Jesus famously summarized the law and prophets by citing the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love neighbor. To illustrate what it meant to love one’s neighbor he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, the beautiful story of a traveler who, in contrast to a priest and a Levite, cared for an injured victim of robbery by carrying him to a hotel, nursing his wounds, and covering his expenses.
For years this parable has shaped my family’s ministry. We carried gifts to people dying of AIDS and served food to the homeless. Living overseas as missionaries, we strived to serve the poor in meaningful ways whenever and however we could. But something always bothered us. Our efforts, though compassionate, well intended, and modeled after Christ’s story, never seemed to produce the results we desired. We were not irrational idealists expecting that we could single-handedly reverse years and even centuries of defective and unjust social systems. But we gradually realized that when we gave donations to people there were two crucial problems: 1) we only temporarily met their needs — they would soon grow hungry, and 2) we inadvertently created dependency — we were their source for ending their hunger. Continue Reading…
