This could merely be a futile attempt to justify my actions, and if you think so, I'd love to discuss how I could have improved my interactions with a woman at Walmart this afternoon. I recognize many mistakes in my interactions today, but I also recognize that mistakes are made so we can avoid making the same mistakes twice. It is this learning process, precisely, that persuaded me to make the decision I did today. I do not share this story with you to pat myself on the back, to toot my own horn, or to convince you to do what I did. After all, many people who read this story will call me a hypocrite, a bad person, suggest a lot of reading on Christian charity, and feel that I should be ashamed of myself and what I did. Honestly, I have no pride in my heart for what I did. In fact, I have a deep felt remorse and sorrow for what I did. Nevertheless, I believe I did the right thing.
It's Saturday afternoon, and after scrounging for what I could find in the fridge to make some lunch, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and make a trip to the dreaded Walmart for some groceries.
I don't know what comes to mind when you think of Walmart because Walmarts are all over the place...some of them in good neighborhoods and some of them in bad neighborhoods. I wouldn't say the one closest to us in a bad neighborhood, but it's certainly not the best.
I am in the produce section, walking over to grab a bagged salad, and a lady in a scooter cart grabs my attention:
"Excuse me."
"Yes?"
"Do you see those blueberries up there?"
"Yes, how many would you like?"
"Will you grab one?"
"Certainly."
I grabbed her a small package of blueberries and handed them to her. She took them, and continued on with her shopping. I must admit, it instantly struck me that she seemed upset about the exchange. She looked upset when I handed her the blueberries, she didn't smile, and she didn't show any appreciation. I literally shrugged my shoulders and continued towards the bagged salads. I just added her behavior to a long list of characters that I have met at Walmart over the years. I assumed she was having a bad day.
After grabbing my bagged salad, I heard my wife's voice in my head. It said, "Get the non-perishables before you fill your cart with perishables and food starts spoiling." Actually, the voice just said, "Who taught you to grocery shop?" but I knew what it meant.
I left the grocery section to grab some cosmetics and household goods. I returned to the grocery section about ten minutes later. The lady in the scooter was coming down the main aisle, saw me, looked as if she had been looking for me, and bee-lined it towards me. I made eye contact, expecting her to ask me to grab something off the top shelf again.
"Excuse me, are you a Christian?"
"Yes I am."
"What church do you go to?"
I proceeded to explain that I attend a Reformed Presbyterian church downtown. She explained that she grew up in the Presbyterian church but she was now a Pentecostal. She also proceeded to explain to me that she was a minister of Christ Jesus, called by Him to abandon everything to minister in His name. She was living off of social security and welfare checks, her monthly checks wouldn't arrive until Tuesday because Labor Day was the following Monday, she had no food, and she asked if I would pay for her groceries.
I started to explain that I work at a local homeless shelter, and she interrupted me to explain that she couldn't go there. She didn't have a car or any mode of transportation. A man at the motel she was staying at gave her a ride to Walmart to buy her groceries. She didn't ask him to help her with the groceries because she felt like he didn't have money and she only asks Christians.
However, I wasn't telling her that I work at a homeless shelter so that I could suggest she go there. She didn't look like the part of a homeless individual needing a meal. I was going to explain to her that I work at a homeless shelter, and I am very skeptical of anyone asking for a handout. I told her that I wanted to help her (I wasn't lying), but I had been burned by too many people seeking help before. I didn't tell her this so I could walk on. I explained this to her so that I could tell her that I didn't believe her story and that I wasn't going to pay for her groceries. I still had every intention of trying to help her, however.
She quickly became defensive.
"I'm not lying to you. You can see in my eyes that I am not lying to you. I'm a Christian asking a fellow Christian to help me."
I looked again at the groceries in her basket, I took a deep breath, and I did something very difficult: I said no. I didn't say the word, but I began the process of telling her why I wasn't going to pay for her cart of groceries.
"You say your a minister of Christ, so what church are you attending?"
"I'm not attending church. I can't. I don't have a vehicle."
I think she could see the look on my face, at this point, and she knew what I was about to offer. She quickly back-tracked.
"I've been to five different churches and they're all corrupt! I was at one church and I was going to pray for a lady there and the pastor told me I couldn't pray for anyone else because every time I pray for someone they die."
"Well, yes, there are plenty of places that call themselves Christian churches, but I know of several good churches around town that you could attend. If you are a minister for Jesus Christ then you should be surrounded by the body of Christ."
"The church is not the building. The church is the people. The church is the people filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and do you know what that power is? Do you know what that power is?"
"Faith."
"Yes, the power of the Holy Spirit and faith, do you know what it is?"
"No, faith is the evidence of the Holy Spirit. Christians should be surrounded by people with like faith, the body of Christ. You claim to be a minister of Christ but you are outside of the body of faith."
"I left my house, my job, and my car to minister in Jesus' name. I want to see you do that! You try that!...Christians are supposed to help each other but you won't help me."
"The question is, what is helping?"
"What?"
"What would help you?"
"I'm hungry. I don't have any food in the motel, and I don't have any money. Someone was kind enough to buy me this, but this is all I have. I'm just asking you to pay for these few groceries for me."
I looked at the food she was referring to. It was orange chicken from the deli section. Her story was further unraveling before me. Either, I was not the first person she asked to pay for her groceries and the other person bought her something at the deli, or she was lying.
"I don't think paying for your groceries is going to help you..."
"So be it. It will be done to you as you have done."
The last sentence she said under her breath as she rode her motorized cart towards the dairy section. I didn't get to finish my sentence.
I continued my shopping, more scatter brained than usual. I visited several isles numerous times. I hopped around the store, unable to organize my thoughts. I kept asking myself, Did I do the right thing? I was truly conflicted. What if she was telling the truth? What if she truly is a Christian and she's just lost her way temporarily? Shouldn't I have paid for her groceries, given her a ride back to the motel, and arranged to pick her up tomorrow morning on my way to church?
I got out to my car, placed the groceries in the trunk, and headed home. At the stop sign was a young lady holding a sign: Everything counts. Underneath the words was an ichthys (the fish symbol). I revisited the whole story as I drove home.
First of all, my first interaction with this woman was quite strange. Asking for blueberries on the top shelf isn't strange when you are in a motorized cart, but her reaction was strange. No thank you. No sign of appreciation. No recognition of my assistance. It was as if I owed her the opportunity to do what I did. It didn't come across rude, but rather, entitled.
When I saw her the second time, it was if she had been looking for me. The first thing she asked me was, "Are you a Christian." As soon as I answered affirmatively, she believed she had me hook, line, and sink 'em.
Well meaning Christians often are the worse offenders when providing hand outs to people that ask for them. When I was growing up, I remember hearing the grown ups talk about the best way to help people asking for money on the streets. They said that rather than giving them money you should pay for their gas, give them a meal, or pay for their groceries. However, whether it is money, a gas tank's worth of gas, a free meal, or a grocery bill covered by someone else's generosity, a handout is a handout.
Handouts don't help anyone.
First of all, handouts really hurt the people asking for them. Many of these people are con artists and not really homeless, impoverished, or hungry like they make themselves out to be. They'll tell you a story about how they just hit hard times, they don't usually ask anyone for help, but they just need to ask you this one time. In fact, many of them do this for a living. They get to choose their own hours, they don't have to answer to anyone, and they can make good money.
Those asking for a handout that aren't conning you, are preying on you in another way. They often take no responsibility for the problem in which they are asking you to help them with. Rather, they make you feel like the responsibility is all yours to help them. Especially if they find out that you're a Christian. They will make you feel like your faith in Christ and Christ's command to help the poor obligates you to give into their request.
This lady at Walmart put the responsibility of her hunger and destitution on me rather than herself. She would go hungry for the weekend if I wouldn't pay for her groceries. However, I didn't give her the opportunity to guilt me or obligate me into buying her groceries because I knew that she was responsible for her own situation. She wasn't hungry because I wouldn't pay for her groceries. She was hungry because she wasn't managing her money properly, she wasn't seeking other means of provision, and she was turning her back on a faith community that would help take care of her. None of these things were in my control. I could have paid for a small cart of groceries, but the underlying problem that was causing her hunger wouldn't have been addressed.
If you are a fellow believer, I want to be very careful about what I say next and I want you to read what I write very carefully:
As a Christian, you are not obligated by your faith to provide handouts to everyone that asks you for one. As a Christian, you are obligated by your faith in Christ to help those in need of help.
Anytime someone approaches you and asks you to help them, don't get flustered, don't panic, and don't feel any obligation to give them what they want. Explain to them that you want to help them, but you have to consider the best way to help them. Rest assured, a hand out of any sort will not help them. It will abate the situation they find themselves in that day, but it doesn't address the underlying problem.
Some people have a rule not to give money to anyone, but they are not opposed to buying a meal, paying for groceries, filling up a gas tank, or paying for a hotel room. However, this is no better than just giving them money.
As an example, if an alcoholic asks you for money and you buy him a meal, you just gave him five dollars to continue to support his bad habit. How? Now he doesn't have to spend five dollars for dinner, and he can use the next five a stranger give him to buy a bottle.
I cannot iterate enough that a handout doesn't help anyone.
As Christians, we've believed for a while that giving handouts are okay as long as it isn't money. Nothing can be further from the truth.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert's book When Helping Hurts is a wonderful book that should be required reading for deacons and Christians who want to help the poor and homeless. The title of the book has a double meaning. When Christians think they are helping someone asking for a handout they are actually hurting that person. They are alleviating a temporary problem in that person's life that will continue to persist as long as that person doesn't take responsibility for their own actions, bad habits, and sinfulness.
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.
It's something we've all heard and believe to be true. If it is true, then why are Christians giving men fish every single day? Just because you don't give the person money, doesn't mean that you're not giving that person a fish. Every handout is a fish in this equation. Every handout gives the person to avoid taking responsibility for their problem for another day, enjoy the spoils at another person's expense, and motivates them to add a new destructive pattern of expecting handouts from others to their repertoire of bad and destructive habits.
This kind of "helping" also hurts other people. People seeking handouts are persistent and are very good at getting what they want. They pull on the strings of your heart, they make you feel guilty, they toy with your emotions, and they will make it very hard to say no. As long as you give in to their request, you are hurting the next person they are going to take advantage of. The next person might not have the capacity you have to help, and the next person might be hurt far more than you.
The other meaning of this title is the meaning most often lost on the reader. Truly helping someone asking for a handout is really going to hurt. It is this pain that many Christians (myself included) try to avoid at all costs. It is far easier to give a man a fish. It takes a lot of work, commitment, devotion, and persistence to teach a man to fish. You have to get involved with his life, you have to get to know him, you have to spend time with him, and you have to invest in him. Although this would change the man's life, it would really change your's as well. Your schedule would have to change, you might not get to what you hoped you would, and you would have to go out of your way.
Christians, we're throwing fish at these people left and right and we're complaining about the way they take advantage of government resources. We're letting them take advantage of us but we fault the government for letting them take advantage of welfare, food stamps, and other social services. This exposes another meaning to the title When Helping Hurts. When we get tired of people taking advantage of us, asking for handouts that they don't need, lying to us, and making us feel obligated to help them, it hurts people who are actually in an emergency situation and need assistance. Christians, like myself today, grow skeptical of everyone asking for immediate assistance. For all I know, the lady at Walmart today could have been telling me the wholehearted truth and I should have intervened more than I did. She may have spent five days without food and she just needed a few groceries to hold her off until Monday. She may have had an expected expense this month that caused her to burn through her fixed income faster than expected. These are possibilities that I was forced to try to outweigh with my knowledge of most people that ask for handouts.
So, what should we do, as Christians, when someone approaches us for a handout?
We should look to Christ.
We have four books in our Bibles that provide four eyewitness accounts of Jesus' earthly ministry. Jesus interacted with the poor all the time. In fact, Jesus was a homeless man when He began His ministry. He didn't have anywhere to lay His head at night.
First of all, as we look to Christ, we have to consider His example but also consider our limitations. He was a man just like us, but He was also wholly God. Whenever we look to Christ, we have to keep this in mind. It is important to consider What would Jesus do? because we should seek to follow His lead, but we must never forget What did Jesus do? because we cannot, of our own strength, do what Jesus did. As we look at Christ's ministry, we see an example that we should follow and that He calls us to follow as His disciples, but we are also called to see that Jesus came to do what we cannot. He accomplished what we couldn't and can't, and we must keep our eyes on Him not only to follow His footsteps but also to be carried by Him when we cannot do as He did.
Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus had great compassion on the poor, lame, and needy. He didn't require anything of them before He fed them, clothed them, healed them, and changed their lives. There is a lot about Jesus' ministry to the poor that we don't know about. It would probably take several of the volumes that John speaks of at the end of his gospel account. We get glimpses here and there of Jesus' ministry to the poor. We know that Jesus and the disciples were raising money to support the poor because Judas was in charge of purse. Therefore, we know that Jesus provided money to the poor and He also provided handouts.
If you look at Christ's miracles and ministries to the poor, lame, and diseased, you'll notice a common theme: faith. The handouts are never given and the miracles are never performed for the sake of fixing a physical, temporary problem. These are all faith experiences for those that Jesus touched, healed, and fed. Jesus didn't just heal a person's physical problem, He had the power and ability to heal their spiritual problem. He came up to a crippled man and said, "Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven." After Jesus heard the evil thoughts of the Pharisees, He remedied the man's physical disability because of their unbelief. They thought making a paralytic walk was a greater demonstration of power than forgiving a lifetime of sin. Christ performed both miracles, and yet, they still didn't believe.
Christ didn't come to eliminate poverty, disease, and hunger. It was Christ that promised, "You always have the poor with you" (Matthew 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8). Do you remember the circumstance in which Jesus said this and to whom He said this too? It was after Mary anointed Christ's feet with an expensive bottle of oil. Matthew and Mark say that the disciples were upset, but John singles out Judas for being upset:
"He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it." (John 12:6)
Christ said that whenever we want, we can do good for the poor (Mark 14:7), but that is not why He came. He saw what Mary did and called it beautiful because she recognized what Christ came to do. She was preparing His body for burial. She recognized that His ministry was so much bigger than healing physical problems and providing remedies for physical ailments. She believed Jesus was God, she believed Jesus was the Christ, and she knew that He was going to die because of this. The disciples, especially Judas, didn't see this. They thought Christ's kingdom was of this world and that He was going to build it by empowering the underdogs to overthrow the elitists that were oppressing them.
Christ's ministry to the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the oppressed wasn't about allowing them to fix a physical, temporary problem in their life. It was about calling them out of their unbelief, forgiving their sins, and calling them to place their faith in Him to restore them to God.
Remember what Jesus said to the crowd of five thousand that followed Him after He provided them all with a free meal the night before?
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
(John 6:26-34 ESV)
After this, Jesus clearly demonstrates that His ministry was not about handouts but was about providing a meal that wouldn't perish: Himself. He said that He was the bread of life. Those who place their faith in Him will no longer hunger or thirst, but rather, would be nourished on a food far greater than the food of angels. Their faith in Him would cleanse them of their sin, reconcile them with the Father, make them adopted children of the most high God, and they would be restored both spiritually and physically. The Jewish crowd was disheartened by this response. They just feasted on Jesus' miracle the night before, but now that Jesus was talking about having a much greater purpose than filling their bellies, they saw Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph rather than the Son of God.
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
(John 6:66 ESV)
This is the case for many people who receive handouts. They don't want the bread of life, but rather, they just want their daily bread and at your expense. As a disciple of Christ, your commission is to, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19-20). A handout without any responsibility to abandon sinful habits, seek forgiveness in Christ and Him alone, and seek reconciliation with God the Father in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is just that...a handout. It's not a ministry. It's not helping anyone.
As Christians, we are called to minister to the poor. But we must minister to the poor by following the example of Christ Jesus. When Jesus ministered to the poor He wasn't trying to eliminate their lack of physical wealth. He was addressing the poverty that plagues the entire globe: spiritual poverty.
As a former deacon, I saw and participated in several examples of what not to do. The poor come to churches and up to Christians expecting handouts. That is, sadly, how we like to operate. It's easier, it's less messy, it's quick and painless, and...IT'S UNEFFECTIVE! God has brought this precious soul to you. They are oblivious to their sinfulness, their need for salvation, their redeemer, Christ Jesus, and the means of grace He provided to not only nourish His church spiritually but also to expand it. They know that Christians feel obligated to help the poor, and more often than not, they leverage that to get a quick handout (what they're looking for). We need to look to Christ, follow His example, remember that His earthly ministry was all about His death and resurrection, and seek to share that instead of or along with a handout.
I truly feel convicted that any homeless person seeking a handout from my church should be invited to worship with us before or after they're request is attended to. Our ministry to him or her should be a spiritual one first and foremost. Every provision for that person should be followed up with prayer, an attempt to provide accountability for provisions requested or received, and room for the relationship to grow into something more than just a fish chuck. These precious people are at our doorsteps and we are throwing them a bone and turning our backs on them. God is bringing them to us and we are forgetting our commission from Christ. We are forgetting to look to Christ and His ministry to the poor. We are failing to do our job as His people, His disciples, and His church.
Although I have these strong convictions, that doesn't mean that I am able to perform them. This is where it is always crucial to look to Christ as a man and as the Son of God. I know what Jesus would do, but I'm scared to do it and uncomfortable when I try to do it. I need to remember not only what Jesus would do but what He did do as it pertains to what He accomplished on my behalf. He sent us a helper, the Holy Spirit, to continually sanctify and conform me more and more into the image of Christ. God pours out grace abundantly when our faith is lacking. Time and time again, like today at Walmart, I feel ashamed and unable to do the things that I want to do. My interactions with the woman at the store didn't go the way I wanted them to, my denial to pay for her groceries was seen as a betrayal of the faith in Christ that I claimed to have, and I did not do a good job of demonstrating my desire to see her fed with the fellowship of Christ and His church. That is where I need to continue to look to Christ, knowing that He makes me whole where I am lacking and that the same Spirit that comforted Him is the Spirit that comforts, helps, and sanctifies me to be more and more like Him, to the glory of God the Father.
In a post script, you can see that I have very high expectations of deacons and those overseeing the ministry of mercy. Unfortunately, I feel that many churches across America neglect the biblical duties of deacons. I admonish any congregation that treats their deacons as custodians and outlines their duties as facility managers, temp workers for congregant needs, and mere financial stewards. The office of deacon has been marginalized in many modern churches, and this stems heavily from modern churches neglecting their Christian duty to the needy. In the early church, the needy and the church were almost synonymous terms. Today, the universal church could do far more to help the needy, but we take a back seat and complain about the government spending of taxpayer dollars on the homeless, hungry, and impoverished services that don't ever fix the problem. That's because money and handouts cannot change a person's spiritual poverty.
Christ's ministry clearly demonstrates that He came to minister to the sick, the poor, the lame, the oppressed, and the lost. Both the spiritually sick, the spiritually poor, the spiritually dead, the spiritually oppressed, and the spiritually lost and the physical equivalent. If your deacons are not following Christ's example and focusing a large portion of their time and the church's financial resources by setting an example of what it takes to truly help the poor or by supporting a Godly organization that helps the poor, then I do not believe your church or your deacons are performing their biblical duties.
The deacon's duty is simply to provide physical acts of mercy expecting spiritual results.
Their duty is not to lock up after everyone else has left, take the offering and count it, make sure that all of the church toilets flush and the squeaky board in the floor gets oiled, and be the work horses whenever a congregant has a physical task that requires help. These are all good things for the whole church to be involved in, both young and old. You do not need to meet the biblical requirements of 1 Timothy 3:8-13 to perform these tasks. These are not duties that require a calling and ordination. These are not the duties of deacons.
The duty of a deacon is to continue Christ's earthly ministry towards the poor, lame, sick, and oppressed while He is absent, seeking to alleviate their physical ailments by focusing on their spiritual ailment. This is a calling, this requires special men with special gifts, this requires great faith, and this is why, "those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 3:13). If they are serving and performing the duty God has called them to, they see over and over again how faith in Christ Jesus changes people in an astounding way. I didn't learn about how to be a good deacon in the church, unfortunately. I learned in a Christian homeless shelter, and I'm hoping to challenge you and your church to visit a homeless shelter to see how faith in Christ Jesus changes people. You'll be astounded too and I hope it changes the way you see the duties of your deacons.
