My friend, Brian, recently returned from a missions trip to Kenya. He led a group of youth as they supported their Kenyan partner church ministry for two weeks. The Kenyan ministry’s focus was HIV positive mothers in its very poor slum community. They provided food, money, prayer and helped their children—demonstrating the love of Christ in word and deed. Brian and the youth group dove in. They spread the news of the church’s ministry into the neighboring communities.
A week into the trip, Brian had a stirring, even haunting, realization. This Kenyan ministry had become “the cocaine of its community.” He shared candidly with me that these mothers were completely dependent upon the charity, and indirectly on Brian’s church which funded it. Instead of working, these capable women would sit every day at the door of the charity, waiting for the free distributions. As a result, their children saw their moms time-and-again not as providers, but as placid receivers.
The more I study, the more I discover how different the biblical prescription of charity is from my own. Consider gleaning. God’s people were not commanded to harvest the fields fully and give a tithe of their grain away, but rather to leave portions of the fields unharvested. Doing so provided the poor, the widows and the foreigners with meaningful work, sustenance and on-the-spot vocational training. And gleaning was a command for all business owners, not just the wheat farmers.
When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterward. (Deut 24:20-21)
I believe we have misinterpreted God’s commands to help the poor. Jewish scholars state that woven through the Torah is an understanding that “not all charity is created equal.” They cite that “the greatest level [of charity], above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow Jew by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others.”
Does this prescription align with the majority of our charitable endeavors? Brian had deep respect that this Kenyan ministry served the “least of these.” But, was this charity in alignment with the biblical model of charity? Were they helping these women…
1) To no longer need to receive charity?
2) Experience the dignity of honest work?
3) Enjoy the blessing of providing for their children?
4) Know the joy of giving charitably to others?
In fairness, there are times when the only appropriate response is to freely give things away. The Haiti earthquake and support to the disabled are examples of such. But, barring such exceptions, our long-term aim should always be to help in a way which frees recipients of the need for our charity, “so that they might help others in need” (Eph. 4:28). Well-intentioned charity devoid of this goal can lead to unhealthy dependency and even addiction.
In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, read HOPE’s top five ways Christ-centered microfinance is an expression of love.
More and more people are coming to understand the financial benefits of microfinance. At HOPE, however, we believe the benefits can be more than financial. We believe the heart of microfinance is reaching out to those in need with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. If we are to model Christ, we need to embrace others with dignity and enable them to facilitate change in their own lives. In this season marked by love, we want to share five key ways Christ-centered microfinance is an expression of love.
1. Financial services are dignity-affirming opportunities.
All of us want the best for those we love, but so often poverty prevents people from fulfilling their potential and steals their dignity. In the Dominican Republic, HOPE’s partner, Esperanza International, has had the opportunity to offer small business loans, basic business training, and a support system to women who formerly worked in prostitution. One group member said her life has been changed. “Before I went out and engaged in prostitution. I feel safer now because I don’t go out. And now I can support my family by selling clothes. I knew about the love of God before, but I didn’t understand it. Now I understand that God loves me.”
2. Group members are in it together.
Members of community banks or savings groups develop a special bond. Meeting week after week, praying together, and sharing triumphs and struggles, groups grow in solidarity. One HOPE India savings group member confessed to her fellow group members that her husband beat her regularly. Instead of merely sympathizing, the other women in her group took action. They travelled to her home, and in a show of solidarity and courage, they confronted her husband. Knowing that the abuse could no longer be perpetrated in secret and that these women cared enough for his wife to hold him accountable, the man stopped beating his wife.
3. Microfinance can promote reconciliation.
In one small Rwandan village there were two feuding brothers and only one savings group. Both valued the opportunity enough to tolerate one another, but neither planned to reconcile. As the savings group began to rotate its meeting locations to various members’ homes, the first brother was forced to decide: Would he skip the meeting and forfeit this opportunity or would he enter his brother’s home? He attended the meeting. A few weeks later, his brother attended a meeting at his home. This second meeting opened with a reading from John 3:16 and a discussion of love. The brothers began to cry, pleading with one another for forgiveness. Faith, finances, and community united in such a way that two enemies became reconciled brothers.
4. Microfinance offers opportunities to share God’s love.
Again and again we hear from our loan officers that the best part of their job is sharing the love of Jesus. This was just the message one HOPE China client needed to hear. He had always been a family man, but after his wife passed away, Liu saw little meaning in his life. He became addicted to alcohol, grew distant from his daughter, and let his business slide. He wanted a change, so he sought a loan from HOPE China, but life still seemed empty. When his loan officer shared the Gospel, Liu said Jesus was exactly what he needed. His family and his community have seen the difference. Once heartbroken, Liu is now filled with joy. He sings while he works, and he says his prayers are prayers of gratitude. Seeing Liu’s genuine transformation, both his daughter and mother have come to put their faith in Christ as well.
5. Microfinance enables clients to show love to their communities.
As a mother of a special needs child, Xiomara longed to stay home with her daughter to give her the care she required - but her income was also needed to provide for her daughter. Living in a community in the Dominican Republic where many of her neighbors left their children behind and travelled to resort towns to work, Xiomara realized that she probably wasn’t the only mother facing this difficult choice. She wanted mothers and fathers to know that their children were well cared for, even while they were away at work. She opened a school and daycare center using a loan from HOPE’s partner in the Dominican Republic, Esperanza International. Parents pay Xiomara to care for their children as they are able, enabling her to provide for her own family, but Xiomara’s love for children and her community extends beyond her business interests. “I will never turn down a child because of a parent’s inability to pay,” she says.
Want to show love by supporting microfinance? Give a heart-felt Valentine’s gift of HOPE here.
Think there are other ways Christ-centered microfinance can be an expression of love? Share your thoughts!
I love online banking and e-commerce. I love the convenience of checking account balances, making transfers, and purchasing products in sweatpants from my living room. I’ve quickly become accustomed to the ease of doing business from home, although this luxury is unique to the past decade. It’s easy to forget that just ten years ago online banking was nothing but a dream.
Last month I visited HOPE’s work in the Dominican Republic. There, I had the privilege of meeting our clients, seeing their businesses and soaking in the culture of a country I have come to love. One of the questions I asked to a few of the community banks (groups of 15-30 clients) was “Why HOPE? Why did you choose to become a HOPE client?” Time and time again, in different communities throughout the country, our clients responded, “Because HOPE came to us.”
It’s hard to think back to what life was like ten years ago, when we had to drive to the bank or the store for just about everything. It’s even more challenging to imagine how extremely inconvenient it would be if we lived a few hours from the center of town, where a trip to the bank or to the store meant a day’s worth of travel. Yet, this is the reality for many of our clients. In Congo, our clients often live two or more hours away from the closest commercial banks, large stores, and even HOPE branch offices. To service these remote communities, our loan officers must travel two hours by bus on shoddy dirt roads or, during the rainy season, traipse hours by foot through the mud to reach these communities.
In that context, you understand why they list it as a primary reason for choosing HOPE. Our hardworking and diligent loan officers go into the communities where our clients live. This is about even more than convenience. That message—No, don’t come to us. We’ll come to you—speaks dignity, loud and clear, into the lives of our clients and into their communities. They matter. Their neighborhoods are not forgotten. When everyone tells them they aren’t, we tell them they are worth our time.
One client’s comments are still ringing in my ears. I asked him, “Why HOPE?” …and he responded, “When everybody else makes us come to them, you come to us.”
This past week has been encouraging regarding relationships I have with neighbors on my block. Four years ago, my husband and I intentionally (and we think, obediently) moved into a tougher inner city neighborhood. We’ve formed some really great relationships with adults and kids, but haven’t really “done” anything to write home about. No one’s professed new faith in Jesus. No one’s drastically improved in school. No one’s changed their status from unemployed to employed. And no one has gotten off of government funding. To sum it all up, no one’s really that drastically different at all…not even us.
A couple days ago, I was yelling over from my front porch to our next door neighbor, Angela (not her real name). Angela is a single mom of three. It must have been an early start, as she has a sixteen-year-old son and she isn’t much older than thirty. Her two daughters are in third grade and kindergarten, and about as sweet as can be. Angela isn’t making it very easily. She lives in Section 8 housing, which means part of her rent is paid by the government. Her ex-husband rarely shows up and neglects child support regularly. She’s a teacher, and her paycheck just isn’t enough. This week, until her check went through, their refrigerator was empty, they were running on fumes, one of her daughters got sick (which meant she couldn’t work), and she was totally stressed out. I offered to watch her sick daughter the next day. As she described her situation, most of which seemed impossible to change, she also mentioned she can’t afford after-school care. Well, on her list, that was the one thing that I felt like I could do something about . So, we’ve come up with a plan for me to pick up her girls after school once a week and take care of them until she can come home. It might turn into three times a week, but for now she’s got the other days covered with other people. I think it hurt her to admit her need (both for the one day to watch her sick daughter and for the ongoing after-school help), but it really isn’t much of an inconvenience for me and I’m happy to help.
So, why am I telling this story in a post titled: Anonymity and the Gospel? Well, because I’ve probably told this story ten times already since it happened last week. Once at Bible study, when I asked for prayer for the relationship with Angela and her kids. I think some of my request was genuine, but it was in large part an opportunity to manipulate the conversation to make people recognize what I’ve done and think well of me. Then yesterday when I was picking up the girls from school, I ran into someone whose kids go to the same school. She was surprised to see me, and while it would have been WAY faster and easier just to explain that I was doing a favor for a friend…I went into the details. Why? Because I knew the details would make me look good. Pay no attention to the dignity it stole from my friend, Angela. I was striving for attention and accolades, and I shared personal details to make myself appear kind, compassionate, and basically awesome. Last night on the phone I did it again with another friend. Here I am again today, but for a different reason.
What does the Bible tell us about doing good works for attention? Well, here’s one really clear example from Matthew 6:1-8:
Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then, your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Sometimes I think we believe that it is only the materially rich who are reaping their rewards on earth, “where moth and rust destroy.” But, friends, you and I are tempted by a different form of pre-eternal reward: man’s acclaim for our works of righteousness. Every time we strive for attention, subtly manipulate a conversation or Twitter update to communicate something we’re doing for Jesus, we are robbing ourselves of true, eternal reward. It is always interesting to me that Jesus doesn’t say we won’t get a reward if we do our ‘acts of righteousness’ this way. He simply and devastatingly says we get our reward in full; we just get it here (from man), and not here and later (from our Father.)
I’m not good with comparisons, but it would be like being eight years old and being offered a trip to Disney Land but choosing to watch Cinderella on TV instead. They’re both rewards or gifts, but the value of them isn’t even close. If we only knew what we were missing. C.S. Lewis says it this way: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Oh friends, I LONG with you that our ‘acts of righteousness’ would be radical, sacrificial, beautiful and for the most part, hidden. I long that God would receiveglory for what has been done, instead of us. I pray that we wouldn’t strive for attention for what we’ve accomplished but that we’d be pleased to stay largely obscure and less known. Francois Fenelon says it this way:
It is not surprising that you are very ambitious to advance in your spiritual life, and to find yourself in the company of those who have a reputation for being spiritual. No matter what it looks like, these things still flatter your self-love. Do not seek to fulfill your ambitions of becoming more spiritual, or to be counted in the company of those people who are honored for their spirituality. Your aim should be to die to all such ambitions by letting yourself be humbled. You must learn to accept obscurity and scornful disregard while you keep your eyes solely on God…Say little and do much—without wondering if you have been noticed or not.
I always wonder if I’ve been noticed. I remember one pitiful moment when a friend was asking me about how my work was going—was I still working part time? And I TOTALLY manipulated the conversation, very subtly, of course, to slip in the fact that we’re adopting from Rwanda. Aren’t we great? Sick. Sick. Sick. Richard Foster says:
Self-righteous service requires external rewards. It needs to know that people see and appreciate the effort. It seeks human applause—with proper religious modesty of course. True service rests in hiddenness. It does not fear the lights and blare of attention, but it does not seek them either. Since it is living out of a new Center of reference, the divine nod of approval is enough.
I like how he mentions that true service doesn’t fear the lights and blare of attention. Some of us/you are going to be in positions of God-given influence. But, we should be cautioned to not let the attention injure our souls and rob us of eternal reward. I’m not suggesting we never tell people about the work we’re doing, but I’m suggesting that we ask God to examine our motives when we’re doing it. How much of it is to encourage someone, glorify God, and obey him…and how much of it is to make myself look good?
Just because we struggle to do these things with pure motivations, does not mean we should just quit trying. God doesn’t give us that option. But, let us seek hiddenness and allow our impure motivations for service to become more pure. Foster says “nothing disciplines the inordinate desires of the flesh like service, and nothing transforms the desires of the flesh like serving in hiddenness. The flesh whines against service but screams against hidden service. It pulls for honor and recognition. It will devise subtle, religiously acceptable means to call attention to the service rendered.” Join me, friends, in moving towards anonymity and hiddenness, not to impress one another, but to have pride and self-love rooted out in us.
From someone who struggles deeply with this issue, who likely has done nothing anonymously in my life, please pray and ache with me that we would be people who would be content to be unknown. Content to obey God whether it brings us attention or not. Able to confess sin and admit temptation. Pray with me that these ‘acts of righteousness’ we’re all doing will be tested later and found to be gold. Suitable for eternity.
We are gearing up for an exciting fall. As the educational year gets into full swing, we’ll be taking advantage of a number of opportunities to educate new audiences on the transformational power of microfinance.
HOPE is especially excited about Sunday, October 18. We’re launching Give HOPE Sunday, a national campaign retrofitted just for churches. We’re aiming to break down the perceived barriers that exist between churches and this new mission field of Christ-centered microfinance. We’re claiming that missionaries can be bankers and affirming that for the three billion people living in poverty on this earth, there is Good News: God cares for His children’s physical and spiritual condition. For Give HOPE Sunday, we’ll happily provide sermon points for pastors, bulletin inserts, posters, videos, and other supporting materials to help your church explore God’s heart for the poor. If you are a pastor seeking ways to encourage your congregation to reach out to the world’s poorest people or if you are a layperson seeking a chance to share your love for what HOPE International is doing, then host a Give HOPE Sunday.
Even before Give HOPE Sunday gets underway, we’ll be heading down to the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta on October 7 to hear some great speakers and to leave our mark as well. HOPE International President Peter Greer will be launching his new book The Poor Will Be Glad. We are brimming with excitement over the book launch! God is creating paths for our message, and people are responding. We’re also excited for an opportunity Peter will have to introduce conference participants to microfinance in a radical and personal way. Stay tuned to hear more!
Sarah Haig has spent the past four years living in Beijing, China as HOPE’s Asia Associate Regional Director. Her work supports HOPE’s programs in Afghanistan, China, India, and the Philippines.
For better or for worse, Beijing is my home and my community. I’m part of this city, part of the economy and landscape and web of urban interactions—from leaving my plastic bottles in a separate trash bag outside the dumpster so people don’t have to dig through nastiness for them, to having the vegetable lady give me free cilantro—that put me in mutually dependent relationship with an unexpected spectrum of neighbors.
In a funny reversal, I had the marvelous experience of depending on the expertise of a microentrepreneur who, though not one of HOPE’s clients, to me represented those we’re reaching out to here and around the world. I had a favorite pair of Mary Poppins-esque brown heels that needed doctoring, and finally I determined to throw myself back into a “Year One in China” situation—going to ask somebody to do something without any of the necessary vocabulary. So I took them to a small shack down the alley from my office building, a lean-to structure that has a key and a shoe painted on the wooden front door. The shoe repair man looked at my shoes carefully when I handed them over, said “my shoes are broken,” and pointed out the missing heel cap and uneven height. He expounded in great detail and unintelligible Chinese on the nature of the problem and solution, mimed cutting the other heel shorter to meet the height of the first, and then accepted my nod and “ok, you can do that, no problem” as a contract.
He invited me to sit on the narrow bench that took up the entire wall of the shed, which was no larger than two picnic tables. I shared the space with an oscillating fan mounted on the wall, a Christmas tree and bouquet of fake flowers hung by the window, a calendar that showed today’s date, his work chair, and tools and materials for the trade. As he shaved the first heel even, then pried off the cap of the second heel, cut it with a saw, and smoothed it off to match shoe 1, I noticed this man’s attention to detail. He had stapled strips of carpet to the door frame to block off the wind that would wheedle its way in. Instead of a knob, the inside of the door sprouted a car’s side-view mirror, which allowed the shoe repair man to see the entire street from his work chair. This precision was reflected in his work. This man had a tool for everything, and spared no detail in fixing my shoes: after the heels were even, he roughened the base with sand paper, pounded small slivers of a wooden dowel into the holes in the plastic heel, traced and cut the heel base’s shape out of rubber, shaved that down to exactness with a razor, glued the rubber to the heels, hammered tiny nails to secure the rubber, then used a third hammer to completely embed the nail head. I thought he was done, but then he held the shoes up, pronounced them dirty, and kept another customer waiting while he cleaned, polished, shined, and buffed the shoes until they were more beautiful than when I bought them. I was ecstatic, and eagerly paid his asking price—I can’t remember the last time I didn’t bargain—in my enthusiasm and utter gratefulness for a job well done.
I walked away with new shoes and a new appreciation of microfinance—not just as a means of bringing families out of poverty, but as a means of allowing individuals to share their skills with the community. This man had accessed capital from somewhere to start up his shop, and then with his profits he slowly purchased tools and machines that allowed him to expand his business and increase his profitability. He had a business, an expertise that others relied on, and he demonstrated his skill by wearing shined shoes that defied the grime of the city. He depended on me to bring my broken shoes, and I depended on him to shine what was scuffed and grind into balance what was uneven. I’m a different-skinned, curly haired, Mandarin-stumbling part of this economy. When I do my job with excellence, micro-entrepreneurs like this shoe repairman have the funding to make their skills and products available to the city community. And when he does his job well, my world-weary shoes are refreshed and I can walk in un-scuffed dignity.
It’s no longer good enough to kill two birds with one stone. We now require each stone to kill six birds. Case in point: While I’m not cool enough to own an iPhone, I have friends who are, and I am continually amazed at its diverse functionality. Mobile communication technology is an absolute marvel in itself, but it’s no longer enough for our phones to make and receive calls from anywhere in the world. Now we require them to provide email, directions, games, web browsing, news, stock trading, and blogging. Daily, the list expands. Are you pregnant and need to track your contractions? Now you can with the Birth Buddy app on your iPhone. You name it – “there’s an app for that.”
Microfinance isn’t just about making loans anymore. Traditional microfinance in and of itself is transformative, but the opportunities for innovation on the microfinance framework are boundless. Clean water is a serious issue around the world; globally, one in six people lack access. HOPE’s program in the Philippines pioneered an innovative, employment-based strategy to address this serious issue. In partnership with PepsiCo, they built a top-notch water purification system right in the branch office. Twenty of their clients took out loans to purchase the water in bulk. These water vendors then load up their bicycles with jugs of water and sell the water in some of the most-underserved communities in the city. Through this model, they collectively sell over 300,000 gallons of clean water annually. Sure, it’s wonderful that our clients in the Philippines can access financial services, but what about the dirty water they drink every day? Microfinance has an app for that.
In the Dominican Republic, many of our clients are able to run a business, but they sadly have family members who are suffering with or have died from AIDS or other sexually-transmitted diseases. When I visited a community bank in the Dominican Republic last year, the loan officer conducted a comprehensive, biblically-based STD training during one of the group’s bi-weekly loan repayment meetings using educational materials developed by a healthcare organization. It’s great our clients there have a safe place to save their money, but how do they educate their children about sexual health? Yep, there’s an app for that.
Recognizing that their clients completely lacked access to Bibles and Christian literature, HOPE Ukraine developed an innovative solution to address this disparity. They have thousands of clients throughout Ukraine, and when they started distributing Bibles, the Jesus Film, and Christian literature at client meetings, immediately they had created a viable distribution channel for these much-needed resources. Having access to capital is important, but what directs our clients’ financial decision-making and priorities? Do they have access to God’s word? You guessed it. There’s an app for that.
HOPE president Peter Greer responds to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The original article can be viewed here (subscription required).
The latest article on microfinance in the Wall Street Journal, “A Global Surge in Tiny Loans Spurs Credit Bubble in a Slum,” makes it sound as if the microfinance sector has reached its saturation point. That may be the case in Ramanagaram and select communities in India—but these communities are the exceptions to the global situation.
Worldwide, 500 million individuals are served by microfinance and yet the estimated demand is over 3 billion according to estimates by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP); less than 20% of the need is currently being served. And most of these borrowers are located in the “safest” locations. In more challenging places, like the Republic of Congo where civil war has left the economy in turmoil, less than 1% of the population of over 4 million is served. Although select neighborhoods in India are “carpet-bombed with loans,” the poor in the Republic of Congo and many other “bottom billion” countries are still waiting for their opportunity to begin working their way out of poverty.
The article also raises the question of whether access to small loans is really helping. Given the examples of consumption and over-indebtedness, multiple small loans from various organizations had a negative impact on Zahreen Taj. What is unfortunate is that her over-indebtedness and challenges could have been avoided by following some basic principles that spurred the microfinance movement:
1. Don’t Push Irresponsible Credit. Microfinance practices in select neighborhoods in India resemble elements of the subprime mortgage crisis, where time-tested safeguards were discarded. This helped inflate loan portfolios, but eroded the portfolio quality. The mutual guarantee, the bedrock that allows loans to be made to individuals without a credit history and collateral, only works when communities spend time understanding each other’s businesses. In the microfinance credit bubble, staff members were rewarded for the volume and efficiency with which they provided loans. The “best practices” that include investing time working with individuals and groups to ensure that the loans were used for productive purposes, not consumption, were ignored.
2. Look at Success Through the Entrepreneurs’ Eyes, Not Just Investors. The rapid growth in India was fueled by microfinance investment that was sold with the promise of beating Wall Street’s returns by a healthy margin – and many did. But we all know that too much of a good thing can be too much. These investment funds were chasing a very small pool of top-tier microfinance institutions – all of which were measured exclusively by their financial returns. The microfinance movement needs to maintain a double bottom-line where success is defined not just by financial performance but also upon the impact on the families utilizing its services.
3. Invest in Credit With Education. When responsible microfinance is coupled with education, we see empowerment of the poor. According to a study conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action, a research nonprofit based in New Haven, Conn., borrowers who received a microfinance loan alongside business training were overwhelmingly more successful than those who received only microfinance loans. Short-term profit maximization eliminates training – but this erodes the foundation for long-term client and institutional success.
4. Focus on Savings, Not Just Credit. Even in India, where it appears that the need for microfinance is being served, there still are millions of individuals in poverty looking for a safe way to save and accumulate capital. Not everyone is ready for a loan. The “Self-Help Group” model in India and the Savings and Credit Association model throughout the world have overlooked potential, but do not have the return promised by investment funds. For a family that wants a television, it is far better to save and accumulate this amount in a savings account rather than using a loan that will have to be repaid with interest.
As the president of HOPE International, I have personally seen that responsible microfinance is an incredibly effective tool for poverty alleviation. Not perfect, but powerful. A safe place to save and accumulate capital as well as an opportunity to access small loans for productive investments are critical for communities to overcome poverty. To fuel this movement, it will require microfinance institutions that limit their promised rate of return, measure their success by more than just their financial return, and follow time-tested procedures that help ensure loans and savings are used for their intended purposes.
Globally, microfinance is not even close to reaching its saturation point, but it will take patient investors to join the movement and choose to help the poor and not just maximize short-term profits.
The following email was written by a HOPE staff member to encourage her brothers and sisters serving with HOPE around the world.
A few weeks ago my husband and I attended a class on Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God. (Keller defines “prodigal” as “recklessly extravagant” or “having spent everything”—so true of our God who runs after us and sent His only Son to die for us.) Keller argues that both sons in the Luke 15 story of the prodigal are lost—not just the younger, irresponsible brother. He goes further, though, and says that the older brother is actually in a more spiritually dangerous position. Keller writes:
Although the sons are both wrong and both loved, the story does not end on the same note for each. Why does Jesus construct the story so that one of them is saved, restored to a right relationship with the father, and one of them is not? (At least, not before the story ends.) It may be that Jesus is trying to say that while both forms of the self-salvation project are equally wrong, each one is not equally dangerous. One of the ironies of the parable is now revealed. The younger son’s flight from the father was crashingly obvious. He left the father literally, physically, and morally. Though the older son stayed at home, he was actually more distant and alienated from the father than his brother, because he was blind to his true condition. He would have been horribly offended by the suggestion that he was rebelling against the father’s authority and love, but he was, deeply.
Let me explain how I’ve had my eyes opened to my older brother tendencies and thus to my very dangerous spirituality. I spent the summer before I got married in Zimbabwe living with children who were orphaned by AIDS. Not surprisingly, during my time there, God grew my heart for the children in Zimbabwe, and I longed to return permanently. To keep it simple, let’s just say that while my husband loves God very much and has a very active and sincere faith, when we got married we didn’t exactly share a passion or calling for living and working in Africa. Not long into marriage we started having hard, impassioned, disappointment-filled, guilt-inducing, resentful conversations about “what we should do with our lives.”
Some of you may be reading and thinking, “Wow, they really should have covered this topic in pre-marital counseling,” but my point is NOT to suggest that, given the chance, we would or should undo our decision so that we could pursue our different callings. Precisely the opposite—read on!
Anyway, it didn’t help matters that as soon as we got married I started working for an incredible organization where I consistently interacted with the executive directors of Christ-centered non-profits. I spent my days being unbelievably spiritually enriched and encouraged. I came home inspired and ready to DO something about what I was learning. Meanwhile, my husband spent his days at work feeling drained and less than inspired. He described himself as spiritually dry and didn’t know how to change it.
As a result, I spent a good chunk of the first parts of marriage in and out of feeling disappointed about what my husband’s faith looked like (and how, in my opinion, he was holding me back from really serving God). It wasn’t constant and there were plenty of things that made us enjoy marriage and each other, but when conversations turned to what I (arrogantly) determined was the way you know if you really love God—willingness to move to Africa—I exploded with feelings of frustration, desperation, disappointment, anger and resentment. Of course I wasn’t the only one hurting; largely because of the way I was treating him, my husband started experiencing feelings of inadequacy, spiritual inferiority, indifference, and resentment.
Now in this email it is easy to pick up on my heinous heart, but I promise it wasn’t so easy to detect at the time. I did a great job of completely ignoring my judgmental heart and somehow manipulated the situation to appear (to myself and some others) like I was the victim. Here I was, (supposedly) wanting to radically live my life fully for the Gospel—wherever God wanted me to do it—and my husband “wouldn’t let me.” Poor me. Like the older brother in Luke 15, I was spiritually in a very dangerous place.
Enter the Gospel.
Over the course of the next several months and years, God began to show me His great wisdom and mercy in not letting us move to Zimbabwe. I was heading down the well-paved Pharisaic road that leads to self-worship and spiritual destruction, and I was completely oblivious to the situation.
There are lots of times we can point to as moments where God graciously opened my eyes to my lostness, arrogance, and judgmental behavior, but the most memorable one was when my husband pretty calmly looked at me and said, “The biggest problem in our marriage is that I don’t think I’m good enough for you… and you don’t think I’m good enough for you.” My heart aches at the memory of those insightful, piercing words. God had been trying to show me this for a while, but my husband’s directness and the Spirit’s work finally began penetrating my hard heart.
Like the older brother, I held feelings of spiritual superiority, entitlement, deep anger, and bitterness because life wasn’t going how I wanted. I thought I wanted to do all the right things. But what were my real motives? I had to ask questions like, why does it make me so mad that we can’t go? Is it righteous anger—because I really want to serve God—or something else? Was I defending God’s glory or was I motivated by other things? With the help of unconditional love from my husband, some good counsel, and community, the Spirit examined my heart about my motivation for all of these ‘radical’ behaviors, and the results were painful and humbling.
It turns out that my radical, do anything, go anywhere faith was deeply contaminated by self-love or self-worship. A lot of the reasons I wanted to do something so extreme were because I wanted people to think well of me (I just happen to have selected radically faithful Christians as the people I want to impress—tricky, huh.) I wanted people to think highly of me—Jesus too—but only if they remembered I was the one who helped them think highly of Jesus. I was threatened (and therefore angry, bitter, and desperate) because, in my mind, my husband was preventing me from proving my worth to everyone, including God.
God is opening my eyes to how sinful my heart really is, and parts of me are dying. It is great. I now assume my motivations for “good works” are at least slightly perverted (which doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do anything but I should ask God to expose my sins and purify my motives). Grace is advancing in my heart, Jesus is being exalted more (instead of me) when I do “good works,” and fruit is being produced in our marriage and life. Of course it hasn’t felt good to go through this pruning process—but it is irreplaceable and the gains are immeasurably valuable.
Now let me assure you, it is “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me,” Philippians 3:12. It would be an understatement to say I have screwed up a lot and that I have hundreds of miles to go in learning these lessons (and plenty of crevices in my heart haven’t yet been explored), but I have a matchless partner to journey with (my husband) and a matchless Savior who has promised to complete this work in me.
I have felt God convict me about what one of my major tasks is for my life: to have the kind of marriage that our children will want to have. Two years ago I would have laughed at the notion of that being worthy of “my calling in life.” Because of God’s grace, though, I can pursue obedience in this area without feeling like it is inferior to a more radical calling like living with children orphaned by AIDS.
I know how tempting older brother behavior is for those of us who work for organizations like HOPE. We have exterior lives that look good. We do the right things. But why? So, I invite you, again, to ask God to examine your heart, your motives, your relationships, your attitude, etc. and expose your sin so that you’ll delight more in what your Savior has done and so that you can more peacefully and humbly live with others around you.
I am daily tempted to slip into these behaviors and attitudes, so I hope identifying them (some indicators written below) will help us to better understand the difference between our self-righteously-motivated behaviors and Gospel-motivated behaviors.
Here are some indicators (mostly from Keller’s book) that show you might be struggling with self-righteousness:
• Deep anger or bitterness when life isn’t going the way you want
• Joyless, fear-based compliance
• Belief that you’re a “real” Christian and others “just don’t get it”
• Doing things for others, including God because you’re supposed to (not enjoying it; possibly only doing it to protect the image you want)
• Sense of significance is gained through competitive comparison
• Feel the need to appear happy and content when you aren’t
• Feel devastated by criticism and act defensively
• Dry prayer life
• Think that if prayers are unanswered it is because you weren’t good enough
I would like to share three caveats before coming back to these stories.
First, there are times when the only option is to give things away. In cases of war and famine, in refugee camps, for children who are on the brink of death—what these individuals need is food and medical assistance—and they need it fast, or they will die. I recognize that sometimes the best solution is to help by freely distributing stuff. What I’d like to encourage us all to do is to examine what the correct response could be and should be in situations where there are opportunities for long-term involvement and partnership.
Second, we need to examine our own hearts in how we view the poor. We need to abandon our tendencies to view ourselves as the great healers of the world and the poor as the sick who need us to heal them. We need to replicate what we saw in Christ, who came to earth as God incarnate to live among us, His creation. Not only did He choose to come to earth, but while here he purposefully chose to live around, party with, and minister to those in need. There is so much we can learn about ministering to the poor in his incarnation alone. Pastor, civil rights leader, and community developer John Perkins says it this way:
Without living among the [poor], without actually becoming one of the people, it is impossible to accurately identify the needs…an outsider can seldom know the needs of the community well enough to know how to best respond to them. Churches that respond most compassionately to the needy are those that have sent out from their own congregations people to live and walk and eat and breathe among the poor.
We need to be friends with those in need. Globally, we need to develop partnerships with organizations and churches that have local members of the community serving and working there, who really understand the local community.
Third, helping people physically is not enough. Christ and his ministry and the example of the New Testament church present a model of helping that is directed to the whole-person. It is not enough to provide bread for the poor if we aren’t introducing them to the Bread of Life. From my experience, there are a lot of Christian organizations who practice and purport a theology which places value on helping the poor in the name of Jesus, but doesn’t place value on helping the poor by introducing them to Jesus. To go back to the stories I shared earlier:
What would have happened if the church starting the ministry in Rwanda had found a few individuals like Jano and helped them grow their egg businesses? What if they had invested in a locally-run organization that was training local Christians to run their businesses in godly ways? What change could have occurred if these business owners had then been connected with orphanages and if they committed to giving eggs on a monthly basis to those sick children in desperate need of protein? For I was sick, and you cared for me.
Years after the missionaries encouraged the Tanzanian community leaders to stop eating grubs and bugs, new missionaries came into that community and were helping to restore the local culture by reintroducing the bugs back into the diets. They came as friends and lived there with humility. They recognized that they didn’t have all the answers. And as a result of this posture, they developed trusting relationships through which they could minister effectively. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink.
It is exciting to see what has happened in Atlanta with the church that had the free clothes outlet. They decided to convert their clothing outlet into a thrift store, where they charged reasonable rates for the clothing. If individuals could not afford to buy any clothing, they provided them with opportunities to work at the store to earn a living and purchase the clothing. The church members hired and trained unemployed and homeless individuals from the community. They were then able to build relationships with these individuals and through those relationships, introduce them to Christ. When they made the change, the clothing outlet became a profitable venture within 18 months.
And one of the greatest changes was the shift in what their relationship looked like with the local community. No longer was there the healer-patient mentality which plagued the free clothing outlet. Lupton describes it this way:
Customers now felt valued rather than guarded against. They were needed and they sensed it. They were welcomed, not as subjects of compassion, but as essential customers. The store could not survive without them. Instead of staff expending energy on how to keep the customers’ greed in check, the energy went into creating an atmosphere that would attract them…
The experience revealed that people—perhaps universally—would far rather engage in legitimate exchange than be the object of another’s pity. There is something in one-way giving that erodes human dignity…We [need to] get out of the business of giving away. We [need to] start using our heads as well as our hearts to build value into people and relationships—value realized only when authentic exchange occurs. Again, perhaps the greatest poverty of all is having nothing of value to offer the community. I want to believe that no one in my community is that poor. For I was naked, and you clothed me.
What Lupton touches on here is important. In Matthew 25, Christ says that whatever you have done to those in need, you literally have done to Him. There is power in that. How would we treat our Creator if He was here among us? I look at my own life and question whether I treat the poor in that light. It has changed my perspective to think that I am to treat those in need with the same dignity and respect in which I would treat almighty God. This was central to the response Jeff Rutt had to the requests of the pastors in Ukraine.
When he was approached by these pastors, they asked him and his church kindly to stop bringing the free stuff and encouraged Jeff to find a way to help them long-term. In being there, and because he owned a business himself, he saw that there were a lot of talented and gifted Ukrainian leaders who were capable of starting businesses to support their own families and their church. But, they lacked the opportunity to do so. There were no banks that allowed the poor to be customers. Jeff recognized that these individuals just needed a kick-start.
So, together with the local church leaders, they decided to give it a shot. They hired a local staff to find the brightest leaders and potential business owners and started with 12 energetic entrepreneurs. They opened, essentially, a bank for the poor that provided loans, basic business training, and mentoring to help them get their start. That was the beginning of HOPE International. Ten years later, HOPE is working in 14 countries with over a quarter million entrepreneurs across the globe, providing Christ-centered banks to the poor.
