping People on a Deeper Level

I'd like to refer you to the comment by Deb. She had some wonderful insights in response to yesterday's post.

As I ponder how to help others, especially those in desperate need like my friend Billy, I recall the chapter of a book by Eugene Peterson. The chapter title is, "Teach Us to Care, and Not To Care," from the excellent book, Subversive Spirituality:

If unwary, the person providing care is co-opted into feeding selfishness, which is to say, sin. There is a great irony here -- that so much of our caring nurtures sin. ..Because of their failure to take with full seriousness the nature and presence of sin, a great deal of caring is simply collaboration in selfishness, in self-pity...We wake up one morning and realize that we have poured ourselves out for these needy people and they are not getting any better...

As Christians who begin to sense a vocation, a reaching out, knowing that this life matters now to other people, the most central thing that we are doing is to teach them to pray. This is our genius as Christians, this access to God, this life of intimacy with God. This is why we are Christians, to live in this healed, loved way. If we do not use the occasions of need, of caring, as a school for prayer, we abdicate our most central concern.

Eugene's thoughts made me think of the story I heard a British pastor tell at a conference last year. He is very involved in an evangelical ministry to the poor in London. He described a government project where they built a large housing project for low-income people. Within a year or so, the residents were tearing up the place and stealing things from the building.

His point was that if we just help people physically but don't address matters of the soul, we won't really be helping them on a deep, spiritual level.

This is why I am so deeply committed to the ministry I'm leading to be Christ-centered. To keep pointing people to Jesus and not just alleviate poverty. Secular and government social services can provide many basic needs for those in poverty. But only followers of Christ can given them food that lasts, living water, a message of hope that can be life changing for eternity.

Jim