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Christianity Today, December (Web-only), 2011

How Charity Can Be Toxic, Just in Time for Christmas

Bob Lupton explains how to avoid destroying dignity.

Interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Indianapolis | posted 12/21/2011 10:38AM

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Toxic Charity
by Robert D. Lupton
HarperOne, October 2011
208 pp., $22.99

Bob Lupton has seen both the blessings and curses of charity, cases where giving can both empower and disempower members of a community. As churches encourage giving and service projects around the Christmas season, Lupton encourages caution. How are churches measuring their outcomes, ensuring they aren't keeping people in places of need? Christianity Today's online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey spoke with Lupton during the Christian Community Development Association conference about ways Christians can navigate the charity waters.

How do you see charity hurting families?

I'm seeing one-way giving, doing for people what they have the capacity to do for themselves in a way that disempowers them. In the United States, the most common Christian charities are food pantries and clothes closets. For example, at Christmastime, I used to be involved with "Adopt a Family" at Christmas. I would line up suburban families with families whose kids wouldn't get anything for Christmas. Then, on Christmas Eve day, they would deliver toys and presents to that family. I saw something I had never seen before. The kids, of course, were excited. The moms were generally gracious, but a little subdued. But if there was a dad in the household, he just disappeared. These parents, in front of their kids, were being emasculated. They were being exposed for their inability to provide. The moms would endure that indignity for the sake of kids. But for the dads, it was just too much. It was just killing their pride.

The following Christmas, we did a "dignity for dads" promotion, or "pride for parents." So as folks called in for their families, I said, 'Go shopping, get presents for the kids, but bring them in unwrapped.' We set up a little toy shop and marked them somewhere between a garage sale and wholesale price. We invited parents to come into the shop. If they didn't have any money, we could hire parents with the money that came in. So on Christmas morning, the low-income parents could see their children open the gifts that they had earned through the efforts of their own work. We have to find a better way of entering into charitable relationships with more reciprocity.

This sounds more pragmatic or psychological. Are there theological implications for how we do charity?

Dignity is given to us by our creator. We hold a whole theology of community and mutual supportedness, bearing one another's burdens and concerns. One-way giving creates toxic relationships where one has the resources, the other has the need. Do recipients at clothes closets and food pantries become a part of your church? Often, they're not participants in our community. How do we create respectful, honest, caring, and mutually supportive relationships?

We asked recipients of our free food, "Would anybody be interested in joining in a food co-op?" You could pay $2 a week and get $30 of groceries. We would do a run to the community food bank where you can buy surplus food. The members of the co-op became the owners of that co-op and decided on the shopping list instead of just being the recipients of whatever we gave them. They managed their money and distributed their food. It creates community and accountability as opposed to the one-way giving system.

What about foreign aid? If we can't cultivate community there, how do we keep charity at the local level?

Last week a guy was telling me that his church went down to Haiti and was so touched by seeing mothers with their babies in their arms wrapped in newspapers and rags. They were so touched that they came back with blankets. They had gotten bunches of blankets and handed those out to those mothers. The next morning when they went out they saw the same blankets in the shops along the street and went down to the mothers and the kids were still in rags and newspapers. They were furious, not realizing that the real need was food and those babies were hungry, and those women would sell a blanket anytime to get a little bit of milk and rice for the babies. We haven't looked at the outcomes of our charities. We've measured our charity by how it affects us as givers. Do we feel the numbers that we have served? Was it a good spiritual experience? Did it change my life?

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December (Web-only) 2011, Vol. 55

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Pam

December 27, 2011 10:09pm

I worry about this latest Christian intellectual trend in regard to giving and volunteering. Yes, of course we should be wise about charities/non-profits/missions and ask about short and long-term outcomes. But there can be a real lack of humility here. Just because we have money, we do not really have the ability to predict the long-term outcome of a gesture/gift or a gesture/gift withheld? Life is long, and what might enable one individual might inspire or engage another now or down the road, Also, where is the joy of giving that God calls us to? I work at a faith-based non-profit and we love it when we receive Christmas collections from enthusiastic churches, which are often for simple things like hats and mittens or paperback books. Everyone benefits -- the churches who support us, the donors who want to do something to help, the kids, their families, and the staff. Does it solve long-term problems? No. Does it give joy? Yes, very much so. Balance is needed.

abey

December 26, 2011 5:57am

Charity is good, but when people like Franklin graham go about propagating toys instead of standing against "gay inclusiveness" in the military, amounts to a case of mistaken priorities. But then gain what people like Franklin do not know is that when a society becomes complacent in the law to gay matters, it is the beginning of the end. In the case of US Military/Nato the Bible states of the beast "Who is like unto the beast , who can make war with it". But its end together with the the devil & the false prophet(the pagan philosophies inc. of the deceitful masonic concepts) stated for the lake of fire. As stated earlier, Gay inclusion in the military is the beginning to its end. Man must be foolish himself to think that the very God who created him does not know his deceitfulness, forgetting that the wages of sin is death.

Alison

December 22, 2011 10:27am

I know very few missionaries who didn't first go on a missions trip. Missions trip may seem frivolous or bothersome or a waste of money to some, but it exposes Christians to something bigger than themselves and often lights a fire to make missions a long-term commitment. Even if you're just painting a school, you are helping teenagers catch the vision.

Dileni Gunewardena

December 22, 2011 4:57am

"It sounds like you're suggesting churches might start thinking more like for-profit businesses, at least in how they measure outcomes." For profit businesses are not the only organisa that measure outcomes. NGOs and donors are required to monitor and evaluate projects, and governments evaluate the impact of programmes. Many years ago, when I interned at the World Bank, I gave my boss, an economist in the research division of the Bank, an "Alternative Gift" at Christmas--a cow to a family in Bangladesh. She wondered about the impacts of this intervention, and I see echoes of her concern in this article. If involvement is the objective, wouldn't longer-term, in-depth involvement be better than short-term painting projects? I have met economists who opted to work on issues facing developing countries (rather than on Wall St., perhaps) because of their experience as a high-school exchange student spending a year in Africa, living with an African family. Isn't this "incarnational" ?

Anonymous

December 21, 2011 9:21pm

I am one who believes we are ennabling many today, from the homeless to single mothers to those who prefer to get something free instead of having to struggle for it. While Idon't have an answer, I believe we should carefully think about what and how we give. On another level, this year, I am giving small gifts to family members and telling them I have decided to give in their honor to military organizations. Many are injured, cannot do what they had hoped to do, and some are coming home who will need help to find jobs.

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