This book is meant to change you. It's not supposed to make you feel good, or tell you what to do in order to feel good, or even how to eradicate poverty from the world, the nation, or your community. Authors Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert aim directly at the heart and mind, the two starting-places for action, with the intent of getting you to actually do something.
Getting every Christian to do something, really. To that end, the authors open every chapter with thought-provoking questions, end with reflection questions, and distribute longer exercises throughout the text. They aren't looking for people to just read the pages—they're looking for full engagement, a Christian response to the ages-old problem of poverty.
In America, reactions to that word range from dismissal to faux concern to genuine care, but how many of us have actually done anything to help the needy? Do our programs often do more harm than good? Is government welfare a suitable alternative? All of these questions are addressed through the lens of Christ's mission to the world.
According to Corbett and Fikkert, that mission was to reconcile all creation to the Creator. Our task as Christians is to proclaim that reconciliation through our actions and the message we preach. This means that we are to help repair what has been broken, including poverty. The goal of believers is not to simply spread the wealth, but to share the Gospel through our concern for the physical well-being of those with less.
The authors are careful not to promote a mere social gospel, keeping the focus on Christ and His redemptive work as the motivation and theological basis for our community work. For them, the task of helping follows a pattern (relief-rehabilitation-development) that in turn reflects the properspiritual and physical priorities of our mininstry.
We tend to assume that giving is always a blessing, no matter to whom we give, no matter how we give. This book shows how this isn't always the case, but it's not just a negative put-down of strategies and motivations: When Helping Hurts is a proactive manual for attacking and defeating both poverty and materialism in the name of the Lord.
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